An advantage of investing to give is that it will allow us to learn about better giving opportunities over time, for instance through improvements in research methodology to detect such giving opportunities.
We should distinguish between two forms of learning — endogenous and exogenous:
Endogenous learning is learning that Mary brings about herself with her giving, for instance by funding research that helps prioritise amongst causes or by funding experiments with new interventions within a cause. Opportunities for endogenous learning can be a reason for her to give now rather than to invest to give.
Exogenous learning is learning that occurs regardless of Mary’s giving. It includes advances in the scientific community, new philanthropic interventions being invented and/or tried out by others with similar aims, moral progress, and more. It also captures the time needed for relevant knowledge to become available, e.g. an experiment might take time, research might need to be done in a certain order, or there might be a talent constraint in a research area that takes time to be resolved. When learning is done exogenously, there are advantages to waiting and hence to investing to give.
When Mary puts her funds in the Founders Pledge Investment Fund, she is able to benefit from the long-term-oriented research Founders Pledge does over the next ten years, and from the learnings the Founders Pledge research team derives from external research in that time period. Both of these constitute exogenous learnings from Mary’s perspective.
Here’s the relevant excerpt from the report: