Here are some rough thoughts or questions of mine for you or for others in the OFTW team:
Is there any data already for what % of OFTW pledgers follow through on their pledges?
Is One For The World thinking of creating a page like Giving What We Can’s that contains the number of pledgers, their names, and the month/year they pledged? I think this could be a good growth hack—people might want the social incentive to pledge and also put their name on the list. The page could also include what chapter each pledger is from.
How can people “resign” from their OFTW pledges if they wanted to? Would they just do it without saying so? I ask this because some people who first make an OFTW pledge might then change their cause prioritization to animal welfare or longtermism (i.e. if they get more engaged in EA), and they may want to stop donating to global health charities.
Is OFTW thinking of expanding to a 1% pledge that is not cause-specific, or one that is for animal welfare or longtermist non-profits in the future? If not, is there anyone interested in creating these types of pledges in the future (whether as a new organization or under GWWC)? Personally I find the GWWC 10% pledge hard to commit to currently, which is why I haven’t taken it. I would be more willing to pledge 1% to effective charities that is not cause-specific. If OFTW had a pledge that wasn’t cause-specific, I would likely take it!
Hi Brian—Jack here (ED at OFTW). Thanks for your thoughtful questions and it looks like Sabrina ha answered them really well :-)
Some quick additions:
as Sabrina says, activation is moderate (~2/3). However, our models suggest that we would still provide decent ROI at even 50% activation rates. One advantage that we have is that we process all our donations ourselves and so actually know our activation and retention rates, where a lot of pledge orgs have to estimate them. My reading of our data is that most orgs are extremely optimistic in their assumptions around this.
definitely open to this and some individual chapters have done it already. It’s on the roadmap!
this is where processing our donations is so helpful—we see in real time how donors behave, and so know if people stop their donations. We do ask people who cancel if they have changed cause area but we only get the usual response rates to cancellation surveys (~1%)
we do not currently plan to expand our cause areas, for few reasons. First, and for transparency, GiveWell is one of our main funders and that influences this decision. Second, our founders were very focussed on global health and poverty and so I would want their input before any change. But third, and most importantly—OFTW on average engages a donor for ~10-60 mins before they pledge (and pre-COVID this was sometimes as little as 2 mins when our volunteers were tabling). When you are recruiting people with this level of engagement, message clarity is essential. Using global health and poverty, which is both the most popular EA cause area and the simplest ‘sell’ to someone who isn’t part of EA yet, makes a lot of sense to me in this context. All that being said, this may well evolve over time!
Thanks for writing this!
Here are some rough thoughts or questions of mine for you or for others in the OFTW team:
Is there any data already for what % of OFTW pledgers follow through on their pledges?
Is One For The World thinking of creating a page like Giving What We Can’s that contains the number of pledgers, their names, and the month/year they pledged? I think this could be a good growth hack—people might want the social incentive to pledge and also put their name on the list. The page could also include what chapter each pledger is from.
How can people “resign” from their OFTW pledges if they wanted to? Would they just do it without saying so? I ask this because some people who first make an OFTW pledge might then change their cause prioritization to animal welfare or longtermism (i.e. if they get more engaged in EA), and they may want to stop donating to global health charities.
Is OFTW thinking of expanding to a 1% pledge that is not cause-specific, or one that is for animal welfare or longtermist non-profits in the future? If not, is there anyone interested in creating these types of pledges in the future (whether as a new organization or under GWWC)? Personally I find the GWWC 10% pledge hard to commit to currently, which is why I haven’t taken it. I would be more willing to pledge 1% to effective charities that is not cause-specific. If OFTW had a pledge that wasn’t cause-specific, I would likely take it!
On 4, GWWC has the Try Giving pledge:
Hi Brian—Jack here (ED at OFTW). Thanks for your thoughtful questions and it looks like Sabrina ha answered them really well :-)
Some quick additions:
as Sabrina says, activation is moderate (~2/3). However, our models suggest that we would still provide decent ROI at even 50% activation rates. One advantage that we have is that we process all our donations ourselves and so actually know our activation and retention rates, where a lot of pledge orgs have to estimate them. My reading of our data is that most orgs are extremely optimistic in their assumptions around this.
definitely open to this and some individual chapters have done it already. It’s on the roadmap!
this is where processing our donations is so helpful—we see in real time how donors behave, and so know if people stop their donations. We do ask people who cancel if they have changed cause area but we only get the usual response rates to cancellation surveys (~1%)
we do not currently plan to expand our cause areas, for few reasons. First, and for transparency, GiveWell is one of our main funders and that influences this decision. Second, our founders were very focussed on global health and poverty and so I would want their input before any change. But third, and most importantly—OFTW on average engages a donor for ~10-60 mins before they pledge (and pre-COVID this was sometimes as little as 2 mins when our volunteers were tabling). When you are recruiting people with this level of engagement, message clarity is essential. Using global health and poverty, which is both the most popular EA cause area and the simplest ‘sell’ to someone who isn’t part of EA yet, makes a lot of sense to me in this context. All that being said, this may well evolve over time!