First of all, this is a great comment and indeed many others have been thinking along the same lines — I was hired by GWWC in June and a substantial element of my role will be to help effective giving initiatives get started in new legal jurisdictions, which will enable tax-deductions in more places. There are already many national ‘regranting organisations’ which fulfil the purpose you are suggesting here and we’re hoping to see many more get started. For an overview of the effective giving ecosystem and what already exists you can take a look here. And to see tax deductibility of donations by country take a look here. Very tentatively, I’m quite excited about new projects getting started in Italy, India, Singapore, Poland, South Africa, Mexico, South Korea, Japan and Portugal, but need to think a lot more about this.
In my view, the primary purpose of these new initiatives is not to increase impact through extra donations that would have otherwise been paid as tax, but rather to facilitate localised outreach and promotion of effective giving. The majority of resources available online are in English, which means we are missing out on reaching a large segment of the global population who may become effective givers.
I largely agree with HakonHarnes that tax deduction is not “a large part of what makes a donation effective, as our main claim to effectiveness lies in the interventions themselves, which can be many orders of magnitude better than typical charities”. Rather regranting organisations are particularity useful because they reach new audiences which counterfactually would not have started donating to effective charities. It is true that enabling tax-deductible donations will have some counterfactual impact insofar as old donors who previously could not give tax-deducible donations would be able to increase the amount they give. However, the largest impact that tax-deduction has, in my view, is psychological, allowing new donors to give more $ makes them to feel like they are contributing more and getting the most value for their donations. This is especially true when taking people on a journey from making tax-deductible donations to charities in their home country to making donations to highly effective charities. It may make people feel uncomfortable that they are able to give less overall, and they may initially struggle to buy into the idea that the best charities are 100x more effective than the median charities. For this reason I agree that tax-deductibility is an important element of the strategy to make effective giving more widespread.
One thing I’d love to follow up on from you’re comment is whether you’re saying that Belgians can always donate to Dutch charities in a tax-deducible way? Because if so that would mean that such information could potentially provided on the website of Doneer Effectief and could be promoted to Belgians.
On the promoting effective giving to businesses side of things, One For The World have been having some success and I’m excited to see much more done on that front!
Really excited to hear about work on the tax advantage front! In addition to what you said, I think some people see their national governments as low-bar charity evaluators, and the lack of clearing that perceived “bar” is an impediment.
Thank you Luke for this great answer and so much valuable information. It may be the Belgium is just a few steps behind other countries, since most of the countries surrounding Belgium seem to have the option to donate tax-deductably.
No, as far as I know it is NOT possible in general for Belgians to donate to Dutch charities, but there are schemes which enable donations to specific charities which are part of those schemes.
For example, the website Transnationalgiving.eu seems to be a great resource on this, but it’s still highlighting the complexity of cross-border donations within the EU.
There is a process through which it is possible for someone from Belgium to donate, but only to charities which are registered with this scheme. There is GiveDirectly in UK and I think other direct donation charities (which I like), but I do not see any effective altruism charities on that list. If there are some, it would be great to make people aware of it. If there are none, maybe it would be worth contacting some EU / UK based charities to see if they can easily register.
I am happy to try to do this—are there any specific charities you would recommend in the list of countries given on the website?
Really appreciate your comment and advice, and sorry for the very slow reply, I had some heavy time-commitments recently.
Sorry for not seeing this sooner! If you’re interested in reaching out to a few charities and making the case that they register (if it’s not to hard) that would be pretty useful. I’d recommend starting with GWWC’s top recommendations: https://www.givingwhatwecan.org/donate/organizations
First of all, this is a great comment and indeed many others have been thinking along the same lines — I was hired by GWWC in June and a substantial element of my role will be to help effective giving initiatives get started in new legal jurisdictions, which will enable tax-deductions in more places. There are already many national ‘regranting organisations’ which fulfil the purpose you are suggesting here and we’re hoping to see many more get started. For an overview of the effective giving ecosystem and what already exists you can take a look here. And to see tax deductibility of donations by country take a look here. Very tentatively, I’m quite excited about new projects getting started in Italy, India, Singapore, Poland, South Africa, Mexico, South Korea, Japan and Portugal, but need to think a lot more about this.
In my view, the primary purpose of these new initiatives is not to increase impact through extra donations that would have otherwise been paid as tax, but rather to facilitate localised outreach and promotion of effective giving. The majority of resources available online are in English, which means we are missing out on reaching a large segment of the global population who may become effective givers.
I largely agree with HakonHarnes that tax deduction is not “a large part of what makes a donation effective, as our main claim to effectiveness lies in the interventions themselves, which can be many orders of magnitude better than typical charities”. Rather regranting organisations are particularity useful because they reach new audiences which counterfactually would not have started donating to effective charities. It is true that enabling tax-deductible donations will have some counterfactual impact insofar as old donors who previously could not give tax-deducible donations would be able to increase the amount they give. However, the largest impact that tax-deduction has, in my view, is psychological, allowing new donors to give more $ makes them to feel like they are contributing more and getting the most value for their donations. This is especially true when taking people on a journey from making tax-deductible donations to charities in their home country to making donations to highly effective charities. It may make people feel uncomfortable that they are able to give less overall, and they may initially struggle to buy into the idea that the best charities are 100x more effective than the median charities. For this reason I agree that tax-deductibility is an important element of the strategy to make effective giving more widespread.
One thing I’d love to follow up on from you’re comment is whether you’re saying that Belgians can always donate to Dutch charities in a tax-deducible way? Because if so that would mean that such information could potentially provided on the website of Doneer Effectief and could be promoted to Belgians.
On the promoting effective giving to businesses side of things, One For The World have been having some success and I’m excited to see much more done on that front!
Really excited to hear about work on the tax advantage front! In addition to what you said, I think some people see their national governments as low-bar charity evaluators, and the lack of clearing that perceived “bar” is an impediment.
Thank you Luke for this great answer and so much valuable information. It may be the Belgium is just a few steps behind other countries, since most of the countries surrounding Belgium seem to have the option to donate tax-deductably.
No, as far as I know it is NOT possible in general for Belgians to donate to Dutch charities, but there are schemes which enable donations to specific charities which are part of those schemes.
For example, the website Transnationalgiving.eu seems to be a great resource on this, but it’s still highlighting the complexity of cross-border donations within the EU.
There is a process through which it is possible for someone from Belgium to donate, but only to charities which are registered with this scheme. There is GiveDirectly in UK and I think other direct donation charities (which I like), but I do not see any effective altruism charities on that list. If there are some, it would be great to make people aware of it. If there are none, maybe it would be worth contacting some EU / UK based charities to see if they can easily register.
I am happy to try to do this—are there any specific charities you would recommend in the list of countries given on the website?
Really appreciate your comment and advice, and sorry for the very slow reply, I had some heavy time-commitments recently.
Hey Denis,
Sorry for not seeing this sooner! If you’re interested in reaching out to a few charities and making the case that they register (if it’s not to hard) that would be pretty useful. I’d recommend starting with GWWC’s top recommendations: https://www.givingwhatwecan.org/donate/organizations
Please contact me on lucas.moore@givingwhatwecan.org if you get anywhere with this :)