4 ms·

I've done a fair amount of volunteering for nonprofits, one in particular[1], and I will say that nonprofits are full of the most overworked, underpaid, and pas

I've done a fair amount of volunteering for nonprofits, one in particular[1], and I will say that nonprofits are full of the most overworked, underpaid, and passionate people you will meet anywhere. They need every penny they can get, and very often people mistake nonprofits spending money on essential activities like marketing or event planning as "overhead", when such expenditures generate multiples of revenue for every dollar spent. Wouldn't you rather the $1 you donate generate leverage in new donations? One thing that PG doesn't mention here is fungibility: if you restrict your donations, nonprofits will still route unrestricted funds to where they need to be spent. It's still sub-optimal, obviously, but people who donate restricted don't always understand that they don't have as much control as they think they do over where funds will be spent, and that's a good thing. [1] Liberty in North Korea is the best way you can contribute to the wellbeing and success of the North Korean people directly...one $ donated to resettle refugees can return 100% ROI after just 2 years: https://www.libertyinnorthkorea.org/ https://www.libertyinnorthkorea.org/

bradleyjg 6y ago
> Wouldn't you rather the $1 you donate generate leverage in new donations? It depends on where the money is coming from. Suppose I donate $100 to a cystic fibrosis charity and using that money they convince 10 people to donate money to their charity instead of the muscular dystrophy foundation. I wouldn’t consider that an effective use of my donation. On the other hand I have no idea how you’d measure that.
- sjg007 6y ago
  It's measured as overhead and/or donation acquisition expenses. It's never 100%. You can assume some percent of that money goes to such expenses vs actual research (which I guess is where you'd want the money to go, or maybe to outreach or supporting individuals with cf).
  - bradleyjg 6y ago
    That’s not quite what I’m getting at. A marketing dollar that brings in two dollars that would have otherwise been spent on coke is good, a marketing dollar that brings in two dollars that would have otherwise been spent on a different decent charity is not good.
    - MaxBarraclough 6y ago
      An additional complication: according to the Centre for Effective Altruism, charities vary hugely - several orders of magnitude - in their ability to turn dollars into benefit.
  - geofft 6y ago
    I think the question above is whether nonprofits are playing a zero-sum game - if donors have set aside some budget, and you "acquire" a donation by competing another equally worthy non-profit (instead of competing against the donor's savings account), it's not clear that this is good for the high-level goals of society. In the long run, it will turn into the same arms race as political donations. At the end of the day, every candidate is trying to win over the same voters, so the net effect of Party X spending $100 million on ads and Party Y spending $50 million isn't terribly different from Party X spending $10 million on ads and Party Y spending $5 million - it certainly does not yield an election that is ten times better at reflecting the voters' preferences. And it may well yield an election that's about how well the parties can market themselves and not how well they can govern. If cystic fibrosis is a problem that needs ten times the spending of muscular dystrophy, but the muscular dystrophy folks are ten times better at fundraising, the effect of that is to divert funds from cystic fibrosis into getting them to be one hundred times better at fundraising than they used to be. (I don't have an answer here, any more than I have an answer to how to curtail campaign spending.)
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
agumonkey 6y ago
I volunteered for the last few months. One thing that surprised me just a bit is how motivated I could be even without any money benefits. Also that charity warehouse was better equipped than my previous gig at a truck disassembly plant at some very large truck renting company. In the former we had a whole fleet of powered pallet trolleys or fenwicks, the latter had 2 busted manual pallet jacks and 1 fenwick. Go figure.
PoignardAzur 6y ago
> Wouldn't you rather the $1 you donate generate leverage in new donations? No, because donations are a zero-sum game. They're not "generating" leverage, they're convincing people to give money to them as opposed to giving money to other causes and/or spending it for themselves. I've heard that people tended to give a fixed amount every year and charities just competed for that amount; I've never seen any evidence that aggressive marketing leads people/organizations to donate a higher percentage of their income overall. And even if it did, I think the principled thing to do would be to convince people to donate more money overall, ideally to high-effectiveness charities, not for specific causes to compete for getting people's money. Overall I think 99% of marketing is a blight upon humanity, a disgusting morass of callousness and amorality, and a huge waste of resources. Any money given for charity that ends up going into it should be considered overhead.
- soneca 6y ago
  > because donations are a zero-sum game What? No, they are not. Because you never saw evidence, it is true? I worked for 4 years convincing millionaires to start doing large donations that they simply weren’t doing before. I myself started donating a larger amount recently (because I am earning more in a new job). You want to think it’s all ” a disgusting morass of callousness and amorality”, so you decide to think this way.

bradleyjg 6y ago

> Wouldn't you rather the $1 you donate generate leverage in new donations? It depends on where the money is coming from. Suppose I donate $100 to a cystic fibrosis charity and using that money they convince 10 people to donate money to their charity instead of the muscular dystrophy foundation. I wouldn’t consider that an effective use of my donation. On the other hand I have no idea how you’d measure that.

sjg007 6y ago
It's measured as overhead and/or donation acquisition expenses. It's never 100%. You can assume some percent of that money goes to such expenses vs actual research (which I guess is where you'd want the money to go, or maybe to outreach or supporting individuals with cf).
- bradleyjg 6y ago
  That’s not quite what I’m getting at. A marketing dollar that brings in two dollars that would have otherwise been spent on coke is good, a marketing dollar that brings in two dollars that would have otherwise been spent on a different decent charity is not good.
  - MaxBarraclough 6y ago
    An additional complication: according to the Centre for Effective Altruism, charities vary hugely - several orders of magnitude - in their ability to turn dollars into benefit.
- geofft 6y ago
  I think the question above is whether nonprofits are playing a zero-sum game - if donors have set aside some budget, and you "acquire" a donation by competing another equally worthy non-profit (instead of competing against the donor's savings account), it's not clear that this is good for the high-level goals of society. In the long run, it will turn into the same arms race as political donations. At the end of the day, every candidate is trying to win over the same voters, so the net effect of Party X spending $100 million on ads and Party Y spending $50 million isn't terribly different from Party X spending $10 million on ads and Party Y spending $5 million - it certainly does not yield an election that is ten times better at reflecting the voters' preferences. And it may well yield an election that's about how well the parties can market themselves and not how well they can govern. If cystic fibrosis is a problem that needs ten times the spending of muscular dystrophy, but the muscular dystrophy folks are ten times better at fundraising, the effect of that is to divert funds from cystic fibrosis into getting them to be one hundred times better at fundraising than they used to be. (I don't have an answer here, any more than I have an answer to how to curtail campaign spending.)

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

agumonkey 6y ago

I volunteered for the last few months. One thing that surprised me just a bit is how motivated I could be even without any money benefits. Also that charity warehouse was better equipped than my previous gig at a truck disassembly plant at some very large truck renting company. In the former we had a whole fleet of powered pallet trolleys or fenwicks, the latter had 2 busted manual pallet jacks and 1 fenwick. Go figure.

PoignardAzur 6y ago

> Wouldn't you rather the $1 you donate generate leverage in new donations? No, because donations are a zero-sum game. They're not "generating" leverage, they're convincing people to give money to them as opposed to giving money to other causes and/or spending it for themselves. I've heard that people tended to give a fixed amount every year and charities just competed for that amount; I've never seen any evidence that aggressive marketing leads people/organizations to donate a higher percentage of their income overall. And even if it did, I think the principled thing to do would be to convince people to donate more money overall, ideally to high-effectiveness charities, not for specific causes to compete for getting people's money. Overall I think 99% of marketing is a blight upon humanity, a disgusting morass of callousness and amorality, and a huge waste of resources. Any money given for charity that ends up going into it should be considered overhead.

soneca 6y ago
> because donations are a zero-sum game What? No, they are not. Because you never saw evidence, it is true? I worked for 4 years convincing millionaires to start doing large donations that they simply weren’t doing before. I myself started donating a larger amount recently (because I am earning more in a new job). You want to think it’s all ” a disgusting morass of callousness and amorality”, so you decide to think this way.