[Disclosures and disclaimers: I do work for the Future of Humanity Institute, and significant consulting for Open Phil. I have previously worked at MIRI, and consulted for 80,000 Hours/CEA. I have advised the EA Giving Group DAF regarding donations, and suggested to Paul Christiano that he facilitate the donor lottery discussed in the post. I am writing only for myself, and not for any of the above organizations.]

Summary

Risk-neutral small donors should aim to make better charitable bets at the margin than giga-donors like the Open Philanthropy Project (Open Phil) and Good Ventures using donor lotteries, and can do at least as well as giga-donors by letting themselves be funged. To do so, I recommend entering Paul Christiano's donor lottery. If you win, do more research, including into the option of entering a larger lottery to reach optimal size, in between small and giga-donors.

Introduction

It's giving season and numerous sets of recommendations for individual donors are out: GiveWell top charities, GiveWell staff donations, Center for Effective Altruism (CEA) staff donations, Open Philanthropy (Open Phil) staff recommendations for individual donors, Animal Charity Evaluators (ACE) recommendations, ACE staff personal donations, and an additional post on the EA Forum with several donors' decisions and reasoning (plus more in comments).

There are also opportunities that get pursued and funded by major funders but not pitched to small donors in these lists. The Open Philanthropy grant database is a rich source of examples (these are not recommendations for individual donors). These opportunities may be costly to explain to small donors, benefit from large minimum grant sizes (startup funds for a new organization, or stable funding to hire for a new position, etc), are funded as soon as they are identified, or just happen to lack any charity evaluator doing the work of evaluating them for small donors.

Some people in the effective altruist community have argued that small donors should accept that they will use marginal charitable dollars less efficiently than large actors such as Open Phil, for lack of time, skill, and scale to find and choose between charitable opportunities. Sometimes this is phrased as advice that small donors follow GiveWell's recommendations, while Open Phil pursues other ca

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