TL;DR

• We are live: The Karoteno effective giving platform is now operational at karoteno.org.
• The Goal: A "normie-friendly" donation experience for Spanish speakers who find traditional EA analysis alienating.
• Action: Share this with your non-EA friends! We are also running a donation-matching campaign this December—please reach out if you’d like to help fund the matching pool.

Introduction

Hi everyone,

A few months ago, I posted here about a project aiming to bridge the gap between effective giving and the general public in Spain.

I’m happy to share that the technical and legal infrastructure is complete, and Karoteno is live.

While this project is rooted in EA principles, our target audience is not the existing EA community. Instead, we are optimizing for "everyday" donors—people who want to do good but are often alienated by the heavy data analysis, jargon, or philosophical density found in our circles.

Below, I outline the reasoning behind our approach, our current operational status, and details on how you can support our upcoming matching experiment.

The Context: Why another platform?

Those familiar with the Spanish effective giving landscape know that Ayuda Efectiva is already doing incredible work. So, why build Karoteno?

The answer lies in broadening the funnel.

Ayuda Efectiva (and similar organizations globally) does a fantastic job catering to donors who are data-driven or willing to engage with technical details, counterfactuals, and specific charity evaluations.

However, there is a vast ocean of well-intentioned donors who act on an emotional impulse to "do good" but prefer to leave the complexity of allocation to experts. To effectively reach this group, we need to adapt our strategy, as the data-heavy messaging that appeals to the core EA community often fails to connect with the broader public.

Our Model: Emotion-fueled, Reason-driven

Karoteno is designed to lower the barrier to entry. We prioritize a simplified user experience that leans into the emotional impulse to give, while ensuring the backend remains rigorously evidence-based.

• Cause-based funds: Instead of asking a casual donor to analyze the trade-offs between the Against Malaria Foundation or New Incentives, we ask them to simply support a cause (e.g., Global Health).
• Trusted Evaluators: We direct the funds collected for each cause to trusted evaluators and grantmakers. The donor gets the satisfaction of giving, leaving it to the experts to do the heavy lifting of allocation.

We are currently routing our pooled donations to:

• Global Health and Poverty: GiveWell’s All Grants Fund.
• Animal Welfare: The Animal Welfare Fund (EA Funds).
• Future of the Planet: The Giving Green Fund and Manifund’s Regranting Program.

Note: While the platform currently resembles other effective giving tools, this is just our baseline. We plan to differentiate further by experimenting with gamified giving and partnerships with other digital platforms.

Current Status

• Tech & Legal: The platform is fully operational. We are legally established as a Spanish Foundation (Fundación), allowing us to process donations and issue tax-deductible receipts in Spain.
• Early Activity: We have soft-launched and processed our first few donations. The system is running smoothly.

The December Experiment: A Matching Campaign

To jumpstart our growth and test user acquisition, we are running a donation-matching campaign throughout December. We are testing this approach to see if it incentivizes habit formation over one-off spikes.

• One-time donations: Matched 2x (up to 50€).
• Monthly donations: First month matched 3x (up to 100€).

Note: We are currently seeking funding partners to help cover this matching pool. If you are interested in multiplying your impact by incentivizing new donors to enter the ecosystem, please reach out.

How you can help

Because our target audience is outside the EA bubble, our best marketing channel right now is you talking to your friends and family.

1. The "Friends & Family" Test: If you have Spanish-speaking friends or relatives who are charitable but skeptical of "EA jargon," please share karoteno.org with them.
   • I specifically want to hear what doesn't work. If you send the link to a non-EA friend, ask them for their raw first impression. Did they trust it? Was it too complex? Please share that feedback with me directly or via the contact form on the website.
2. Match Funding: If you are interested in matching the donations of these new non-EA donors during our December campaign, send me a message.
3. Connect: If you know influencers, media contacts in Spain, or other potential funders who might care about donation effectiveness, introductions are incredibly valuable at this stage.

Thanks for the support so far!

I keep a very low bar for reaching out, so please don't hesitate to message me.