Personally, I think that there’s a spectrum with many more points between #8 and #9. Even many employer matching programs aren’t entirely counterfactual, they likely have a budget of how much they’re willing to spend on charity matching which would be adjusted down on a per employee basis if they all used it, and the counterfactual portion is the difference in impact between different charities it might be donated to.
Per my comment I think there are different uses of counterfactual that are getting tied up, particularly when it comes to donor matching: impact and actions:
Counterfactual impact: Is the total impact triggered by donor A whose donation is being matched by donor B counterfactual once you take into account what donor B would have done otherwise?
Counterfactual action: Were the actions of donor B counterfactually impacted by donor A (i.e. they would have given somewhere else but that might have been similarly impactful, or less impactful)?
In the case of #2 it is not misleading to donor A to say that their donation was matched IMHO. But it isn’t the full story for impact, that is only as counterfactual as the difference between the impact of the actions that are taken or not.
I really like how you’ve laid this out 😀
Personally, I think that there’s a spectrum with many more points between #8 and #9. Even many employer matching programs aren’t entirely counterfactual, they likely have a budget of how much they’re willing to spend on charity matching which would be adjusted down on a per employee basis if they all used it, and the counterfactual portion is the difference in impact between different charities it might be donated to.
Per my comment I think there are different uses of counterfactual that are getting tied up, particularly when it comes to donor matching: impact and actions:
Counterfactual impact: Is the total impact triggered by donor A whose donation is being matched by donor B counterfactual once you take into account what donor B would have done otherwise?
Counterfactual action: Were the actions of donor B counterfactually impacted by donor A (i.e. they would have given somewhere else but that might have been similarly impactful, or less impactful)?
In the case of #2 it is not misleading to donor A to say that their donation was matched IMHO. But it isn’t the full story for impact, that is only as counterfactual as the difference between the impact of the actions that are taken or not.