In the future I'll probably want to donate to a UK charity (Humane Slaughter Association). Some people in the UK probably want to donate to a US charity like GiveWell or MIRI. Rather than both donating to foreign charities, we should trade donations so that we can both get tax deductibility / Gift Aid for our donations.
Trading doesn't have to occur only between matched countries. There's a benefit to trading so long as just one side gets tax deductibility / Gift Aid where it didn't exist before. For example, if a UK donor was going to give to a Spanish charity, and if a US donor was going to give to a UK charity, the UK donor should give to the UK charity to get Gift Aid, while the US donor gives to the Spanish charity (without tax deductibility). Trading like what I just described even works for those in the US who have already donated 50% of their income and so can no longer get tax deductions in the current year from further US donations.
We should set up a marketplace for trading donations. According to Tom Ash, trading donations is completely legal.
I created an extremely low-tech platform for donation trading in this Google spreadsheet. Feel free to add your info there, keeping in mind that it's shared publicly on the web.
If something like this gets traction, perhaps we can create a website for the service, not just for EAs but for all donors around the world. I haven't been able to find any existing website for this. I'm not sure if that's because large-scale coordination of donation trading is frowned upon or whether it's just because no one has scooped up this opportunity yet. I'm normally skeptical of startup ideas, but this one seems promising to me.
(See also an earlier post by Robert Wiblin about donation trading. Giles recommended a system like I'm proposing here.)
Agreed, doing it through organisations is probably better. Brian, how about putting people who fill in the spreadsheet in touch with the relevant organisations? Right now that'd be GBS for Switzerland and the countries listed at http://effectivealtruismhub.com/actions/donating/europe plus Charity Science for Canada - plus any other organisations that are willing to participate.
Looks like Jonas entered GBS into the Google Doc. Would you like to add Charity Science for Canada to it?
I think the people besides me in the GDoc already have their charity of choice tax-deductible and only added themselves as possible trading partners.
My impression is that trading through organizations only works for a restricted set of charities? It possible in theory to create an org that can donate to any charity in a set of countries? I guess that's what TIDES, Charities Aid Foundation, etc. do, but there's overhead to set that up. If so, there's still value in trading among individuals.