Actually no I am not. I began studying the Actuarial exams when I started work and have passed the ones that I took but stopped studying 3 years ago.
I found them very interesting but sadly of only minor relevance to the work that I was doing and, since I was not intending on becoming an Actuary and therefore was not being afforded any study leave in which to progress in them, I decided to focus my spare time on my own career path instead.
Why do you ask?
Could I take a slightly different tack on this?
Correct me if I’m wrong but I believe the objective is to increase donations to charity? So if, for example, this approach generated $1bn but only from people who would have donated anyway then the gain is zero.
The core questions that we are then addressing are:
how do we convince people to donate more to charity than they would without our intervention?
what stops people from donating the full amount that they would wish to, and how can we remove these barriers?
The first would be tackled by focusing on “marketing”—ie getting the message out there, influencing decision making etc. The second would be tackled by focusing on efficiency.
Clearly the Craigslist idea addresses both of these in its own way but making itself rapidly visible to a large number of people and allowing low effort donations.
I will leave the first item, marketing alone, as I do not feel well positioned to discuss the morals of using psychological techniques to influence increased altruism, and will leave this for others to debate.
For the second I would like to suggest that the Craigslist idea doesn’t go far enough. (Being from the UK I have never heard of it!) The internet is entering our lives apace and on-line transactions are becoming a way of life. There cannot be too many processes more efficient than one requiring only a flick of the wrist and a couple of mouse clicks.
I would be interested to hear debate on the feasibility of a more centralised internet-enabled donation scheme funded by the charities themselves that could remove suspicion by gaining notoriety.
Although this is only a slight extension of the idea, image the success that could be generated if present on-line transactions allowed the option to round purchases to the next $1 and donate the difference.