While the effective altruism movement has changed a lot over time, one of the parts that makes me most disappointed is the steady creep of donation matching. It's not that donation matching is objectively very important, but the early EA movement's principled rejection of a very effective fundraising strategy made it clear that we were committed to helping people understand the real impact of their donations. Over time, as people have specialized into different areas of EA, with community-building and epistemics being different people from fundraising, we've become less robust against the real-world incentives of "donation matching works".

Personally, I would love to see a community-wide norm against EA organizations setting up donation matches. Yes, they bring in money, but at the cost of misleading donors about their impact and unwinding a lot of what we, as a community, are trying to build. [1] To the [...]

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First published:
August 9th, 2024

Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/4bCoQmYgrwL34LqJe/farmkind-s-illusory-offer

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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“FarmKind’s Illusory Offer” by jefftk

LessWrong (30+ Karma)