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
Is there a recap of what happened in last year's lottery?
See the post for that lottery: Tim Telleen-Lawton (former GiveWell employee) won. He is planning to post about his donations soon.
Do note, though, that the odds of payouts for other participants are unaffected by anyone's particular participation in this lottery design. For you, it doesn't matter what other participants plan to do except insofar as you would change your donation plans upon hearing they had made or not made a similar donation outside the lottery context. [I mention this because there is a common misconception to the contrary.]
One way in wh... (read more)