We’re excited to announce that EffectiveAltruism.org is hosting the 2017 effective altruism donor lottery!
A donation lottery is a different way to donate. Rather than making a donation to a charitable organization directly, you can make a donation to a donor lottery. You then get a shot at being able to recommend where the entire pool of money goes, in proportion to the size of your donation.
The concept was described by Carl Shulman in 2016, and in late 2016, Carl and Paul Christiano successfully ran the first donor lottery.
Carl and Paul have asked the Centre for Effective Altruism (the organization that runs EffectiveAltruism.org) to take on the responsibility of running this year’s lottery. As with the original lottery, Paul is acting as lottery guarantor, backstopping the lottery pot size of $100,000.
As this is the first time we’ve run the lottery on EffectiveAltruism.org, we’re considering this section of the site to be in open beta. If you notice anything that looks out of place, if anything in the explanation is unclear, or anything doesn’t work as expected, we’d really appreciate your feedback, either via the chat bubble at the bottom right of the screen, via lottery [at] effectivealtruism [dot] org, or in the comments below.
Sam Deere
Tech lead, Centre for Effective Altruism
In this case, you haven't found an advisor who you trust to take into account all the things you consider to be relevant. So, instead of relying on a third-party advisor, you do the research yourself. As research is costly for any given individual to undertake, it may not make sense for you to do this with a smaller donations, but with the larger pot, if you win, you've got more incentive to undertake whatever research you feel is necessary (i.e. that 'captures the relevant considerations').
It's just meant to illustrate that the value of the amount that you would be able to grant to a preferred organization is the same in expectation whether you participate in the lottery or donate directly. The lottery then may generate additional upside, potentially increasing the effectiveness of your donation if you do more research, and also giving you access to different funding opportunities (providing seed funding for an organization, donating to organizations that have a minimum donation threshold etc)
[updated — see more in the discussion below]
We think that it's in the spirit of the lottery that someone who does useful research that would be of interest to other donors should publish it (or give permission for CEA to publish their grant recommendation). Also, if they convince others to donate then they'll be causing additional grants to go to their preferred organization(s). We'll strongly encourage winners to do so, however, in the interests of keeping the barriers to entry low, we haven't made it a hard requirement.
Seems like even strong social pressure might be enough to be a significant b... (read more)