“Announcing Equal Hands — an experiment in democratizing effective giving.” by abrahamrowe

TLDR: Sign up here to join a six-month experiment to democratize effective giving. The experiment establishes a community who agree to allocate charitable gifts proportionally to member votes. You’ll help make EA donations more representative of the community's cause prioritization. Sign up and pledge by October 15th to participate in our first round.

Equal Hands is a 6-month trial in democratizing charitable giving among EA cause areas.

Here's how it works:

1. You pledge to give a certain amount each month.
2. Each month that you pledge, vote on the optimal distribution of the donated money across causes (1 vote per person, no matter how much you give).
3. The total amount of money pledged is split out proportionally to the total of the votes, so that no matter how much you gave, your voice equally influences the final allocation.
4. To actually make the gifts, you will be assigned a particular [...]

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Outline:

(02:42) Effective giving overly weighs the views of a few decision makers.

(06:13) How will Equal Hands work exactly? An example funding round

(08:58) The Details

(09:01) The process

(10:16) Transparency

(10:36) Improvements

(10:51) FAQ

(10:54) Why would individual people participate?

(11:31) What causes can I vote on?

(13:15) Why not just establish some kind of fund people can donate to and then vote on the allocation of its grants?

(13:42) Why cause areas and not individual charities?

(15:33) Why these specific charities to represent these cause areas and not \[my preferred charity\]?

(16:00) Why do I have to donate a minimum amount to participate?

(16:22) Can I give via another entity to one of the listed charities?

(16:52) Why not quadratic funding / some other hip mechanism?

(17:11) Will I have to donate to causes I don’t care about?

(17:44) What happens if this goes well?

(17:54) How is this governed/funded/run?

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First published:
September 28th, 2024

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/eDJfRrMveExXmmEpX/announcing-equal-hands-an-experiment-in-democratizing

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.