The amount of money donated to charitable causes in the US alone was over $484 billion in 2021, with the largest proportion of that amount donated by individuals. There is a reason to believe that differences in the effectiveness of various charitable interventions are vast. However, donors rarely decide where to donate based on how effective their donations will be, and research suggests most donors significantly underestimate the differences in how effective different charities are.
Most research done in this area is focused on increasing the amount donated, however it seems plausible that more research on increasing the effectiveness of donations would create a greater positive impact. Further research to identify interventions that create desirable behavioural change would likely be more valuable than descriptive research (i.e. how donors behave).
Contributors: This profile was last updated 31/12/2022. Thanks to Samantha Kassirer, Philipp Schoenegger, David Reinstein and Izzy Gainsburg for helpful feedback. All errors remain our own. Learn more about how we create our profiles.
