Latest Update: On Nov 24 at 1:01pm PT, the matching fund pool was increased to $600,000. Check the realtime dashboard to see how much is still available to allocate.
Of the first $250,000 in matching funds, more than 82% went to nonprofits you all donated to:
Donation Match Terms
This year, starting on November 1, Every.org is offering a very attractive $250,000 true counterfactual donation match. (Realtime dashboard of remaining funds.)
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Every.org will match the first donation you make to each US 501(c)(3) nonprofit you give to 1:1 up to $100 per donor per nonprofit.
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Currently, Every.org will contribute an extra $10 to your donation if you click to share your donation after donating. This might change (what it was originally).
The Match Terms in Every.org's words:
A donor can support multiple nonprofits, but only the first donation they make to each of those nonprofits will be matched. If someone makes two $50 donations to the same organization, then only the first $50 would be matched. If someone makes a $1000 donation, then only the first $100 is matched. If someone makes ten $100 donations to different organizations, then all ten donations will be matched.
Steps to Participate
- Join with: https://www.every.org/join/@william.kiely?c=gg25 (If you're a new user, this will give you and I $25 in giving credit in addition to the match described above (Update: I believe this new user incentive was removed by Nov 24), plus help me track how many EAs participate in the match so I can share the information with the community.)
- Check the live dashboard to see if there are remaining matching funds.
- If so, donate $100[1] to a nonprofit of your choice (to get your donation automatically matched 1:1)
- After donating, click one of the links to share your donation (to get the extra share incentive, currently +$10)
- Repeat steps 3 and 4 for every nonprofit you want to support!
FAQ Answers
- Everyone can participate, regardless of country, even if you already joined last year.
- Fees are low, so donate by card if it's easier for you. Or if you'd prefer to eliminate all fees you can do so by connecting your bank account.
- Tax receipts: You can get these easily in your account on your My Giving page.
If this sounds familiar...
It's because 198 of you participated in a previous donation match sponsored by the same Every.org after seeing the post Make a $10 donation into $35 in December 2020.
We successfully directed $4,950 in matching funds to highly effective nonprofits during that match. It was quite popular because it only took ~3 minutes for each person to direct $25 in matching funds. I'm hopeful that even more of you will participate in Every.org's current match since it's just as easy and yet the limits are much higher.
You can donate less than $100 and still get matched, but note that you will forfeit your ability to get the full match for that nonprofit, even if you donate again. Per the terms: "If someone makes two $50 donations to the same organization, then only the first $50 would be matched." ↩︎
In short, I think that's basically the reason. In particular, EAs got donations matched to at least 66 different nonprofits. Many EAs participating in this match donated to 10+ different nonprofits. I'm not aware of any other groups of people who are that excited to support that wide a range of different nonprofits. So the $100 per donor per nonprofit limit really helped EAs direct a disproportionate amount of the matching funds due to our disproportionate willingness to donate to several different charities.
Regarding your other 'early scoop' hypothesis: Every.org reached out to me about this #FallGivingChallenge in mid-October (because they liked my post promoting their #25DaysOfGiving initiative last year), but I don't think this is what led to the EA community directing such a large portion of the matching funds to effective charities. This can most apparently be seen from the facts that: (1) I waited until after the match began to publish this post and promote the match to others in EA ; (2) Every.org published their announcement post more than a week before the match, so presumably others had early notice of it; (3) Most significantly, the matching funds still have not run out yet after more than a week of being available, meaning speed wasn't a significant factor.
Point 3 above also suggests that the number of people interested in the match is clearly limited. In fact, even within EA the number of people interested is limited. This Forum post has not dropped off the front page of the EA Forum as of November 8th and yet the number of new EAs participating in the match has continually decreased each day since November 2nd and is now quite low. At this point, the number of people getting their donations matched each day is low enough that the initial $475k of matching funds will not be used up for weeks--perhaps not even by the end of the match (November 30th)--unless something accelerates the pace at which people start getting their donations matched again.
Regarding the Facebook Giving Tuesday match, note that EAs direct a highly disproportional amount of the available matching funds (probably way more disproportional than in this Every.org match). The difference is just that the Facebook match is far more competitive (approximately a million people make a donation of Facebook on Giving Tuesday each year), such that it's impossible for any one group--including EAs--to direct a large fraction of the matching funds.