Note that this depends on the “unit of action” for the organisation. E.g. for AMF, it may be that $2,000 is enough to do another distribution of bednets (I haven’t checked this). In which case the value of donations probably does scale linearly (at least when comparing a $2,000 donation and a $200,000 donation). But the non-linearity point would be valid if we were comparing $20 with $2,000 (i.e. $2,000 would be more than 100x as valuable as $20).
However for lots of organisations the “unit of action” is the amount of money needed to fund another person’s salary, in which case the non-linearity point would apply in the example I gave ($2,000 vs $200,000).
Obviously all of this is assuming favourable Room For More Funding conditions—i.e. that we have not yet hit diminishing marginal returns on donations.
Also, the point about “money has a time value” hides lots of detail which I haven’t gone into here, but can do if someone requests it.
Details/caveats:
Note that this depends on the “unit of action” for the organisation. E.g. for AMF, it may be that $2,000 is enough to do another distribution of bednets (I haven’t checked this). In which case the value of donations probably does scale linearly (at least when comparing a $2,000 donation and a $200,000 donation). But the non-linearity point would be valid if we were comparing $20 with $2,000 (i.e. $2,000 would be more than 100x as valuable as $20).
However for lots of organisations the “unit of action” is the amount of money needed to fund another person’s salary, in which case the non-linearity point would apply in the example I gave ($2,000 vs $200,000).
Obviously all of this is assuming favourable Room For More Funding conditions—i.e. that we have not yet hit diminishing marginal returns on donations.
Also, the point about “money has a time value” hides lots of detail which I haven’t gone into here, but can do if someone requests it.