Off the top of my head, one charity might be worse overall but might need a small amount of funding to attempt an experimental strategy aimed at improving it. If the likelihood of finding a better way than the most efficient charity pursues is high enough, then small funding to the experimental charity and the rest of your donation to the other could be optimal.
In general I am uneasy with suggestions that one should focus all their charitable energy in one direction, because people are far too prone to finding a local maximum then ceasing exploration for higher maximums.
one charity might be worse overall but might need a small amount of funding to attempt an experimental strategy aimed at improving it.
If this were true, that would mean that that charity had extremely high but rapidly diminishing marginal returns, in which case you should give it money until those diminishing MRs brought it below your next best option. I’m pretty confident that diverse investment is only proper where charities exhibit interactive returns (which is probably extremely rare for most people’s value of charitable contributions) or whether you are trying to maximize something other than effective charity.
Off the top of my head, one charity might be worse overall but might need a small amount of funding to attempt an experimental strategy aimed at improving it. If the likelihood of finding a better way than the most efficient charity pursues is high enough, then small funding to the experimental charity and the rest of your donation to the other could be optimal.
In general I am uneasy with suggestions that one should focus all their charitable energy in one direction, because people are far too prone to finding a local maximum then ceasing exploration for higher maximums.
If this were true, that would mean that that charity had extremely high but rapidly diminishing marginal returns, in which case you should give it money until those diminishing MRs brought it below your next best option. I’m pretty confident that diverse investment is only proper where charities exhibit interactive returns (which is probably extremely rare for most people’s value of charitable contributions) or whether you are trying to maximize something other than effective charity.