Giving Multiplier is a donation platform promoting effective giving. It was founded at Harvard University in 2020 by psychologists Joshua Greene and Lucius Caviola.
 | |
| Founded | November 2020 |
|---|---|
| Founders | Lucius Caviola, PhD & Joshua Greene, PhD |
| Founded at | Harvard University |
| Type | Nonprofit organization |
| Website | givingmultiplier.org |
History
editGiving Multiplier was created as a research project in 2020 by Joshua Greene, a psychology professor at Harvard and Lucius Caviola, a postdoctoral researcher at Harvard at the time. The goal was to introduce people to effective charities in a way that overcomes some of the psychological barriers to effective altruism.[1][2] To date, Giving Multiplier has facilitated over 8,500 donations totaling $3.4 million.[3]
Research
editGiving Multiplier uses research from charity evaluators[4] such as GiveWell, Animal Charity Evaluators, Founders Pledge, and Open Philanthropy to select a list of ten "super-effective" charities addressing three cause areas: extreme poverty, animal welfare, and global catastrophic risks.
Giving Multiplier lets donors select their favorite charity and one of their super-effective charities (i.e., "with the head and the heart") to implement a donation bundling technique.[5] This innovation combines donors' seemingly conflicting preferences, namely, that they have their own favorite charities,[6] and they simultaneously care about effectiveness.[7] Moreover, Giving Multiplier uses donation matching to further incentivize donors to donate more effectively.[5][8] The original design by Caviola and Greene integrated donation bundling with a new technique called micro-matching.[9][5] Micro-matching works by adding matching funds on top of each donation, with a greater matching rate for a greater proportion allocated to the super-effective charity. Individual donors support the matching system to encourage others to donate, creating a "supply and demand" cycle of charitable giving.[10]
The proof of concept for Giving Multiplier was published as part of Greene and Caviola's academic research on splitting donations between favorite charities and effective charities. Their research found that including an option to split donations between a favorite charity and effective charity increased effective giving by 76%. The authors suggested that favorite-effective donation splits satisfies donors' dual motivations of supporting causes meaningful to them and effective organizations that have a big impact.[9]
Current list of super-effective charities
editAs of October 2024, Giving Multiplier's list of super-effective charities (based on charity evaluators' recommendations) include:
- Against Malaria Foundation
- Clean Air Task Force
- Evidence Action (Deworm the World Initiative)
- GiveDirectly
- Good Food Institute
- Helen Keller International (Vitamin A supplementation program)
- Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security
- Malaria Consortium (Seasonal malaria chemoprevention program)
- New Incentives
- The Humane League
References
edit- ^ Caviola, Lucius; Greene, Joshua (2020-12-17). "Op-Ed: How to be an effective altruist when giving to charities". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 2024-10-08.
- ^ "Opinion: Giving with the heart – and the head". The Globe and Mail. 2020-12-11. Retrieved 2024-10-08.
- ^ "Multiply the impact of your charitable giving | Giving Multiplier". givingmultiplier.org. Retrieved 2024-10-17.
- ^ Samuel, Sigal (2020-12-17). "How to give a meaningful holiday gift this year". Vox. Retrieved 2024-10-08.
- ^ a b c Schubert, Stefan; Caviola, Lucius, eds. (2024). Effective altruism and the human mind: the clash between impact and intuition. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-775739-0.
- ^ Berman, Jonathan Z.; Barasch, Alixandra; Levine, Emma E.; Small, Deborah A. (2018). "Impediments to Effective Altruism: The Role of Subjective Preferences in Charitable Giving". Psychological Science. 29 (5): 834–844. doi:10.1177/0956797617747648. ISSN 0956-7976. PMID 29659341.
- ^ Caviola, Lucius; Faulmüller, Nadira; Everett, Jim. A. C.; Savulescu, Julian; Kahane, Guy (2014). "The evaluability bias in charitable giving: Saving administration costs or saving lives?". Judgment and Decision Making. 9 (4): 303–315. doi:10.1017/S1930297500006185. ISSN 1930-2975. PMID 25279024.
- ^ Gneezy, Uri; Keenan, Elizabeth A.; Gneezy, Ayelet (2014-10-31). "Avoiding overhead aversion in charity". Science. 346 (6209): 632–635. Bibcode:2014Sci...346..632G. doi:10.1126/science.1253932. ISSN 0036-8075. PMID 25359974.
- ^ a b Caviola, Lucius; Greene, Joshua D. (2023-01-20). "Boosting the impact of charitable giving with donation bundling and micromatching". Science Advances. 9 (3): eade7987. Bibcode:2023SciA....9E7987C. doi:10.1126/sciadv.ade7987. ISSN 2375-2548. PMC 9848424. PMID 36652510.
- ^ "Multiply the impact of your charitable giving | Giving Multiplier". givingmultiplier.org. Retrieved 2024-10-08.
Further reading
edit- Albrecht, L (December 23, 2021). "Torn between donating to a charity you care about vs. one that will do the most good? Try this "Giving Multiplier."". MarketWatch. Retrieved October 16, 2024.
- Caviola, Lucius; Greene, Joshua (December 17, 2020). "Op-Ed: How to be an effective altruist when giving to charities". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved October 17, 2024.