This would make people feel better about their donations than they would otherwise. When people read Givewell’s recommendations and decides to donate to AMF instead of the local homeless shelter they don’t always feel pure joy at the knowledge that their donation is doing more good; they may also feel slightly bad about not helping the local homeless. With Altruistic Partisanship, people would feel good about helping charity in addition to feeling good about helping their candidate. Thus, Altruistic Partisanship could elicit donations from people who aren’t even remotely interested in effective altruism.
There are disadvantages to using Altruistic Partisanship as opposed to donating directly to a candidate. There would presumably be extra fees associated with moving the money around, or at least overhead associated with operating Altruistic Partisanship. There would be a delay in getting money to a candidate to provide time for the other candidate to raise a similar amount. Also, the assumption that depriving a campaign of $100 is just as good as donating $100 to your preferred candidate would not hold if your candidate has raised far less money than the opponent (or perhaps has lower name recognition, etc.). Finally, some donors may prefer to do whatever feels the most like supporting their candidate with little regard for the consequences, and donating directly to their candidate would probably be more appealing to them.
Politicians, even ones who are personally uninterested in philanthropy, would be incentivized to support Altruistic Partisanship. They could find it useful as a fundraising pitch; people who are on the fence about whether to donate to a candidate may be pushed over the edge by the prospect of simultaneously helping charities at no additional cost. Moreover, soliciting donations through Altruistic Partisanship could improve a politician’s image since it signals that he or she is a caring person.
There is a small but relevant chance that the majority of political contributions would eventually go through Altruistic Partisanship, even if most donors aren’t actually interested in helping charities. Here’s an example of how it might happen. One candidate decides to establish Altruistic Partisanship as the primary means of making a donation to his campaign, either because he wants charities to have more money or because he wants favorable media coverage. His opponent declines to follow suit and is criticized for being more interested in her campaign’s coffers than in helping people. Other politicians conclude from this that using Altruistic Partisanship is politically advantageous and decide to do so in future campaigns. If enough of them do so then the use of Altruistic Partisanship will become a political norm, and every time a politician sends an email asking for money it will double as a fundraiser for charity. (There could be an API, or perhaps human coordinators, to make it easy for campaigns to solicit donations via Altruistic Partisanship.)
I think Altruistic Partisanship’s core values should include doing the most good possible, maintaining political neutrality, and having the counterfactual political impact of a donation through Altruistic Partisanship be as close as possible to that of donating directly to a candidate. That is to say, donating through Altruistic Partisanship should be as politically effective as donating directly to a candidate.
Not just any charity could be chosen since some would be objectionable. If a Republican were to divert money from Clinton’s campaign to Planned Parenthood, he might not consider it to be an improvement and would greatly prefer to have donated directly to Trump’s campaign instead. I think the best approach would be to have a list of acceptable charities with Givewell’s recommended charities conveniently located at the top.
For the sake of transparency, each donor should receive an email telling them where their money went and where the donations marked for the opposing candidate were redirected due to their donation. The effects of a single donation could be determined by multiplying the effects of all donations associated with the same candidate by the amount of the one donation and dividing by the total amounts of all donations for that that candidate.
B. Comments
This would make people feel better about their donations than they would otherwise. When people read Givewell’s recommendations and decides to donate to AMF instead of the local homeless shelter they don’t always feel pure joy at the knowledge that their donation is doing more good; they may also feel slightly bad about not helping the local homeless. With Altruistic Partisanship, people would feel good about helping charity in addition to feeling good about helping their candidate. Thus, Altruistic Partisanship could elicit donations from people who aren’t even remotely interested in effective altruism.
There are disadvantages to using Altruistic Partisanship as opposed to donating directly to a candidate. There would presumably be extra fees associated with moving the money around, or at least overhead associated with operating Altruistic Partisanship. There would be a delay in getting money to a candidate to provide time for the other candidate to raise a similar amount. Also, the assumption that depriving a campaign of $100 is just as good as donating $100 to your preferred candidate would not hold if your candidate has raised far less money than the opponent (or perhaps has lower name recognition, etc.). Finally, some donors may prefer to do whatever feels the most like supporting their candidate with little regard for the consequences, and donating directly to their candidate would probably be more appealing to them.
Politicians, even ones who are personally uninterested in philanthropy, would be incentivized to support Altruistic Partisanship. They could find it useful as a fundraising pitch; people who are on the fence about whether to donate to a candidate may be pushed over the edge by the prospect of simultaneously helping charities at no additional cost. Moreover, soliciting donations through Altruistic Partisanship could improve a politician’s image since it signals that he or she is a caring person.
There is a small but relevant chance that the majority of political contributions would eventually go through Altruistic Partisanship, even if most donors aren’t actually interested in helping charities. Here’s an example of how it might happen. One candidate decides to establish Altruistic Partisanship as the primary means of making a donation to his campaign, either because he wants charities to have more money or because he wants favorable media coverage. His opponent declines to follow suit and is criticized for being more interested in her campaign’s coffers than in helping people. Other politicians conclude from this that using Altruistic Partisanship is politically advantageous and decide to do so in future campaigns. If enough of them do so then the use of Altruistic Partisanship will become a political norm, and every time a politician sends an email asking for money it will double as a fundraiser for charity. (There could be an API, or perhaps human coordinators, to make it easy for campaigns to solicit donations via Altruistic Partisanship.)
I think Altruistic Partisanship’s core values should include doing the most good possible, maintaining political neutrality, and having the counterfactual political impact of a donation through Altruistic Partisanship be as close as possible to that of donating directly to a candidate. That is to say, donating through Altruistic Partisanship should be as politically effective as donating directly to a candidate.
Not just any charity could be chosen since some would be objectionable. If a Republican were to divert money from Clinton’s campaign to Planned Parenthood, he might not consider it to be an improvement and would greatly prefer to have donated directly to Trump’s campaign instead. I think the best approach would be to have a list of acceptable charities with Givewell’s recommended charities conveniently located at the top.
For the sake of transparency, each donor should receive an email telling them where their money went and where the donations marked for the opposing candidate were redirected due to their donation. The effects of a single donation could be determined by multiplying the effects of all donations associated with the same candidate by the amount of the one donation and dividing by the total amounts of all donations for that that candidate.