I did some digging and found this website which seems to focus on this exact problem for institutional donors with $25,000 or more. (Though I don’t believe they give people money to donate). The main obstacle they report is that people simply don’t know about the donation matching programs at their companies and what charities they can apply them toward. I wonder how many companies will actually match donations to EA charities?
It might be worth either
Reaching out to organizations about accepting matches for EA orgs
Reaching out to organizations that try to increase donation matching to help include EA charities
Setting up a donation matching promotion project focused on this for EA
Thank you for the reply, Peter. Yes, I’ve come across people at my company not knowing the match existed as well so that makes sense. I actually think your concern around how many companies will be willing to match EA organizations will not be a problem. If my experience has any relevance to the rest of the world, which I think it does because my Fortune 500 company is supported by an umbrella donating organization that helps multiple companies, GiveWell organizations were already approved for matching. Even the NTI was already approved for matching. The EA funds themself took a little more effort to get approved though and other AI organizations were not approved. I didn’t put any effort into getting the AI organizations approved though once the funds became available for matching so maybe they would be approved if requested.
Your last two points seem good. Maybe the best way would be having CEA or GWWC directly reach out to your attached website so that the contact is more professional? I’ll send CEA/GWWC an email and let them know they should pitch EA organizations to your linked website and consider making a project that incentivizes more matching. Let me know if you think there’s a better way of going about this.
Oh that’s good news. Yes, that sounds like a good plan I think. There are probably a number companies that use that platform so if some EA charities are added it could result in quite a few new donors over time.
I did some digging and found this website which seems to focus on this exact problem for institutional donors with $25,000 or more. (Though I don’t believe they give people money to donate). The main obstacle they report is that people simply don’t know about the donation matching programs at their companies and what charities they can apply them toward. I wonder how many companies will actually match donations to EA charities?
It might be worth either
Reaching out to organizations about accepting matches for EA orgs
Reaching out to organizations that try to increase donation matching to help include EA charities
Setting up a donation matching promotion project focused on this for EA
This also reminds me of an EA donation swapping project where people donate to each other’s favorite charities so they can each get tax deductions they wouldn’t otherwise.
Overall, taking advantage of unused corporate donation matches seems like a good idea and I’d be happy to help if there’s anything I can do.
Thank you for the reply, Peter. Yes, I’ve come across people at my company not knowing the match existed as well so that makes sense. I actually think your concern around how many companies will be willing to match EA organizations will not be a problem. If my experience has any relevance to the rest of the world, which I think it does because my Fortune 500 company is supported by an umbrella donating organization that helps multiple companies, GiveWell organizations were already approved for matching. Even the NTI was already approved for matching. The EA funds themself took a little more effort to get approved though and other AI organizations were not approved. I didn’t put any effort into getting the AI organizations approved though once the funds became available for matching so maybe they would be approved if requested.
Your last two points seem good. Maybe the best way would be having CEA or GWWC directly reach out to your attached website so that the contact is more professional? I’ll send CEA/GWWC an email and let them know they should pitch EA organizations to your linked website and consider making a project that incentivizes more matching. Let me know if you think there’s a better way of going about this.
Oh that’s good news. Yes, that sounds like a good plan I think. There are probably a number companies that use that platform so if some EA charities are added it could result in quite a few new donors over time.