Hi guys,
I am currently looking into the research around altruism and "consumer behavior".
One thing that struck me is that many people seem to not care who or what receives their donations (Breeze, 2013), arguably because the act of helping seems to give them some kind of satisfaction. Moreover, they probably donate out of some feeling of guilt and the act of donating is then some kind of "letter of indulgence". However, given their desire to do something good but also their laziness, it is conceivable that their donations are not perfectly effective and it would be conceivable that these people would positively respond to an offering in which they would give their money to somebody who allocates it wisely to the most effective charities which would, minus the advisors fee, still probably cause a net better outcome.
Do you know whether something likes this exists and whether there is research around this?
Surely this would make the donor very passive as he/she only provides the money and is not involved in the information gathering. Is this even desirable from your perspective?
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Breeze, Beth. (2013). How Donors Choose Charities: The Role of Personal Taste and Experiences in Giving Decisions. Voluntary Sector Review. 4. 165-183. 10.1332/204080513X667792.
Just to clarify since I see you are new and you didn't mention it by name: Are you familiar with Givewell? It's a fairly well-respected organization in the EA community, and people can simply donate money to Givewell for them to allocate to the most effective charities.
Also, I want to push back on one of your potential assumptions: I'm not so confident that people donate to less-effective charities primarily as a result of "laziness", nor am I convinced that it's accurate to broadly say that "many people seem to not care who or what receives their donations." I can't read the full article that you cite, but its abstract does explicitly say "donors often support organisations that promote their own preferences, that help people with whom they feel some affinity and that support causes that relate to their own life experiences", which almost seems like the opposite of your interpretation. Regardless, I think it's probably more accurate to say that many people are not actually motivated by some impersonal desire to "maximize good" and instead are influenced by a variety of desires (and habits, aversions, etc.), including how donating makes them feel.
Thus, you might get many people donating to a seeing eye dog charity instead of the Fred Hollows Foundation not because they're actually trying to maximize how much they help other people but rather because, e.g., they've personally interacted with seeing eye dogs or such services have helped a family member, and thus donating to those charities gives them just as much if not more "warm fuzzies" as would donating to something far more effective at mitigating/preventing blindness like the Fred Hollows Foundation.
And if learning about the Fred Hollows Foundation would make them feel less happy about donating to guide dog charities (e.g., "yeah, I guess these charities actually are ineffective, I'm just donating to make myself feel better") then it might even be instrumentally rational to not be intellectually curious about better alternatives.
Hey,
thank you for your response. Sorry for my ignorance, as I did know about Givewell but not about this possibility and am just starting my EA journey.
In my post I am actually referring to one finding of the article such as:
"While the sample was composed entirely of people sufficiently committed to charitable giving to have gone to the trouble of setting up a charity bank account, interviewees were often disarmingly honest about their lack of knowledge regarding the causes and charities they support. Despite distributing thousands of pounds a year, one donor prefaced his replies by saying: “I’m going to be the wrong person to ask because I’m not sure I give it that much intellectual thought” (male, thirties, high income). Others admitted a similar lack of investment in their charitable decision making" (Breeze, 2013, p. 6).
and although it might contradict with the key conclusions in the abstract, the article was about getting a holistic perspective on very different people and motives of donation behavior. In my post and my considerations I focused only on this apparent sub-group of people (the size and therefore importance of that "group" can not be determined due to the qualitative nature of the article) that the authors describe who seemingly want to donate but don't care too much who will receive it apparently and how to get them to donate more effectively given their motivation to do good but also lack of initiative.
These are somewhat "marketing" considerations on how to target different groups of donors optimally.