From someone who’s been involved in charities for decades:
For pity’s sake, don’t earmark. It’s a goddamn pain in the arse to deal with and can greatly increase inefficiency in dealing with the tainted money. If you trust them enough to give them money, trust them enough to work out what to do with it.
If the charity has set things up so you can donate to a particular programme, do that; otherwise, just donate, possibly with a suggestion.
Yeah, I should have clarified—by “earmarking” I meant “80K” or “GWWC”, not things like “please only use this money for things directly related to existential risk” which would definitely be a pain in the arse.
The donate pages for 80k and GWWC both say “Whichever way you donate, please also notify will.crouch@80000hours/givingwhatwecan.org, in order that we can restrict your donation to 80,000 Hours/Giving What We Can.” So it seems that they’re OK with earmarking.
Actually, I think this is a technical problem they have, and should not be construed as a positive endorsement of earmarking. It looks like what they want are separate organizations (80k, GWWC), but the way their org is set up, they can only be tax deductible if you donate to the “Tides Foundation” instead.
Although technically this looks like earmarking, the intent seems to be that they wanted to have separate organizations with separate funding but have so far not actually separated them for the purposes of tax deductibility.
Note that the Tides Foundation is not the same thing as CEA. I’m not sure what CEA’s exact relationship is with the Tides Foundation—I’ll add this to the list of questions.
My guess would be that the relationship to Tides is necessary in order to get US tax deductability (CEA is based in the UK), and that splitting off 80K and GWWC from each other wouldn’t help with that. I will ask though.
A charity may have different programs, and you might reach the conclusion that some of these do much more good than the others. To abstain from earmarking on the grounds that this “can greatly increase inefficiency” runs the risk of attaching excessive weight to efficiency. But it is effectiveness, not overhead that matters. To consider the charities at hand, Effective Animal Activism is officially a part of 80K, but due to its focus on animal suffering—which is much more neglected than human suffering—it might be considerably more effective than its parent organization, as I believe it is. So I don’t think earmarking should be discouraged in this case.
I agree with the idea that EAA seems more likely to be more effective than 80k for the reasons you stated. However, I disagree that this is sufficient reason to encourage earmarking.
It’s true that I’d prefer to give to EAA directly, and the only way to do this currently is to write a check to the “Tides Foundation” and earmark it for EAA. But I think the far better way of doing this is for EAA to be separate not just from Tides, but also 80k (which has a confusingly distinct mission focused on careers and lifetime charitable donations, not animal welfare). Until they’re separate, I can see why earmarking is justified, but you said it should be encouraged, which is an entirely different thing. I would NOT encourage earmarking; I’d earmark regretfully, and only until they separate out the organizations so that I can donate toward the mission I consider to be genuinely more effective.
If I understand Will’s response correctly (under “Earmarking”), it’s best to think of GWWC, 80K, EAA and LYCS as separate organizations (at least in terms of whose money will be used for what, which is what really matters). I don’t know if this addresses your concern though.
I admit it makes the actual physical donation process look slightly clunky (no big shiny donate button), but my impression is they’re not targeting casual donors so much so this may not be such a problem.
Some people have indicated that they might want to restrict their donation to just one of GWWC, 80K or EAA. But earmarking often doesn’t work in the presence of unrestricted funding
I’ve been helping CEA work out how to handle earmarking; naturally we’re aware of the fungibility problem, and there is in fact a whole page on the GWWC website about it. So I can promise that we’re being careful to respect the wishes of donors who wish to earmark, while being upfront about any fungibility issues with them.
It’s a good question! I was going to respond, but I think that, rather than answering questions on this thread, I’ll just let people keep asking questions, and then I’ll respond to them all at once—hopefully that’ll make readability clearer for other users.
Some people have indicated that they might want to restrict their donation to just one of GWWC, 80K or EAA. But earmarking often doesn’t work in the presence of unrestricted funding
How much of CEA’s funding do you expect to be restricted vs. unrestricted?
Is the unrestricted funding likely to all go to the same preferred cause?
Do you have any other measures in place to guard against the effect described in GiveWell’s post?
From someone who’s been involved in charities for decades:
For pity’s sake, don’t earmark. It’s a goddamn pain in the arse to deal with and can greatly increase inefficiency in dealing with the tainted money. If you trust them enough to give them money, trust them enough to work out what to do with it.
If the charity has set things up so you can donate to a particular programme, do that; otherwise, just donate, possibly with a suggestion.
Yeah, I should have clarified—by “earmarking” I meant “80K” or “GWWC”, not things like “please only use this money for things directly related to existential risk” which would definitely be a pain in the arse.
The donate pages for 80k and GWWC both say “Whichever way you donate, please also notify will.crouch@80000hours/givingwhatwecan.org, in order that we can restrict your donation to 80,000 Hours/Giving What We Can.” So it seems that they’re OK with earmarking.
Actually, I think this is a technical problem they have, and should not be construed as a positive endorsement of earmarking. It looks like what they want are separate organizations (80k, GWWC), but the way their org is set up, they can only be tax deductible if you donate to the “Tides Foundation” instead.
Although technically this looks like earmarking, the intent seems to be that they wanted to have separate organizations with separate funding but have so far not actually separated them for the purposes of tax deductibility.
Note that the Tides Foundation is not the same thing as CEA. I’m not sure what CEA’s exact relationship is with the Tides Foundation—I’ll add this to the list of questions.
My guess would be that the relationship to Tides is necessary in order to get US tax deductability (CEA is based in the UK), and that splitting off 80K and GWWC from each other wouldn’t help with that. I will ask though.
A charity may have different programs, and you might reach the conclusion that some of these do much more good than the others. To abstain from earmarking on the grounds that this “can greatly increase inefficiency” runs the risk of attaching excessive weight to efficiency. But it is effectiveness, not overhead that matters. To consider the charities at hand, Effective Animal Activism is officially a part of 80K, but due to its focus on animal suffering—which is much more neglected than human suffering—it might be considerably more effective than its parent organization, as I believe it is. So I don’t think earmarking should be discouraged in this case.
I agree with the idea that EAA seems more likely to be more effective than 80k for the reasons you stated. However, I disagree that this is sufficient reason to encourage earmarking.
It’s true that I’d prefer to give to EAA directly, and the only way to do this currently is to write a check to the “Tides Foundation” and earmark it for EAA. But I think the far better way of doing this is for EAA to be separate not just from Tides, but also 80k (which has a confusingly distinct mission focused on careers and lifetime charitable donations, not animal welfare). Until they’re separate, I can see why earmarking is justified, but you said it should be encouraged, which is an entirely different thing. I would NOT encourage earmarking; I’d earmark regretfully, and only until they separate out the organizations so that I can donate toward the mission I consider to be genuinely more effective.
If I understand Will’s response correctly (under “Earmarking”), it’s best to think of GWWC, 80K, EAA and LYCS as separate organizations (at least in terms of whose money will be used for what, which is what really matters). I don’t know if this addresses your concern though.
I admit it makes the actual physical donation process look slightly clunky (no big shiny donate button), but my impression is they’re not targeting casual donors so much so this may not be such a problem.
I’ve been helping CEA work out how to handle earmarking; naturally we’re aware of the fungibility problem, and there is in fact a whole page on the GWWC website about it. So I can promise that we’re being careful to respect the wishes of donors who wish to earmark, while being upfront about any fungibility issues with them.
It’s a good question! I was going to respond, but I think that, rather than answering questions on this thread, I’ll just let people keep asking questions, and then I’ll respond to them all at once—hopefully that’ll make readability clearer for other users.
Can I clarify: I think you meant “CEA” rather than “EAA” in your first question?
Yes, thanks—fixed.