every contribution to the Singularity Institute up until January 20, 2011 will be matched dollar-for-dollar, up to a total of $125,000.
Anyone willing to comment on that as a rationalist incentive? Presumably I’m supposed to think “I want more utility to SIAI so I should donate at a time when my donation is matched so SIAI gets twice the cash” and not “they have money which they can spare and are willing to donate to SIAI but will not donate it if their demands are not met within their timeframe, that sounds a lot like coercion/blackmail”?
Would it work the other way around? If we individuals grouped together and said “We collectively have $125,000 to donate to SIAI but will only do so if SIAI convinces a company / rich investor to match it dollar for dollar before %somedate%”?
It’s a symmetrical situation. Suppose that A prefers having $1 in his personal luxury budget to having $1 in SIAI, but prefers having $2 in SIAI to having a mere $1 in his personal luxury budget. Suppose that B has the same preferences (regarding his own personal luxury budget, vs SIAI).
Then A and B would each prefer not-donating to donating, but they would each prefer donating-if-their-donation-gets-a-match to not-donating. And so a matching campaign lets them both achieve their preferences.
This is a pretty common situation—for example, lots of people are unwilling to give large amounts now to save lives in the third world, but would totally be willing to give $1k if this would cause all other first worlders to do so, and would thereby prevent all the cheaply preventable deaths. Matching grants are a smaller version of the same.
The sponsor gets publicity for their charitable donation—while the charity stimulates donations—by making donors feel as though they are getting better value for money.
If the sponsor proposes the deal, they can sometimes make the charity work harder at their fund-raising effort for the duration—which probably helps their cause.
If the charity proposes the deal, the sponsor can always pay the rest of their gift later.
Anyone willing to comment on that as a rationalist incentive? Presumably I’m supposed to think “I want more utility to SIAI so I should donate at a time when my donation is matched so SIAI gets twice the cash” and not “they have money which they can spare and are willing to donate to SIAI but will not donate it if their demands are not met within their timeframe, that sounds a lot like coercion/blackmail”?
Would it work the other way around? If we individuals grouped together and said “We collectively have $125,000 to donate to SIAI but will only do so if SIAI convinces a company / rich investor to match it dollar for dollar before %somedate%”?
It’s a symmetrical situation. Suppose that A prefers having $1 in his personal luxury budget to having $1 in SIAI, but prefers having $2 in SIAI to having a mere $1 in his personal luxury budget. Suppose that B has the same preferences (regarding his own personal luxury budget, vs SIAI).
Then A and B would each prefer not-donating to donating, but they would each prefer donating-if-their-donation-gets-a-match to not-donating. And so a matching campaign lets them both achieve their preferences.
This is a pretty common situation—for example, lots of people are unwilling to give large amounts now to save lives in the third world, but would totally be willing to give $1k if this would cause all other first worlders to do so, and would thereby prevent all the cheaply preventable deaths. Matching grants are a smaller version of the same.
It seems like it would be valuable to set up ways for people to make these deals more systematically than through matching grants.
Indeed. It seems to be essentially ‘solving a cooperation problem’.
The sponsor gets publicity for their charitable donation—while the charity stimulates donations—by making donors feel as though they are getting better value for money.
If the sponsor proposes the deal, they can sometimes make the charity work harder at their fund-raising effort for the duration—which probably helps their cause.
If the charity proposes the deal, the sponsor can always pay the rest of their gift later.