I am working on making that happen right now. I am pretty sure we can arrange something, but it depends a bit on getting a large enough volume to make it worth it for one of our UK friend-orgs to put in the work to do an equivalence determination.
Can you let me know how much you are thinking of giving (either here or in a DM)?
For anyone considering large-ish donations (in the thousands), there are several ways to do this in general for US non-profits, as a UK taxpayer. (Several of these also work for people who pay tax in both the US and UK)
The one I’d recommend here is using the Anglo-American Charity—you can donate to them tax-deductibly (a UK charity) and they’ll send it to a US non-profit. I hear from a friend that they’re happy to forward it to every.org so this should be easy here. The main annoying thing is fees—for amounts below £15K it’s min(4%, £250) (so 4% above £6250, a flat fee of £250 below).
Fee structure; 4% on donations under £15k, 3% on gifts between £15,001 to £50,000 and 2% on gifts over £50k. Minimum gift of £1,000. Minimum fee £250.
The minimum donation is £1,000.00.
But this is still a major saving, even in the low thousands, especially if you’re in a high tax bracket. Though it may make more sense for you to donate to another charity.
Assuming all went well, I just donated £5,000 through the Anglo-American charity, which should become about (£5000 * 1.25 * 96% = £6000 ≈ $7300) to lightcone.
I had further questions to their how to give page, so:
You can return the forms by email, no need to post them. (I filled them in with Firefox’s native “draw/write on this pdf” feature, handwriting my signature with a mouse.)
If donating by bank transfer, you send the money to “anglo-american charity limited”, not “anglo-american charitable foundation”.
For lightcone’s contact details I asked on LW intercom. Feels rude to put someone’s phone number here, so if you’re doing the same as me, I’m not gonna save you that step.
For lightcone’s contact details I asked on LW intercom. Feels rude to put someone’s phone number here, so if you’re doing the same as me, I’m not gonna save you that step.
Reasonable prior, but my phone number is already publicly visible at the top of this post, so feel free to share further.
Tagging @philh@bilalchughtai@eventuallyalways@jbeshir in case this is relevant to you (though pooling money to get GWWC interested in helping may make more sense, if it can enable smaller donors and has lower fees)
Thanks—I think GWWC would be fewer steps for me, but if that’s not looking likely then one of these is plausible.
(I wonder if it would be worth a few of us pooling money to get both “lower fees” and “less need to deal with orgs who don’t just let you click some buttons to say where you want the money to go”, but not sure if that would be legit for gift aid purposes.)
Yeah, GWWC has told us no for at least a few months (they are still in the middle of spinning out from Effective Ventures, and so fiscal sponsorship things are impacted by that).
Not clear to me whether it would be allowed if the charity is in on it and everyone fills in their own gift aid declaration. But that’s extra steps for all parties.
If you can get it set up before March, I’ll donate at least £2000.
(Though, um. I should say that at least one time I’ve been told “the way to donate with gift said is to set up an account with X, tell them to send the money to Y, and Y will pass it on to us”, and the first step in the chain there had very high transaction fees and I think might have involved sending an email… historical precedent suggests that if that’s the process for me to donate to lightcone, it might not happen.)
Do you know what rough volume you’d need to make it worthwhile?
Their inclusion criteria suggests that they want to see at least $50k of expected donations in the next year. My guess is if we have $10k-$20k expected this month, then that is probably enough, but I am not sure (and it might also not work out for other reasons).
Is there a way for UK taxpayers to tax-efficiently donate (e.g. via Gift Aid)?
I am working on making that happen right now. I am pretty sure we can arrange something, but it depends a bit on getting a large enough volume to make it worth it for one of our UK friend-orgs to put in the work to do an equivalence determination.
Can you let me know how much you are thinking of giving (either here or in a DM)?
For anyone considering large-ish donations (in the thousands), there are several ways to do this in general for US non-profits, as a UK taxpayer. (Several of these also work for people who pay tax in both the US and UK)
The one I’d recommend here is using the Anglo-American Charity—you can donate to them tax-deductibly (a UK charity) and they’ll send it to a US non-profit. I hear from a friend that they’re happy to forward it to every.org so this should be easy here. The main annoying thing is fees—for amounts below £15K it’s min(4%, £250) (so 4% above £6250, a flat fee of £250 below).
But this is still a major saving, even in the low thousands, especially if you’re in a high tax bracket. Though it may make more sense for you to donate to another charity.
Another option is the charitable aid foundation’s donor advised gift, which is a similar deal with worse fees: min(4%, £400) on amounts below £150K.
If you’re a larger donor (eg £20K+) it may make sense to set up a donor advised fund, which will often let you donate to worldwide non-profits.
Assuming all went well, I just donated £5,000 through the Anglo-American charity, which should become about (£5000 * 1.25 * 96% = £6000 ≈ $7300) to lightcone.
I had further questions to their how to give page, so:
You can return the forms by email, no need to post them. (I filled them in with Firefox’s native “draw/write on this pdf” feature, handwriting my signature with a mouse.)
If donating by bank transfer, you send the money to “anglo-american charity limited”, not “anglo-american charitable foundation”.
For lightcone’s contact details I asked on LW intercom. Feels rude to put someone’s phone number here, so if you’re doing the same as me, I’m not gonna save you that step.
Thank you!
Reasonable prior, but my phone number is already publicly visible at the top of this post, so feel free to share further.
So it is. Other than that, the remaining details I needed were:
2740 Telegraph Ave, Berkeley
94705
habryka@lightconeinfrastructure.com
Oliver Habryka
Tagging @philh @bilalchughtai @eventuallyalways @jbeshir in case this is relevant to you (though pooling money to get GWWC interested in helping may make more sense, if it can enable smaller donors and has lower fees)
Thanks—I think GWWC would be fewer steps for me, but if that’s not looking likely then one of these is plausible.
(I wonder if it would be worth a few of us pooling money to get both “lower fees” and “less need to deal with orgs who don’t just let you click some buttons to say where you want the money to go”, but not sure if that would be legit for gift aid purposes.)
Yeah, GWWC has told us no for at least a few months (they are still in the middle of spinning out from Effective Ventures, and so fiscal sponsorship things are impacted by that).
Based on https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/charities-detailed-guidance-notes/chapter-3-gift-aid#chapter-344-digital-giving-and-social-giving-accounts, doing this the naive way (one person collects money and gives it to the charity, everyone shares the tax rebate) is explicitly forbidden. Which makes sense, or everyone with a high income friend would have access to the 40% savings.
Not clear to me whether it would be allowed if the charity is in on it and everyone fills in their own gift aid declaration. But that’s extra steps for all parties.
I reached out to them and they said pooling isn’t possible.
If you can get it set up before March, I’ll donate at least £2000.
(Though, um. I should say that at least one time I’ve been told “the way to donate with gift said is to set up an account with X, tell them to send the money to Y, and Y will pass it on to us”, and the first step in the chain there had very high transaction fees and I think might have involved sending an email… historical precedent suggests that if that’s the process for me to donate to lightcone, it might not happen.)
Do you know what rough volume you’d need to make it worthwhile?
My favorite fiscal sponsorship would be through GWWC: https://www.givingwhatwecan.org/inclusion-criteria
Their inclusion criteria suggests that they want to see at least $50k of expected donations in the next year. My guess is if we have $10k-$20k expected this month, then that is probably enough, but I am not sure (and it might also not work out for other reasons).
Okay. Make it £5k from me (currently ~$6350), that seems like it’ll make it more likely to happen.
I also commit to donating £5k to lightcone if and only you can get UK gift-aid donation set up by the end of March.
any update on this?
Not yet :(
Still working on it.
I’ll also give at least £5k if tax deductibility is set up in the UK.