EA - Levels of donation by vipulnaik

Link to original articleWelcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Levels of donation, published by vipulnaik on September 18, 2022 on The Effective Altruism Forum. Via the MagnatesMedia YouTube video on the subject, I came across a Reddit post on levels of wealth. The post separates out different levels of wealth and the qualitative differences between them, with the four levels being $10-30 million, $30-100 million, $100 million-$1 billion, and $1 billion+. As with all such analyses, the threshold selection is somewhat arbitrary, and a lot of nuance is missed, but I still find the exercise interesting. I thought it would be interesting to do a somewhat similar exercise for levels of donation; this seemed like a good prompt in response to which I could express several thoughts that have been floating around in my mind. This post looks at various levels of donation as well as the ways one could level up (if deemed desirable). The levels of donation Level 1: retail donor (< $1,000) Lower limit for level 1: retail donor: $0 Upper limit for level 1: retail donor: $500 to $1,000 Prototypical donor: Low-income person (typically young, such as a student) donating some money; higher-income person donating 1% of income. Split between donees? (no): The one-charity argument is pretty much definitely true here; it's very hard to imagine a case where the marginal value functions of two donees cross within this small an amount of donation. Investigate? (no): It probably doesn't make sense to spend extensive resources investigating by yourself or hiring others to investigate. You should either donate directly to the best endpoint donee, or give money to a reallocator (such as the EA Funds, GiveWell Maximum Impact Fund, or GiveWell All Grants Fund) that is sufficiently value-aligned with you. It may not even make sense to write extensively about your decision. Engage donee? (no): It probably doesn't make sense to ask a bunch of questions of the donee or expect any kind of personalized response; it's best to rely on information you already have as a donor. Optimize for transaction costs? (no): You should probably just use whatever donation method the donee recommends, rather than reaching out to the donee to figure out the best method for your particular case (for instance, if they suggest using PayPal, use PayPal, even if you know it has network fees that you'd rather not spend). As a data point, GiveWell's page on how to donate sets a threshold for $1,000 for when you should switch from donating by credit card to donating by check. Optimize for taxes? (no): Optimizing donation timing and other donation mechanics for tax considerations probably doesn't make sense at this level. Level 2 (four-digit donors) Lower limit for level 2: $500 to $1,000 Upper limit for level 2: $5,000 to $10,000 Prototypical donors: Person or couple with median income (by first-world standards) donating a nontrivial percentage of income annually (such as the 10% set by the Giving What We Can Pledge). Person with higher income donating a smaller percentage of salary or donating at a cadence more frequency than annual. Considerations: Split between donees? (conceivable but unlikely): It's conceivable (though unlikely) that the one-charity argument starts breaking down here, if the expected best use of your funds also has sharply diminishing marginal value (e.g., helping an organization get off the ground, or close a small funding gap). So you might find yourself splitting your donation. Investigate? (yes, a few hours): If you don't have any obvious endpoint donee or reallocator with whom you are closely value-aligned a priori, it may make sense to spend a few hours investigating the options. It may also make sense to document your thinking. Engage donee? (maybe, hope for responsiveness but not proactive effort from donee): It may make sense to ask questions of potential done...