TLDR

• Original Position is a new effective giving organisation that uses a virtual ‘lottery of birth’ experience to inspire high-earners ($100k-$1m) in the US to pledge a portion of their income to effective charities
• This demographic donate less proportionally than other income brackets and are underserved by effective giving initiatives
• A digital, immersive experience meets this demographic’s need for a quick intervention and provides EAs a tool to share with this often difficult-to-reach segment
• My background (management consulting, business school, tech startups) makes me well positioned to understand and reach this demographic
• It is high-risk, high-potential reward bet to commit time and resources to proving out
  • My research and initial pilot give me ~20% confidence of achieving a >35 multiplier over the next two years, with a median outcome of a 2-5x multiple

Asks

• Try the experience and share your feedback if you’re part of the target demographic
  • Try the Demo experience if you’re not
• Share this experience with people in the target demographic, and let me know about your experience sharing it
• DM me for volunteer, advisory board, or cofounder opportunities
  • I’m actively recruiting for a technical lead with full-stack + gen AI expertise who can offer >5 hours/week
• Share your feedback on this post
• Donate to Original Position

The Problem: An Underserved Demographic

Approximately 47 million Americans earn between $100k and $1m per year (IRS, 2021), earning a total of $6.5 trillion. This demographic on average donates 2.2-2.5% of their gross income to charity, lower than any other tax bracket (IRS, 2021). This group is underserved by the effective giving ecosystem - a “missing middle”. In simple terms, GWWC reaches younger, lower-earning pledgers, while philanthropic advisors focus on wealthier individuals.

The recent Rethink Priorities survey on effective giving concluded there is "Low Awareness but High Receptivity" in this demographic, with "Opportunities for Growth: While receptive individuals may not become deeply involved in ‘the EA movement,’ the findings show potential for broader awareness, understanding, and engagement with effective giving (e.g., the use of charity evaluators)”.

​​I’ve spent much of my adult life surrounded by high-earners who were less altruistically engaged than I was. I knew the incredible good they could achieve by donating to effective charities, but I often found it difficult to bring up the topic—it always felt awkward or overly serious. My go-to approach was sharing Dylan Matthews’ compelling articles from Vox Future Perfect, which sparked thoughtful reactions and conversations, but I still struggled to hold friends and colleagues accountable to making a pledge or donation.

Reaching high-earners through referral marketing

The Original Position Experience is designed to address this challenge. It’s a tool you can easily share with a simple 'Check this out!' message, giving you the best chance of inspiring others to commit to a pledge—no follow-up needed. Awareness is often the biggest challenge for effective giving organisations, which I plan to overcome by focusing on this referral marketing approach and by increasing the virality of the experience itself.

I’m also well positioned to generate the initial proof of the idea. I have a direct network of 400+ individuals in this demographic, and access to the ~45,000 individuals in the U.S. that graduated from a top-25 MBA program in the past five years through a previous non-profit I founded - The Small Business School Challenge. I see U.S. business schools as a particularly high-potential channel for Original Position and for EA community building more broadly^[1].

Reaching this group economically via individual outreach is challenging—it typically requires a counterfactual impact of hundreds of thousands of dollars to justify the effort. A scalable tech solution is the most effective way to share the principles of effective altruism and inspire this demographic to pledge a portion of their gross income to effective charities. 

Original Position^[2] seeks to address this through the Original Position Experience and the Original Position Fund.

The Original Position Experience provides efficient inspiration to make an effective giving pledge

The Original Position Experience is an immersive digital journey inspired by John Rawls' "lottery of birth" thought experiment, which has been shown to “[make] people more likely to donate to a more effective charity”. Participants imagine themselves behind a "veil of ignorance," unaware of their circumstances of birth, such as wealth, social status, or abilities. This perspective fosters empathy by highlighting how what matters most for your living conditions is not who you are, but where you are. The experience encourages those with the means to pledge a portion of their income to effective charities, promoting shared responsibility and fairness.

The experience dynamically encourages participants to pledge an income share that is feasible. While the 10% pledge remains an ambitious ideal, the experience acknowledges that such a commitment may not be realistic for those currently donating 0-3% of their gross income. My initial findings suggest that this demographic prefers smaller starting commitments (e.g., $1,000, often a threshold amount requiring serious consideration) and gradually increasing their pledge as their compensation increases, avoiding major lifestyle changes.

A vision to be a thoughtful, tech-for-good leader

The first version of the experience is minimally "inspirational"; it currently only features ten text-based alternative life stories for participants to explore. While these have shown promising traction (detailed later), they are far from the full potential of the platform. My vision includes leveraging generative AI to make the experience unique for each participant, enhancing its emotional impact and encouraging virality as users share their journeys with friends and family. In time, it could also use virtual reality for even deeper immersiveness. Although these technologies may take time and resources to fully implement, Original Position is well-positioned to lead in this "Tech for Good" space.

There are, of course, risks associated with this vision. Original Position could be perceived as manipulative or accused of misrepresenting the generated "alternative life" stories, especially as generative AI introduces less predictable elements. To mitigate these risks, I am prioritizing transparency and collaboration—already core organizational values—and ensuring thorough testing before rolling out future iterations. I will establish governance frameworks to prevent any single individual’s "ideal vision of the future" from dominating. Feedback on these risks is crucial, and I welcome any concerns about the current version or the direction of Original Position.

The experience does not need to be perfect from the outset. Once it achieves sufficient scale, A/B testing can refine various features, and the results will guide organizational development. The insights gained through these experiments could benefit the broader effective giving field - much like this article from GiveDirectly. If, as the post shows, knowledge that “one-click payment buttons can increase online donations by 14%” then I am excited by the potential for Original Position to offer insights such as ‘for participants that identified as politically conservative, messaging emphasizing personal legacy increased conversion by X% compared to messaging emphasizing community’.

The Original Position Fund simplifies effective giving for a time-strapped audience

My user research shows that high earners in this target demographic often feel overwhelmed by the concept of effective giving when first introduced to it. Many recognize the effort required to identify the “most effective” charities and deprioritize the task. The Original Position Fund addresses this barrier by simplifying the process and offering a streamlined donation pathway.

For every $100 donated to the Original Position Fund, $75 supports GiveWell’s Top Charities, and $25 goes toward growing and improving the Original Position Experience. This allocation aligns with our recommended Giving Portfolio: 60% to the most effective charities, 20% to giving multipliers, and 20% to personal and community causes. While there are strong arguments for allocating even more to effective charities and multipliers, I hypothesize that this initial ratio will resonate with participants and encourage them to shift further away from less-effective causes over time.

This approach also enhances impact evaluation. By channeling donations through a dedicated fund, I can track contributions from source to recipient, ensuring higher confidence in the results compared to relying on self-reported data. Details about this evaluation approach are provided later in the post.

This Theory of Impact offers a low probability of outsized returns

In plain English, my Impact Estimation Model suggests that $250k over two years could reach 7,200 participants with the current experience (V1). I estimate that 2% of these participants (144 people) would pledge an additional 0.6% of their pre-tax income (∼$900 annually) to effective charities in the first year. Over time, and on average, these pledges could increase by 0.5 percentage points each year until reaching 5%, yielding a counterfactual present value impact of $4.8m—a 19x return on the $250k investment.

With an additional $100k, a superior version (V2) could reach 10,000 participants and generate 250 pledges more effectively. This enhanced version would have a counterfactual present value impact of $12.7m, representing a 36x return on the total $350k cost. If this initial model proves effective, there is good reason to believe that Original Position could achieve >100x returns, in line with successful tech startups whose models I am emulating.

I extend my gratitude to Koji Flynn-Do for their paper on giving multipliers at Founders Pledge and to the comprehensive public reports from GWWC, which have informed this model. I welcome critique and feedback—there are likely considerations I’ve overlooked.

To ensure financial sustainability, I plan to fund Original Position’s operating budget through donation revenue from the outset, and only seek grant funding for major product development. This initial budget is particularly lean, limited to my salary and a modest budget for tech subscriptions and administrative expenses.

Initial validation is positive but limited

I have shared the experience very little so far and with close friends, the evidence at this point is anecdotal and likely heavily swayed by social desirability bias. This isn’t to say it is worthless data given that my outreach mirrors the referral marketing that this model relies on, but it is vital in this next stage to test with a larger audience.

11 friends have taken the experience to provide feedback:

• 8 were within the target demographic, with an average income of $325k
  • 6 made pledges
    • Average pledge: 2.8%
      • 1.5 percentage points higher than their existing giving percentage of 1.3%
    • 4 of these did so before I was able to receive donations
    • 1 of the 2 who could do so donated immediately
    • The other is still considering a larger donation
  • 1 committed to making a pledge after discussing more with their partner and made a one-off donation
  • 1 was philosophically opposed to a giving pledge but made a small one-off donation
• 2 of the 3 not in the target demographic (due to currently being unemployed) committed to making a pledge once they had an income again. The other already gives >20% of their income to charity.

Select quotes:

• “Very eye opening and compelling”
• “This was wonderful. I am so curious to see what your conversion rates look like!”
• “I was surprised by the stat that top charities have 100x more impact. I would have like to research more on the charities suggested.”
• “It is a very engaging experience.”
• “The CTA to “pledge” is powerful — I felt my heart racing. But then I chickened out, made it 1% instead of 10%, did the math in my head, and thought “hmm, I actually need to run this by my wife because we’re talking thousands of dollars per year”…which I know I can afford, but it all became too much to decide on the spot. 
  That said, it was a very effective “foot in the door” because I rationalized delaying my big pledge decision with a one time donation. I did appreciate the follow up option (I promise 1 year is enough time to make my pledge decision haha)”

Again, this sample size is far too small to build significant confidence, yet it has been sufficiently positive that I am still confident to dedicate my time and money to exploring the potential of Original Position further.

I have strong personal fit with this problem

I am a serial social entrepreneur driven by a mission to create an equitable and fulfilling future for all. I signed the Founder’s Pledge in 2018 and the GWWC pledge in 2022 when I became more involved in EA. Most recently, I served as Executive Director of The AI Governance Archive, an LTFF-backed platform aimed at improving the effectiveness and efficiency of AI governance research. I realised from this experience that I am personally more motivated by directly addressing inequality, and that my tech and business expertise has significant potential to increase the funding available for such impactful interventions. I’m seeking an experienced board of advisors and exceptional co-founder(s) who can complement my skill set and enhance Original Position's potential for success.

Thanks for reading! And thank you to everyone who gave me feedback on this post and on the idea so far. Please comment, DM, or email me at [david at original-position.org] your feedback.

1. ^{^}

    I have reached out to the CEA Groups team to discuss this idea in parallel

2. ^{^}

    That I sadly won’t be abbreviating to ‘OP’ due to potential confusion with Open Philanthropy