On running fundraisers for weird charities

DanielFilan

On running fundraisers for weird charities

DanielFilan

6 min readJan 14, 2016

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Benjamin_Todd

10y

This lines up with my guess - in these situations, people mainly give due to the personal connection, and it doesn't matter too much what the particular charity is.

Kaj_Sotala

10y

I once did a birthday fundraiser that allowed people to choose between three targets: MIRI, GiveDirectly, and Mercy for Animals. I mostly wanted MIRI to get the money, but was concerned about the weirdness angle. So I said that people were free to indicate which of the three they wanted to donate to, and that any donations which didn't explicitly name a target would go to MIRI.

The final donation breakdown was

MIRI: $420,34
GiveDirectly: $52,33
Mercy for Animals: $27,33

A bunch of the donors included relatively "mundane" friends of mine, rather than committed MIRI sympathizers and supporters. Given that, I'm inclined to interpret these results as suggesting that most people, if they were inclined to give to my fundraiser at all, didn't really care about the weirdness of the default recipient enough to even bother specifying an alternate recipient.

AGB 🔸

10y

Note that Denise and I ran a match with a much higher $/person and wrote about it on the forum.

http://effective-altruism.com/ea/ex/what_we_learned_from_our_donation_match/

I really don't want to draw too much from that because there was a lot of stuff going on there, but I do want to stress that the data you have is way way too weak to draw any meaningful conclusion. You really should just stick with your priors here until you have much more data.

Tom_Ash

10y

the data you have is way way too weak to draw any meaningful conclusion. You really should just stick with your priors here until you have much more data.

This. (Stressing it as an epistemic principle that's under-applied within EA.)

Linch

10y

One thing to consider is that when you're raising money from friends&family, the cost to you isn't just time but also social capital.

For example (just because this is most obvious thing on my mind) right now, getting people to donate to a Christmas fundraiser probably means it'd be awkward to also ask them to Try Giving for 2016.

Paul_Christiano

10y

It also causes your friends and family to have less money. I expect this to be the main cost; that is, I expect that if one were allocating "moral responsibility" you should give > 1/2 to the person who actually did the donating.

Peter Wildeford

10y

getting people to donate to a Christmas fundraiser probably means it'd be awkward to also ask them to Try Giving for 2016.

Do you usually ask the same people about these things? My impression was that the two (fundraiser donors vs. Try Giving) are separate audiences.

Peter Wildeford

10y

Congrats on raising a successful fundraiser. I do suspect Ben Todd is right that people give based on the personal connection regardless of the actual charity, as long as it can be plausibly spun in a good way.

One thing I'd flag though is that your key piece of evidence is:

they both raised US$14.3/person contacted, while I raised US$14.0/person contacted

...but this number is sensitive to the number of people you contacted, because there's diminishing marginal returns to contacting more people.

In particular, a better number would be to compare the amount you raised to the median amount raised by other fundraisers who also contacted their friends individually. Unfortunately I don't have that number (yet).

Most of the money came from a few people who I would call semi-EAs – my impression was that they sort of knew about EA ideas, but that they weren't part of the community

This is another aspect that could skew things. Many fundraisers don't have access to a bunch of semi-EAs and it's possible semi-EAs might go more for REG or other weird charities than others. It's possible that you may have gotten more non-EAs to donate if the charity were AMF.

if you think that donations to a weird charity are at least twice as valuable as donations to the best normal charity, and you want to run a birthday/Christmas fundraiser, it seems worth it to fundraise for the weird charity despite the possibility of eliciting lower donations per person contacted.

I think this is the best evidence -- if you do think your charity is much better, then it does offset a large decline in total money fundraised! And I agree that the drop-off is likely not that high.

DanielFilan

10y

they both raised US$14.3/person contacted, while I raised US$14.0/person contacted

...but this number is sensitive to the number of people you contacted, because there's diminishing marginal returns to contacting more people.

I think that this is a problem, but not necessarily as big a problem as you think it is. The two AMF fundraisers had very different numbers of people contacted (63 vs 149), and still had almost identical funding elicited per person contacted. My guess would be that the likelihood of someone donating is closely related to how well you know the person, and that that would be why additional people contacted would be less valuable. If this is right, and I just know fewer people than you do, then it could be that my marginal contactee was just as close to me as your marginal contactee is to you.

In particular, a better number would be to compare the amount you raised to the median amount raised by other fundraisers who also contacted their friends individually. Unfortunately I don't have that number (yet).

Do you mean comparing my amount raised to the median amount raised by other fundraisers who contacted about as many people as I did? The problem with that is that it wouldn't account for variation in how many people I'm close with. I'm not really sure how to get rid of this factor, except by giving many people the same instructions about what sort of person to contact, and seeing how well they do fundraising for REG and AMF.

Most of the money came from a few people who I would call semi-EAs – my impression was that they sort of knew about EA ideas, but that they weren't part of the community

This is another aspect that could skew things. Many fundraisers don't have access to a bunch of semi-EAs and it's possible semi-EAs might go more for REG or other weird charities than others. It's possible that you may have gotten more non-EAs to donate if the charity were AMF.

This is also an important factor. Actually, since the EA outreach pipeline tends to start by talking about effective global poverty/health interventions, my guess is that semi-EAs might also be more enthusiastic about AMF than REG, and that I just know atypical semi-EAs. In general, details about the friend group seem like they will impact how well fundraisers go.

If you do think your charity is much better, then it does offset a large decline in total money fundraised! And I agree that the drop-off is likely not that high.

Yeah, this is really the most important argument in favour of weird charity fundraisers. I see a lot of room for arguments (like yours) for something on the order of a 10% dropoff in money raised, but I think that this is good evidence against a >50% dropoff (which I think was a priori plausible).

Peter Wildeford

10y

If this is right, and I just know fewer people than you do, then it could be that my marginal contactee was just as close to me as your marginal contactee is to you.

My initial reaction is that this is unlikely because I attempted to contact basically everyone I could, even people I hadn't talked to in 4+ years.

In particular, a better number would be to compare the amount you raised to the median amount raised by other fundraisers who also contacted their friends individually. Unfortunately I don't have that number (yet).

Do you mean comparing my amount raised to the median amount raised by other fundraisers who contacted about as many people as I did? The problem with that is that it wouldn't account for variation in how many people I'm close with. I'm not really sure how to get rid of this factor, except by giving many people the same instructions about what sort of person to contact, and seeing how well they do fundraising for REG and AMF.

Yeah, it also doesn't count for variations in wealth among friend groups.

I think it could be useful to look at both % of people who donate and total money raised then, just to get different perspectives.

Keep in mind that it's possible that maybe your friends would have donated more to AMF, even if the same number gave, so the absolute amount does matter some.

Tom_Ash

10y

Many fundraisers don't have access to a bunch of semi-EAs

(...who wouldn't be donating the same amount anyway.)

And yes, this appears to be true.

it's possible semi-EAs might go more for REG or other weird charities than others.

It seems quite likely, absent further evidence.

I agree that the drop-off is likely not that high.

Likewise, I think we'd need further evidence to say that.

DanielFilan

10y

One other metric that you could look at is proportion of people contacted who donate. This would be evidence of some kind of weirdness effect, but at the end of the day, $/person contacted is closer to what we care about. Still, I think it's interesting to look at.

My proportion is 10/42=24%, Giles' is 26/63=41%, and Peter's is >33/149=22%. I don't know that I would draw any conclusions from this, except that it makes the very similar $/person contacted numbers look much more coincidental.

[edit: rewording]

Peter Wildeford

10y

My proportion is 10/42=24%, Giles' is 26/63=41%, and Peter's is >33/149=22%. I don't know that I would draw any conclusions from this, except that it makes the very similar $/person contacted numbers look much more coincidental.

Well Giles clearly did better than us... that's a big outlier we should consider. But it's also very sparse data!

And one reason why mine was low was that I did intentionally reach out to pretty much everyone I could, even if I hadn't talked to them in 4+ years. Naturally, the people who I hadn't reached out to in 4+ years didn't respond / donate at the same frequency as my closer friends. ...This year when I relaunch the fundraiser I'll keep it to people I know better.

33/149=22%

Just for the technicality, I relooked and it was 35/146 = 24%. The same as you! Cool coincidence...

Comments

DanielFilan

10y

they both raised US$14.3/person contacted, while I raised US$14.0/person contacted

...but this number is sensitive to the number of people you contacted, because there's diminishing marginal returns to contacting more people.

In particular, a better number would be to compare the amount you raised to the median amount raised by other fundraisers who also contacted their friends individually. Unfortunately I don't have that number (yet).

Most of the money came from a few people who I would call semi-EAs – my impression was that they sort of knew about EA ideas, but that they weren't part of the community

This is another aspect that could skew things. Many fundraisers don't have access to a bunch of semi-EAs and it's possible semi-EAs might go more for REG or other weird charities than others. It's possible that you may have gotten more non-EAs to donate if the charity were AMF.

If you do think your charity is much better, then it does offset a large decline in total money fundraised! And I agree that the drop-off is likely not that high.

It's been ages since we've caught up - how are things going for you? Would you be almost graduating from your psych degree? If so, any idea what's next? My life is going well - in particular, I managed to get a university medal! I've also got an internship at the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford, which should start in late January and go for three months. My PhD applications have been sent out, and I'm nervously waiting to see where I get accepted. I'm actually in Sydney for a few days (including right now), but unfortunately I need to spend time with my family and organise stuff for leaving the country on Monday (I'm visiting American family and then chilling with friends in SF), so I don't have time to catch up in person, sorry :( This Christmas, I've decided to run a fundraiser for a charity called Raising for Effective Giving (REG). REG is an organisation that convinces professional poker players to donate a portion of their winnings to the most effective charities. I'm very excited by their work - not only are they causing a large amount of money to be moved to charity (in fact, it's about $10 moved for every $1 donated to REG), but they are also getting this money moved to charities that most effectively help others. Some charities can do hundreds of times more good with donations than others, so getting these donations to more effective charities is a huge deal. They've been pretty successful in the poker world, and are expanding to other fields, such as gaming, finance, and daily fantasy sports. If you want to support REG, there are two options. First, if you're up for giving more than $70, just make a donation at http://reg-charity.org/donate/ to the 'Effective Altruism Foundation', the organisation behind REG (note that you can't donate in AUD, only USD, GBP, EUR, and CHF). If you'd like to give a smaller amount, let me know, and I'll make a list of these donations in the comments of this post: https://www.facebook.com/danielfilan/posts/1020515235879. At the end of the fundraiser (i.e. Boxing day, or as soon after as I can get around to it), I'll donate the total amount to REG, and get you to transfer me the money at your convenience. Obviously, it's totally fine if you don't want to give. At any rate, I'd really like to hear how things have been going for you, and hope that you have a merry Christmas and a happy new year. -Daniel