Giving Multiplier

{{Infobox organization

| name = Giving Multiplier

| founded = {{start date|2020|11}}

| logo = File:Giving Multiplier logo.jpg

| founders = Lucius Caviola, PhD & Joshua Greene, PhD

| founding_location = Harvard University

| website = [https://givingmultiplier.org givingmultiplier.org]

}}

Giving Multiplier is a donation platform promoting effective giving. It was founded at Harvard University in 2020 by psychologists Joshua Greene and Lucius Caviola.

History

Giving Multiplier was created as a research project in 2020 by Joshua Greene, a psychology professor at Harvard and Lucius Caviola, a postdoctoral researcher at Harvard at the time. The goal was to introduce people to effective charities in a way that overcomes some of the psychological barriers to effective altruism.{{Cite web |last1=Caviola |first1=Lucius |last2=Greene |first2=Joshua |date=2020-12-17 |title=Op-Ed: How to be an effective altruist when giving to charities |url=https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2020-12-17/effective-altruism-charity-psychology-morality-donation |access-date=2024-10-08 |website=Los Angeles Times |language=en-US}}{{Cite news |date=2020-12-11 |title=Opinion: Giving with the heart – and the head |url=https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-giving-with-the-heart-and-the-head/ |access-date=2024-10-08 |work=The Globe and Mail |language=en-CA}} As of April 2025, Giving Multiplier has facilitated over 10,000 donations totaling over $4 million.{{Cite web |title=Multiply the impact of your charitable giving {{!}} Giving Multiplier |url=https://givingmultiplier.org |access-date=2024-10-17 |website=givingmultiplier.org}}

Research

Giving Multiplier uses research from charity evaluators{{Cite web |last=Samuel |first=Sigal |date=2020-12-17 |title=How to give a meaningful holiday gift this year |url=https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/22177289/best-meaningful-holiday-gift-charity-donations |access-date=2024-10-08 |website=Vox |language=en-US}} such as GiveWell, Animal Charity Evaluators, Founders Pledge, and Open Philanthropy to select a list of ten "super-effective" charities addressing three cause areas: extreme poverty, animal welfare, and global catastrophic risks.

Giving Multiplier lets donors select their favorite charity and one of their super-effective charities (i.e., "with the heart and the head") to implement a donation bundling technique.{{Cite book |title=Effective altruism and the human mind: the clash between impact and intuition |date=2024 |publisher=Oxford University Press |isbn=978-0-19-775739-0 |editor-last=Schubert |editor-first=Stefan |location=New York, NY |editor-last2=Caviola |editor-first2=Lucius}} This innovation combines donors' seemingly conflicting preferences, namely, that they have their own favorite charities,{{Cite journal |last1=Berman |first1=Jonathan Z. |last2=Barasch |first2=Alixandra |last3=Levine |first3=Emma E. |last4=Small |first4=Deborah A. |date=2018 |title=Impediments to Effective Altruism: The Role of Subjective Preferences in Charitable Giving |url=https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0956797617747648 |journal=Psychological Science |language=en |volume=29 |issue=5 |pages=834–844 |doi=10.1177/0956797617747648 |pmid=29659341 |issn=0956-7976}} and they simultaneously care about effectiveness.{{Cite journal |last1=Caviola |first1=Lucius |last2=Faulmüller |first2=Nadira |last3=Everett |first3=Jim. A. C. |last4=Savulescu |first4=Julian |last5=Kahane |first5=Guy |date=2014 |title=The evaluability bias in charitable giving: Saving administration costs or saving lives? |url=https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/S1930297500006185/type/journal_article |journal=Judgment and Decision Making |language=en |volume=9 |issue=4 |pages=303–315 |doi=10.1017/S1930297500006185 |pmid=25279024 |issn=1930-2975|doi-access=free }} Moreover, Giving Multiplier uses donation matching to further incentivize donors to donate more effectively.{{Cite journal |last1=Gneezy |first1=Uri |last2=Keenan |first2=Elizabeth A. |last3=Gneezy |first3=Ayelet |date=2014-10-31 |title=Avoiding overhead aversion in charity |url=https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.1253932 |journal=Science |language=en |volume=346 |issue=6209 |pages=632–635 |doi=10.1126/science.1253932 |pmid=25359974 |bibcode=2014Sci...346..632G |issn=0036-8075|url-access=subscription }} The original design by Caviola and Greene integrated donation bundling with a new technique called micro-matching. Micro-matching works by adding matching funds on top of each donation, with a greater matching rate for a greater proportion allocated to the super-effective charity. Individual donors support the matching system to encourage others to donate, creating a "supply and demand" cycle of charitable giving.{{Cite web |title=Multiply the impact of your charitable giving {{!}} Giving Multiplier |url=https://givingmultiplier.org/transparency |access-date=2024-10-08 |website=givingmultiplier.org}}

The proof of concept for Giving Multiplier was published as part of Greene and Caviola's academic research on splitting donations between favorite charities and effective charities. Their research found that including an option to split donations between a favorite charity and effective charity increased effective giving by 76%. The authors suggested that favorite-effective donation splits satisfies donors' dual motivations of supporting causes meaningful to them and effective organizations that have a big impact.{{Cite journal |last1=Caviola |first1=Lucius |last2=Greene |first2=Joshua D. |date=2023-01-20 |title=Boosting the impact of charitable giving with donation bundling and micromatching |journal=Science Advances |language=en |volume=9 |issue=3 |pages=eade7987 |doi=10.1126/sciadv.ade7987 |issn=2375-2548 |pmc=9848424 |pmid=36652510|bibcode=2023SciA....9E7987C }}