Hi guys—Jack here (Executive Director at OFTW). Sabrina makes some great points here. I would add as well that we need to be mindful of how much the average American is giving to effective charities. You’re right, @Larks, that persuading people to give 1% to effective charities would be odd, if the average person would give 3% to them—but, of course, the average American gives ~0% to effective charities! We have introduced some checkout questions to give us an indication of this ‘counterfactual’ argument (‘how much do you already give (if anything) to GiveWell’s charities?’) and also have some students at Yale researching typical giving trends for graduates to give us a proxy control group.
Hi guys—Jack here (Executive Director at OFTW). Sabrina makes some great points here. I would add as well that we need to be mindful of how much the average American is giving to effective charities. You’re right, @Larks, that persuading people to give 1% to effective charities would be odd, if the average person would give 3% to them—but, of course, the average American gives ~0% to effective charities! We have introduced some checkout questions to give us an indication of this ‘counterfactual’ argument (‘how much do you already give (if anything) to GiveWell’s charities?’) and also have some students at Yale researching typical giving trends for graduates to give us a proxy control group.