I've been thinking about the question of whether and how much to
donate, compared to other uses of money (including saving for
later). These thoughts prompted an earlier
post
where I tried separating the "how much" and "where" to donate
questions. More recently, I wrote a post on levels of
donation
to clarify the different strategies I might follow as a donor
depending on how much I donate.
One useful prompt for thinking about many questions is based on the
anticipated regret
framing. In
this case, it would translate to: what kinds of donations tend to lead
to regrets, and what kinds of regrets? I'm curious about the ways that
people have regretted their past donations, and how such past regrets
have informed their future donations. Please share your thoughts in the
comments!
A few examples of the kinds of regrets that I can imagine possible:
-
You regret that your donation was either ineffective or actively
harmful (because you reversed your mind either on the cause area or
on the specific organization you donated to). See, for instance, Brian Tomasik:
I donated to several different organizations in the past, some of
which I still support and some of which I now oppose.
In this
post
Holden Karnofsky doesn't directly express regret, but his
observations are the sort that might trigger regret in some people.
-
You've found much better donation opportunities since then, and
you're sad that you can't direct as much money as you'd like to these
better donation opportunities because you gave too much to what you
now think of as an inferior donation opportunity.
-
The total money you donated left you with less money for personal
use (such as dealing with a personal emergency, a great investment
opportunity that would make you more money that you could donate,
or a personal life change such as getting married and having kids).
-
The total money you donated left you with less money for pursuing
altruistic ventures, such as starting your own nonprofit, taking up
a job at a nonprofit that pays less, or helping other people start
their own nonprofit or engage in an altruistic venture.
This is a really great question. Strong upvoted.
Regret 1: not donating more in 2014-2017
I donated small amounts to early longtermist organizations 2014-2017, before Open Philanthropy Project entered the space. Some of these organizations were funding constrained at the time, but aren't anymore. And I regret not donating more.
Most notably, I donated to the "Global Priorities Project" at CEA in 2015, and they were funding constrained enought that they were willing to spend the time to have a fundraising call with me, even though my budget was small. This project might have contributed to the Global Priorities Institute in later years. I could have donated 3x as much.
I prioritized building up financial runway so that I could live off my savings in case I ended up unemployed. This is very understandable. I was early in my career, and having some runway is important for your financial (and mental) health, but I could have afforded more risk. (I might be hindsight biased here because I stayed employed all the time).
Regret 2: not providing low-friction funding to early stage projects
There are some voices saying that individual donors' comparative advantage is that they have local knowledge. An individual can spot promising early stage projects in their network and fund them. This can help getting these projects started in the first place.
I have been hestitant doing this. I don't trust my own judgement very much. I may be biased funding friends and projects I contributed directly to - and I may have overcorrected for this bias by not donating at all.