The easiest case for a charity offering donation matching, if you don’t think too hard:
Funders take money they were already going to donate to this charity, and call it matching funds. No utility loss for the funders.
Regular donors who don’t have strong charity preferences see advertising saying that this charity is offering a matching drive, view that as an opportunity for their money to go farther, and donate.
This works out well for the charity, who gets more money, and the funder, who maybe sees their money go farther. It’s not good for the regular donor, who was convinced to donate based on a false understanding of the impact.
The approach GiveWell is using tries to fix this, by making sure that the money the funders provide would not otherwise be going to anything nearly as valuable. If they are correct in that assessment, and if funders don’t change their approach in response to expecting GiveWell to want matching funds, then this seems like it can work out well for everyone. Unfortunately, I don’t think they are doing sufficient vetting to claim that the match is fully counterfactual, and I do expect funders to take into account opportunities like this in deciding how they would donate their funds “normally”.
The easiest case for a charity offering donation matching, if you don’t think too hard:
Funders take money they were already going to donate to this charity, and call it matching funds. No utility loss for the funders.
Regular donors who don’t have strong charity preferences see advertising saying that this charity is offering a matching drive, view that as an opportunity for their money to go farther, and donate.
This works out well for the charity, who gets more money, and the funder, who maybe sees their money go farther. It’s not good for the regular donor, who was convinced to donate based on a false understanding of the impact.
The approach GiveWell is using tries to fix this, by making sure that the money the funders provide would not otherwise be going to anything nearly as valuable. If they are correct in that assessment, and if funders don’t change their approach in response to expecting GiveWell to want matching funds, then this seems like it can work out well for everyone. Unfortunately, I don’t think they are doing sufficient vetting to claim that the match is fully counterfactual, and I do expect funders to take into account opportunities like this in deciding how they would donate their funds “normally”.