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Thanks for doing this! I personally think that this could be a good idea and useful website. Getting people to talk about donating effectively on social media seems like an important intervention in service of increasing effective giving. I know that one CEO of an effective charity said that this was one of the two areas that they would most like more research on.

I recommend that you try to work with Givewell, EA funds or GWWC if possible. If you could validate that key organisations think this is useful then you might be able to get funded/paid to do it.

Currently, I'd be keener for you build the tracker in/for a pre-existing donation platform rather than doing something standalone where you have to build your own brand and so on to get people using the website. That's assuming the people in charge thought it would useful, of course.

LaurinAug 3 20212

Thank you for very good suggestion Peter!

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Give in Public Beta is live

by Laurin

Aug 2 20211 min read 7

16

Effective givingPublic givingPublic interest technology

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Hi all,

talking about donations can be awkward and is easily dismissed as virtue signalling. However, being public about what you do, can also encourage others to do good and multiply the impact that you have.

To make that easier, I build: http://www.giveinpublic.com/

In the first version, I want to make it easy and visually appealing to track your current donations that you can then share via your website/socials in a less intrusive way.

The end goal is to let users & businesses (especially outside of EA) easily pick the most effective charities for specific cause areas and visualize the impact their donations have.

I believe that being public about doing good and having a nice way to track it, can create a flywheel that can help reach more people outside of the EA community to donate.

I would love to hear what you think about the first version of Give in Public.

Regards,

Laurin

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Luke Freeman 🔸Aug 3 20217

Hi Laurin, glad to see you're working to help change this norm around giving!

I'm the executive director at Giving What We Can and per @peterslattery's comment I'd be more than happy to chat if you'd like. Feel free to book a time using calend.ly/luke-gwwc

LaurinAug 3 20211

Great! I booked some time with you next week. Looking forward to our conversation.

PeterSlatteryAug 3 20217

I recommend that you try to work with Givewell, EA funds or GWWC if possible. If you could validate that key organisations think this is useful then you might be able to get funded/paid to do it.

LaurinAug 3 20212

Thank you for very good suggestion Peter!

FlorianHAug 2 20214

I find it a GREAT idea (have not tested it yet)!

harsimonyAug 2 20213

Wonderful idea, it looks great so far.

I appreciate that the list of charities one can donate to is relatively restricted since this prevents people from publicly donating to highly political charities for signalling purposes.

I also like that there is a dashboard showing how your donations are being spent.

One thing I find a little strange is the "lives saved" total (whereas the "CO2 Reduced" total seems perfectly normal to me). I don't have a good reason for this, its just a personal feeling. Perhaps instead show the total spent or fraction spent on different causes areas rather than assert the overall impact of the donations?

FlorianHSep 11 20212

What about this to reduce the pbly often overwhelming stigma attached to showcasing one's own donations?!

Maybe the main issue is that I'm showing off with the amount I donate, rather than towards which causes. So: Just show where to, or maybe which share to where I donate, avoiding to show the absolute amount of donations.
Ok, so you do your donations, I do some other donations. But: You showcase my donations, I showcase yours. No clue whether that's stupid and not much better than simply not showing any personal donations. Maybe then, a bunch of us are donating to whatever each of us likes, but each of us simply showcases the group's aggregate donations: "Hey, I'm in this group of five and it donated these amounts to here and here; I gave only a small share, but you could participate in sth similar".