Some pushback seems warranted, so I upvoted and agree-voted. On the other hand, if you’re giving to a registered charity anyway, you can get tax credits, which means you can give more for the same net cost to you.
in Canada, you can get a 50% tax credit on donations to registered charities (meaning basically you get half back and can choose to donate twice as much for the same after tax cost, up to 75% of your annual income), and RC Forward lets you donate to GiveWell recommended charities (they forward on to various EA charities that aren’t registered in Canada, whereas RC Forward is, so you get the tax credit). I don’t know how generous the tax situation is in other countries, but typically there is some tax benefit, so if you’re going to give to a recognized charity, then DAFs make sense. I’ve used them for “I’m not exactly sure where I’m going to give because I haven’t done all the research I want to, but I want that tax credit, and it is inaccessible for prior years, so I’d like to give now and hold it in a DAF”. Which ended up with “I can give a large chunk of saved up funds from prior years to GiveWell’s mostly-unrestricted fund in the year when the US government defunded USAID”—worked out well!
But, I did find an opportunity last year (AIGS Canada—basically trying to inform Canadian parliamentarians about superintelligence risks and influence policy in a direction of “AI will be really impactful, don’t just treat it as normal technology”) where they needed money urgently, didn’t want to take money from non-Canadians because that’s a public relations vulnerability if trying to influence Canadian government policy, and weren’t a registered charity—and I felt the twinge of having stuck everything I’d planned to give for that year into a DAF, which is not ideal because giving them enough for a few months more operations really does seem to have had a good effect and I endorse having done it, in retrospect. So “don’t put all you’re planning to give into a DAF” is good advice.
I think for small donors, donating to the best unregistered charity is >>2x times the best registered charity, for the reasons OP outlines: registered charities are much better covered by large institutions, and lots of people are overanchored on registration so the unregistered are neglected by comparison.
The counterargument is that bednets/givedirectly are just pretty good and it’s unlikely any particular new thing beats them. Which is a fine approach, but not what we’re talking about here.
Some pushback seems warranted, so I upvoted and agree-voted. On the other hand, if you’re giving to a registered charity anyway, you can get tax credits, which means you can give more for the same net cost to you.
in Canada, you can get a 50% tax credit on donations to registered charities (meaning basically you get half back and can choose to donate twice as much for the same after tax cost, up to 75% of your annual income), and RC Forward lets you donate to GiveWell recommended charities (they forward on to various EA charities that aren’t registered in Canada, whereas RC Forward is, so you get the tax credit). I don’t know how generous the tax situation is in other countries, but typically there is some tax benefit, so if you’re going to give to a recognized charity, then DAFs make sense. I’ve used them for “I’m not exactly sure where I’m going to give because I haven’t done all the research I want to, but I want that tax credit, and it is inaccessible for prior years, so I’d like to give now and hold it in a DAF”. Which ended up with “I can give a large chunk of saved up funds from prior years to GiveWell’s mostly-unrestricted fund in the year when the US government defunded USAID”—worked out well!
But, I did find an opportunity last year (AIGS Canada—basically trying to inform Canadian parliamentarians about superintelligence risks and influence policy in a direction of “AI will be really impactful, don’t just treat it as normal technology”) where they needed money urgently, didn’t want to take money from non-Canadians because that’s a public relations vulnerability if trying to influence Canadian government policy, and weren’t a registered charity—and I felt the twinge of having stuck everything I’d planned to give for that year into a DAF, which is not ideal because giving them enough for a few months more operations really does seem to have had a good effect and I endorse having done it, in retrospect. So “don’t put all you’re planning to give into a DAF” is good advice.
I think for small donors, donating to the best unregistered charity is >>2x times the best registered charity, for the reasons OP outlines: registered charities are much better covered by large institutions, and lots of people are overanchored on registration so the unregistered are neglected by comparison.
The counterargument is that bednets/givedirectly are just pretty good and it’s unlikely any particular new thing beats them. Which is a fine approach, but not what we’re talking about here.