TLDR: Sign up here to join a six-month experiment to democratize effective giving. The experiment establishes a community who agree to allocate charitable gifts proportionally to member votes. You’ll help make EA donations more representative of the community’s cause prioritization. Sign up and pledge by October 15th to participate in our first round.

Equal Hands is a 6-month trial in democratizing charitable giving among EA cause areas.

Here’s how it works:

1. You pledge to give a certain amount each month.
2. Each month that you pledge, vote on the optimal distribution of the donated money across causes (1 vote per person, no matter how much you give).
3. The total amount of money pledged is split out proportionally to the total of the votes, so that no matter how much you gave, your voice equally influences the final allocation.
4. To actually make the gifts, you will be assigned a particular cause area split with assigned dollar amounts, based on the preferences of the community and how much you pledged to give (more detail below). After making a gift on behalf of the community, you will submit your evidence of donations by the last day of the month.

As a result of this process, the community's donations will be distributed across cause areas according to the votes of the community, no matter how much each person donated. Larger donors will have an equal say in the allocation of charitable donations as smaller donors. The distribution of funds will represent the priorities of the community, as opposed to the priorities of a few people.

The minimum donation to participate in a given month is $25. As of September 28th at 4:30pm Eastern time, 2 donors have pledged to give a combined total of $1,500 every month for the trial. This means that if 10 more people join at the minimum donation, each new donor will influence the allocation of $145.83.

So, if you give below the average donation amount, you’ll be increasing the degree of alignment the effective giving community has with your preferred allocations in expectation. If you give above the average donation amount, you’ll be allocating your funds more closely to the priorities of the effective giving community. 

If you are able, giving above the average donation is better — you're committing to having your charitable donations be guided by community consensus, and hedging against your own beliefs based on the beliefs of other thoughtful, committed donors.

Below, I give more detail on how the program works and why I'm doing this.

Effective giving overly weighs the views of a few decision makers.

Here’s a world where community priorities are not reflected by donations (as seems to be the case in EA right now):

• There are three donors:
  • Donor 1 gives $1,000,000 per year to animal welfare. They are a tech founder who cares a lot about animals, and less about other areas.
  • Donor 2 gives $1,000 per year to global catastrophic risks. They are an academic working on researching these topics. They care about other causes, but feel more skilled at giving within GCRs than any other area.
  • Donor 3 gives $100 per year to global health charities. They work for animal welfare charities, but think they don’t do much good, so give to global health instead.
• Right now, their donations don’t align with their collective beliefs at all. They are giving:
  • $1,000,000 to animal welfare, $1,000 to GCRs, and $100 to GHD. This happens despite none of them having beliefs like:
    • The funding gap in animal welfare being way bigger than the other areas.
    • That animal welfare is vastly more important than the other areas.
    • Donor 1’s views should massively outweigh the views of Donors 2 and 3.
  • Yet, their donations seem to imply these beliefs.
• Collectively, they have a lot of knowledge and beliefs about the world. If they sat down and chose how to distribute the $1,001,100 in a matter they all agreed was best for the world, they probably wouldn’t give $1,000,000 to animals, $1000 to GCRs, $100 to GHD.
  • Donors 1 and 3 both think animals matter a lot, but Donor 3 is skeptical of the existing charities. Donor 1 doesn’t have access to the information that makes Donor 3 skeptical. It’s unclear if Donor 3 is right, but aggregating their beliefs might better capture an accurate view of the animal welfare space.
  • Donor 2 knows a lot about their specific research area, but not other areas, so they just give within GCRs and not outside it. They’d be happy to get the expertise of Donors 1 and 3 to inform their giving.
  • All three are motivated by making the world better, and believe strongly that other people have good views about the world, access to different information, etc.

This default is a problem

Donating inherently has huge power differentials — the beliefs of donors who are wealthier inevitably exerts greater force on charities than those with fewer funds. But it seems unlikely that having more money would be correlated with having more accurate views about the world. Equal Hands is an attempt to build a lightweight charitable giving system that divorces the influence of donations from the wealth of individuals, and instead tries to align donations with the beliefs of its community members as a whole.

Equal Hands functions similarly to tax systems in democracies — we don’t expect people who pay more in taxes to have better views about who should be elected to spend that tax money. Similarly, we should expect people who donate more to have better views about moral priorities.

This is a bet on the effective giving community as a whole having good beliefs collectively, instead of the current model for donating, which relies on a very small set of people having good beliefs and accurate models of the world. 

How will Equal Hands work exactly? An example funding round

(If you think this is an overly complicated way of doing this, see my FAQ below)

Let’s say there are three donors, who vote between August 1st and August 15th.

• A, who gives $500, and votes for the funds to be distributed 50% to GCR mitigation, and 50% to animal welfare.
• B, who gives $50, and votes 100% to GCR mitigation
• C, who gives $100, and votes 100% to global health.

The committed funds are pooled ($650), and the votes are totaled (50% to GCR mitigation, 33.33% to global health, 16.67% to animal welfare). A total that should be donated to each is calculated from this vote ($325 to GCRs, $216.67 to global health, $108.33 to animal welfare).

Some attempt at preference matching/minimizing complexity for individual donors is made (to the extent possible), and on August 16th, donors are given donation instructions:

• A: $108.33 to animal welfare, 116.67 to global health, $275 to GCRs
• B: $50 to GCRs
• C: $100 to global health

Donors have until August 31st to donate and submit receipts. On September 1st, let's say donors A and B have donated, but C has not. Backstop funds would be used (as available) to cover the $100 gap for global health. C is given a strike, and if they fail to donate again, will be banned from participation in future giving rounds.

On September 1st, participants are invited to update their allocation vote, or keep it the same, and the process repeats.

If the donors had given according to their pure preferences, the distribution of funds would have been:

• $250 to animal welfare
• $300 to GCRs
• $100 to global health

But this doesn’t match the views of this imaginary three-person community, who think that animal welfare is significantly less important to fund, global health is a lot more important to fund, and GCRs are a bit more important to fund. The redistributed donations more closely match the beliefs of the community, and donor A gets to benefit from the wisdom of the crowd, and hedge against their own beliefs and uncertainties.

The Details

The process

1. To join and receive notice of the charity rounds, sign up here.
2. On the 1st of each month, you’ll receive a survey that will ask you:
   1. How much you intend to donate
   2. How you’d like to see funds distributed
3. On the 16th of each month, you’ll receive instructions on where to donate.
   1. We’ll make every effort to make this simple for donors — trying to ensure that most donors only have to make 1 or 2 total transactions, no matter their total distribution
4. You have until the last day of the month to make your donations, and submit your donation receipts via a final form.
5. One of our founding donors will cover the gaps caused by donors whose votes affected the allocation but failed to donate; up to $500 per month.
   1. We currently have one individual acting as a “founding donor” on this project and playing this role. If you’d be willing to support the project in that way, you can indicate your interest on the sign-up form.

Participation will be optional on a monthly basis, but pledging to give and then failing to do so will cause you to be removed from the project on your second failure during the trial phase.

Transparency

Besides individual donor identities, everything that happens during this experiment will be transparent to the donors. You’ll have access to how distributions were determined, how much money was distributed, and how much money your individual vote impacted in expectation.

Improvements

There are lots of improvements that can be made to this process! Participants will be invited to give feedback, share ideas, and work on improving the system over the course of its first 6 months.

FAQ

Why would individual people participate?

Individual donors could participate if they generally agree that it is bad that charitable allocations across cause areas are made by the views of relatively few people, instead of by a community as a whole.

If donors are giving less than the average contribution, they should expect that their participation will directly increase the amount of money going to their preferred cause areas.

For donors giving above the average donation, they are demonstrating a commitment to hedging against their own beliefs, investing in democratic funding processes, and experimenting with effective giving!

What causes can I vote on?

To launch, the causes that people can vote on will be animal welfare, global catastrophic risk reduction, EA Community Building, global health and development, and climate change. The charities that they can donate their allocations to within each area are listed below.

Animal Welfare

• ACE Recommended Charities (Will be updated if ACE releases new recommendations during this period)
  • Çiftlik Hayvanlarını Koruma Derneği
  • Dansk Vegetarisk Forening
  • Faunalytics
  • Fish Welfare Initiative
  • Legal Impact for Chickens
  • New Roots Institute
  • Shrimp Welfare Project
  • Sinergia Animal
  • The Good Food Institute
  • The Humane League
  • Wild Animal Initiative
• EA Animal Welfare Fund

Reducing Global Catastrophic Risks

• EA Long-Term Future Fund
• Giving What We Can Risks and Resilience Fund
• Longview Philanthropy Emerging Challenges Fund
• Any charity with a Founders Pledge “Active Recommendation” under the following categories
  • Artificial Intelligence
  • Biosecurity
  • Global Catastrophic Risks
  • Global Security

EA Community Building

• EA Infrastructure Fund
• Centre for Effective Altruism
• Ambitious Impact

Global Health and Development

• Any Giving What We Can recommended option in the Global Health and Wellbeing category.

Climate Change

• Any Active Recommendation from Founders Pledge in the Climate Change category.

Why not just establish some kind of fund people can donate to and then vote on the allocation of its grants?

This seems like a viable longterm option for this project. But, it also comes with costs (the overhead of running the fund, legal and logistical hurdles, etc). I'm only committing to trialing this for 6 months. If it goes well, I think formalizing it via a fund should be considered.

Why cause areas and not individual charities?

There are several reasons to prefer voting on cause areas over individual charities, including:

• Listing individual charities would be more “gameable” and susceptible to manipulation. In some sense, that’s okay — we want donations to represent people’s preferences! But, given this dynamic, it seems risky to open this system up to this vulnerability early, when it is unclear how much demand for this kind of system there is within EA. Charity elections inevitably turn into popularity contests, instead of focusing on the impact of funded groups.
• Cause areas have both impactful charities, and funds available for donors to give to. Cause area-specific funds are usually managed by people with an understanding of the cause, while individual donor preferences for specific charities seem less likely to be well-researched. So, providing options for both hopefully increases the impact of donations.
• To me, it feels more important to democratize how funds are split among community priorities (e.g. cause areas) than among specific charities. Cause areas feel closer to “values” or things that would be downstream from my beliefs. So, democratizing the allocation of funds to cause areas makes more sense than the allocations of funds to specific charities.
• Every time I see a “vote on your favorite charity for it to get funding” mechanism, it seems like charities that are popular, not necessarily due to their impact but due to their communications skills, do especially well. This seems bad!

Like everything else about this project, nothing is set in stone beyond six months. Join, and contribute to the discussion about how to improve this if you disagree with this approach!

Why these specific charities to represent these cause areas and not [my preferred charity]?

The listed charities are meant as a sort of “minimum viable product.” They likely aren’t perfect, but they are popular places to give for donors in EA interested in each of these cause areas. But this is a project in democratization! Join, and help shape the future of this project if you see ways it could be better.

Why do I have to donate a minimum amount to participate?

Currently, there is a minimum donation requirement to prevent gaming of the system/spam votes. Everyone who votes will have committed to participating in donating. Hopefully that means they’ll have thought about their priorities, and their ultimate vote reflects on the community well. 

Can I give via another entity to one of the listed charities?

Yes! If for tax or logistical reasons, you need to route your donation through another vehicle, that's totally fine, as long as your donation ends up at one of the listed charities. For example, if you use the Giving What We Can platform to make donations, it would be fine to give within your assigned cause areas on that platform. Your donation evidence should just show that you allocated your gift according to your assignment.

Why not quadratic funding / some other hip mechanism?

Maybe that would be better! But for now, the project is just an effort to help line up donations in effective giving with the priorities of the community. If you want it to change, participate and make the case for it!

Will I have to donate to causes I don’t care about?

We’ll try to do some level of minimizing the complexity of donations for donors, and try to do preference matching when possible. However, it is likely that some donors, especially larger donors who prefer only 1-2 areas, will be asked to give to causes they might not otherwise have given to. But, this is also why this system exists — charitable decision making and ability to give shouldn’t go hand-in-hand. All participant’s voices count equally

What happens if this goes well?

We’ll keep it going, hopefully with improvements by incorporating lessons from the first iteration!

How is this governed/funded/run?

This is entirely run by Abraham Rowe (me), and governed according to the rules laid out above. I'd prefer that other people give input on how it is governed in the long-run, and people who participate will have a chance to join in on that.

All votes and calculations will be verifiable by the members when making their donations.

This project has no funding or costs. It’s entirely volunteer-based and takes just a few hours to run every month. 

Long-term governance is not yet decided, but will be decided by community members toward the end of the 6 month trial.

Sign up here to get reminders about each month's vote, and to participate in the October round.