I would like to tell you about the initiative
I am working with, it's called Kinder.
So for all Germans speaking people, we are
Kind Kinder.
We are Kinder the English way to pronounce
it.
Which means that we try to be more kind, which
is in line with the EA thought of course.
And the talk will be about how to nudge Joe
Public towards effective giving.
Joe Public, the Dutch translation would be
Jean Modale.
So the average donor.
Who of you have heard of Kinder before?
So roughly 1/3, so for that 1/3 maybe you
have been introduced by Kinder during EA Global
last November in London, we were part of one
of the sessions there.
And we've also introduced ourselves to the
EA Netherlands community last January where
we had a nice discussion about how to market
ourselves.
But basically now I'm going to tackle the
following problem.
I have to aim to the left which is here hidden.
I think it works now.
So the problem that we want to tackle is that
the average donor, Joe Public, is not donating
effectively, as we all know.
So what should we do about it?
And before we even consider what we should
do about it, I think that EA practice prescribes
that we follow the ITN framework to analyze
whether this is a problem even worthwhile
investigating.
And I have had some interesting discussions
about this already yesterday.
Because we as EA's we don't tackle every problem
that we encounter, we first see whether it's
worthwhile.
So I tried to adapt our problem to the ITN
framework, and this is what comes out.
Is it important?
Let's see.
You might seem it's not important because
the amount of money spent by the average donor
is maybe only a few tens of Euros per year,
or a few hundreds of Euros.
But at the same time there are many Joes out
there, so if they all start to donate more
effectively their quantity might increase
importance.
And if you look at some number, for example,
the percentage of Dutch donations made by
average households with Joe Public in there,
they are accounting for 46% of total donations.
And in the United States, which has a more
philanthropic culture from high level up to
household level, it's even 80%.
So these numbers indicate that if all Joes
out there will donate more effectively it
is actually an important issue to tackle.
The next question is, is it neglected?
Let's see whether it pops up.
Is the situation neglected?
I think it is because if you look within the
EA community about different target groups,
of course we have people focusing on high
net worth individuals, like Effective Giving.
There is this organization focusing on poker
players, Raising for Effective Giving.
Then we have Founders Pledge who focuses on
entrepreneurs.
And you might say, well GiveWell is the one
focusing on Joe Public, but that's not entirely
true.
Because I think that GiveWell is accessible
for people like you and me who already know
a lot about the topic.
Who understand the ins and outs of the values
behind effective altruism.
But maybe they account for around 3% off the
population and the other 97% who is not entrepreneurial,
not very rich, and also not EA aligned, is
also donating but is not donating effectively.
So I think that the problem from the EA perspective
is somehow neglected, so that's where Kinder
wants to jump in and tackle this issue.
But the crucial question is, is it possible
to nudge Joe to want more effective donations?
Is the problem tractable?
So we don't know yet because Kinder is a startup,
we are just starting our journey to watch
exploring potential solutions.
But at least we know that there is potential.
Because Duke University, they presented a
study last year during EA London, about the
potential for alignedness with the EA values
among the general public.
And it seems that over a half of the total
population could fully align with the principles,
but in fact they don't act according to them.
But it seems that there is a large potential
they are willing to donate effectively, they
only do not because they have certain biases.
Of course there is the warm glow, we all know
the warm glow, we have all experienced the
warm glow.
We know that others who donate refer to the
warm glow.
But actually it might stand in the way for
effectiveness because any type of donation
might give a warm glow, so we are already
satisfied.
So why chasing effectiveness once we already
feel good?
There is the signaling theory, if a society
agrees that donating in itself is a nice act
and the effectiveness of donating is not so
important, it means that others tend to do
what the general opinion in society is.
So you don't chase effective donations if
others do not find it important.
Another one that follows from it is undercover
altruism.
And maybe some of you who already donate significant
amounts of money might experience that.
That at a general birthday party you might
not brag about it too much.
Because again, it's not the standard in our
society to donate a lot of money or to donate
it very effectively.
So the ones who do that, they remain a bit
silent about it.
Maybe not this weekend, but in general life
you might underestimate your appeal to it
instead of overestimate.
So the status quo remains and the norm of
not donating effectively is kept in place.
Then there's the scope insensitivity.
I have heard it three times already yesterday,
so I won't explain it again.
But basically it's about, we suck at numbers.
There's the identifiable victim effect, and
even if we know what it is we still have some
feelings when we see these poor children.
And that accounts for all of us humans.
So it means that we are distracted by the
feelings that we have once we see people.
And it blurs our reasoning and our ability
to crack numbers and make effective choices.
The bystander effect, well there's so many
people around there, probably somebody else
is picking it up.
So I prefer doing nothing.
It's an easy one, we all use it once in a
while.
And then there is the myth of the charitable
sector.
Which is very much in the way of effective
donating.
Like studies revealed that most people think
that in general different charities are more
or less as effective as others.
While we all know that it's definitely not
the case, it's not even a matter of one being
two or three times as effective, it's about
hundreds or even thousands of times of effectiveness.
But Joe out there, he doesn't have a clue.
And another thing that Joe believes is that
there is a relation between overhead costs
and effectiveness.
The lowered overhead costs, the more effective
probably he thinks the charity is.
And that's also really a myth that stands
in the way of effective donations.
And then even if you are beyond those biases,
you are aware of them and you think, okay
now I need to find evidence to see which charities
are most effective.
Then you have the so called evaluability bias.
I'm happy that I pronounce it correctly now,
because I practiced this a lot.
Which basically means that types of interventions
that are likely to be measured well in terms
of their impact, are favored over interventions
that might be more effective but we just don't
have a clue whether they are effective because
we cannot measure them.
And I think that's a bias that is bothering
us because most of the talks of yesterday
also related to that.
It's a very permanent point of discussion
when you do cause area selection.
You go for the sure things, or for the risky
things.
And people tend to go for the sure things
because then at least you know you have some
impact.
But maybe you miss out on potentially much
larger impact.
So even if you dive further past the initial
biases, you might still end up doing the wrong
thing instead of being the most effective.
So it's not only Joe who suffers from these
biases, we all suffer from these biases in
a larger or lesser extent.
So then this is basically an overview of the
problems that are in the way of effective
donating.
So what about the solution?
I think our first clue is quite simple.
Just spread the message.
Basically that has been one of the strategies
of the Centre for Effective Altruism in their
say, first two to three years.
They went out to mass media to spread the
message, but then they found out that the
mass media were only picking some highlights
without telling the full story.
So the earning to give story was very appealing,
but it missed the nuances.
And there were some other examples where the
inclusive approach of EA got diluted.
So in the end, the Centre for Effective Altruism
and amongst it a large part of the EA community
got more and more hesitant to just spread
out the message and tell Joe about all his
biases and how he should change those biases.
In the end, should we not reach out to Joe
and tell him what's wrong with him, so he
knows about it and can be more effective?
Well then we are back at the starting point
at doing nothing with Joe.
But still the cause is neglected, and still
it's important to do something about it because
we talk about billions and billions of dollars
donated every year to not effective organizations.
So still Kinder is stimulated to do something
about it, but we definitely found out that
we have to find a different approach than
just presenting this presentation to Joe Public
because probably it won't work.
And it's quite complicated, so I understand
that it wouldn't work too much.
So, what should we do?
Well, what our basic principle is to care
about Joe instead of confront Joe.
And then you would say, why am I putting this
smoking lady on the screen?
The parallel that we have here is that there
has been a lot of research in how to stimulate
people to quit smoking, and a recent literature
review study revealed that in general supporting
mechanisms for quitting to smoke are much
more effective than ones confronting people
with their bad behavior.
Considering non-effective donations as bad
behavior, as compared to the great behavior
of effective donations, we tend to confront
Joe with his shortcomings and tell him about
all his biases.
Well this study about smoking gave us some
idea about, well instead we could care about
the needs of Joe, and try to support those
needs instead of having the discussion of
why he's not effective.
We care for the needs of Joe Public, and before
we can do that we have to know what needs
does Joe have?
So we dived into the barriers of Joe which
stand in between Joe and the donation.
And actually the barriers as perceived by
Joe are not the ones that I just listed as
all those biases and other issues that we
think as academically, critically analyzing
people, as stand in the way.
But they have a very different perception
about their willingness and ability to donate.
And we did some research about it and we came
up with a list of barriers that stand in the
way of donating.
So I quickly go through them.
One is of course we all know it, the annoying
fundraising methods.
You'll just walk on the street and some fundraiser
bumps into you, probably with some blackmailing
issue like you are going to spend a lot of
money on shopping today, but what about these
poor children, blah blah blah?
Actually these fundraisers they know about
the biases, but they misuse the biases to
fundraise for their causes.
And if all these causes would be highly effective
you might even think, well okay, it's a strategy
to get people to donate effectively.
But as we know, most of the organizations
out there are not so effective at all.
So they have optimized their fundraising strategy,
but not optimized their implementation strategy
because money is what makes their organization
go around.
So you end up with these kind of fundraising
methods, and the average donor is really frustrated
by it, and it might diminish the appetite
to donate.
Another one that is related to these annoying
fundraising methods is the fact that fundraising
is very costly.
And there is a famous example of if you donate
as a result of a street acquisition, then
the first two years your donation is only
paying off the costs to recruit you.
Most people know that nowadays, so that's
very frustrating.
If you say yes to start donating, you're just
paying your own recruitment.
So again, this is what is frustrating Joe.
Another thing is that you finally took the
step to donate and then one month later you
receive this mail saying, oh please can you
donate more because there are so many more
poor children out there?
So instead of positive reinforcement about
your donation, they are begging for more.
And I understand those organizations, like
was told in the introduction, I've been working
in the charitable sector myself, and my colleagues
just calculated what works best.
So these begging letters, they work best.
But at the same time they frustrate people.
But frustrated people might still donate,
so the charitable organizations themselves
they don't have an incentive to change the
behavior.
But in the long run, Joe really gets fed up
with these kind of fundraising strategies,
so he might quit.
Another reason there is lack of transparency.
Before you start to donate, there is a lot
of time and personal attention to explain
to you what will be done with your donation.
Whether it's on the street or on the phone,
or on the website of the organization.
But the amount of information provided to
Joe after he has donated is much more limited.
And Joe just wants to know whether that 10
Euros or 20 Euros he provided actually went
to the theme that was promised to him.
But it's very hard to trace that back with
most charitable organizations.
So even people who have the willingness to
donate might become hesitant to donate more
because they don't know where their money
ends up.
And of course unfortunately there is the scandals
in the sector.
Of course the Oxfam one of last March, I think
it was, is still fresh in our minds.
And I think well, people who tend to care
about the sector and be considerate about
the effect of media, they know that the scandals
are only a tiny fraction of what is done,
so it's not representative.
But Joe Public doesn't work that sophisticated,
he just sees one scandal after another and
he feels like, oh this sector is full of crap.
I stop donating, so another barrier.
Now we know the strategy of Kinder, which
is to take away the barriers of Joe.
We know his barriers, so how does Kinder do
that?
And that's where the solution comes in.
Which is that we provide a one-stop shop for
donors.
So we use modern technology, as is done in
many different sectors to improve the sector,
to facilitate Joe.
So we provide an overview of organizations,
and we don't only focus on their effectiveness,
I come to that later.
But we just provide a safe and objective platform
for Joe to donate to charities.
So no strings attached because the receiving
organizations will not receive their contact
information.
It's a cheap way because all the expensive
fundraising methods will not be needed anymore
because everything is packed in our one-stop
shop.
And we add information about the world of
doing good in a media platform.
So on the go, we inform Joe about what is
done with his donation, how does this sector
work, what are the different challenges and
things in the sector.
So we also educate him.
And our main product will be a donation app
where you can browse through different charitable
organizations and directly donate to them.
That one is still under development.
But it will look a bit like this.
So you can get inspired to find organizations.
You can see what others donate to, be it experts
of a specific cause area, be it your friends.
You can look back to your own donation history,
what kind of charities did I pick in the past?
What were the effects of that?
So it's really like a full donation portfolio
which some people who frequently donate have
back at home.
They have some sort of a folder where they
put all the information.
Well this is like putting it in one app, which
makes it very convenient to browse through
and also to select your next steps and to
become more aware of your own donation behavior.
So far we are only taking away the barriers
of Joe, but we are not yet promoting effectiveness,
right?
Because we should not forget that all this
facilitating Joe and taking away his barriers
is just a step towards our end goal, making
Joe donate more effectively.
So that is where some additional strategies
of Kinder come in.
One of them of course we have to know which
charities are more effective than others.
And we cannot just copy/paste the list of
GiveWell, because I think at the moment they
have only seven organizations they recommend.
And if we present only those seven to Joe,
they will not feel connected with the product,
so they will back off.
So we decided to lower the bar and have a
larger percentage of all organizations which
can be donated to.
So we assessed charities on different parameters
of effectiveness, including the effectiveness
of the intervention and a cause area analysis.
But we do that on the backend, we don't show
them upfront to Joe because as we know now
Joe doesn't care about it.
But we ourselves, we know which ones are out,
like the lower half of our organizations is
even out.
And our upper half of our organizations is
in the product, but we know that there are
ones, a hundred, or even a thousand times
more effective than others and we will use
that information as follows.
For example on our media platform Kinder World,
we deliberately write about the organizations
that are more effective, like our journalistic
team makes choices about which organizations
to highlight.
So we can check our own list of the effectiveness
scores, pick out the ones that are most effective
and write about them so that Joe gets confronted
with the ones who are more effective without
actively having to take all these steps of
consideration, the effectiveness himself.
Another thing is the appearance in the donation
app, it has sort of a swipe feature like Tinder.
So you can swipe through organizations.
And our algorithms can decide which ones appear
most.
So the mediocre ones they might not even appear
in the swipe function.
If you search for them deliberately you might
find them and you might even donate to them,
but if you let us decide which ones to pop
up, we of course push the more effective ones.
And another idea is to make collections of
the more effective ones.
For example, we will launch GiveWell collection
so if you browse through the different collections
of organizations that we have and you happen
to know about GiveWell, or you're interested
in effectiveness, you can find the ones that
are most effective.
So the Joe that is already interested has
the opportunity to reach out for the most
effective ones.
There is also a referencing and cross-selling
like great big digital organizations like
Amazon use like others also looked at.
And we are free to indicate which organizations
we put there, we don't put the mediocre ones
as references, so again it's a nudge towards
effective donating in order to stimulate Joe
in the right direction.
So basically that is our story in a nutshell,
we don't confront Joe with all his biases
because probably he won't understand and he
might not even care.
We facilitate Joe in his needs, which are
much more about the things that are frustrating
to him.
And then from there we start a relationship
or a customer journey, as it's called, towards
effectiveness using nudges.
So that's the approach of Kinder.
Of course if you have considerations or reflections
on our approach, which some of you definitely
will have, get in touch with me.
So for now, I think that's the story.
Yeah?
Round of applause?
