A few vegetarian organizations have been running ad campaigns on Facebook linking to The Hidden Face of Food. They've been seeing impressive results with regard to the number of people who click through and like the page per dollar. I hope to write more about this particular effort in a later post, but here I wanted to talk about the general idea of using online advertising (Facebook, Google, Bing, etc.) to generate support for campaigns and causes.

In a discussion on the Old Felicifia, Gaverick suggested that fundraising/advertising were massively underfunded by activist organizations. I would hypothesize at least two reasons: (1) Organizations don't want to be seen as wasting precious donor money on advertising, and doing so reduces the fraction of money they spend on program costs. (2) Activists have a general aversion to advertising because it feels like something that is mostly done with commercial intent.

There's another good reason, which is that (3) if your ads will principally pull money or followers away from other groups doing roughly the same thing as you are, then the advertising is zero-sum.

Both (1) and (3) are important caveats to keep in mind. However, those of us on this forum generally think that we do know of some causes which are (much) more cost-effective than others, so even if we pull away supporters from other things, there's still a big net gain.

It is remarkably easy to create an ad campaign, and you don't even need the sponsorship of an organization. Anyone can create a simple ad linking to a web page with less than an hour of setup. You might want to spend a few extra hours learning about the theory of web advertising, reading policies and best practices, etc., but the core steps of creating the ad are just a few pages long.

For example, take a look at Facebook's ads page and click "Create An Ad". I created a fake ad for my essay on wild-animal suffering just to see the process. You can target toward specific countries, ages, genders, Facebook interest categories, languages, etc. I think it's best to aim at young people (say, 13-25 years old) because (a) young minds are most open to new things and (b) they have the longest time ahead of them to donate, not eat meat, choose optimal careers, and participate in our projects.

The costs are pretty decent. For United States, the suggested bid that Facebook gave me was $0.54 per click. $0.44 for UK, $0.22 for India, $0.19 for China, $0.12 for Mexico, $0.12 for Sri Lanka, etc.

I wonder if 80,000 Hours, Global Happiness Organization, Giving What We Can, etc. should try a few online ads, at least as a pilot effort to see how they work. (I may eventually try some for my website, though I'd prefer to wait until later so that I'll be able to handle the increased traffic load and perhaps improve the aesthetics of the pages.)

If you want to use your ads for scientific purposes, you could create several different flavors of descriptions + pictures and see which ones produce highest conversion rates. In fact, you could test the appeal of almost any slogan or meme in this way -- your ads could be your own, personal public-opinion-polling system -- although it could get expensive if only used for this purpose.

Sounds promising. One way to get it even cheaper might be through google grants: http://www.google.com/grants/ (although I'm not sure if they are as customizable as the facebook-ads).

An even cheaper way of doing the research (although less natural) is mTurk:
http://pyxlin.wordpress.com/2007/06/06/ ... lid-leads/

thx for the Facebook link. Note that the "recommended bid" of $0.54 is much higher than the per-click rate of untargeted advertising (from a .01 to .15 is more typical there), but a targeted audience is sometimes worth the money. I'm not sure of the need for a targeted audience for fundraising unless the ad appeals only to people in specific demographic groups and the cost warrants the difference. For example, if I create an ad that appeals to 30% of the online population and an untargeted ad costs $0.05 per click and the targeted costs $0.54, the untargeted is better. If the costs are per page view, then you have to do some math: (1/.3 * .05) < (1 * .54) meaning that the "cost per view from the target demographic" is less for the $0.05 per view relative to $0.54 per view.

I explored advertising for a related purpose (getting people from known groups to participate in online studies), and some of the big special-interest web sites (environmentalism) won't talk to you unless you plan to spend many thousands of dollars. Same with the big search engines. I also found an amazing degree of neglect from nonprofit organizations--they don't want people pestering their members. Reddit offers easy-to-use advertising bidding similar to Facebook, and many people use Mechanical Turk. In the case of Mechanical Turk, people who register are asked to click on an advertisement and answer a stupid question about it and get paid $0.01 as if there is a scientific study being conducted, but the intent is to get people to read the advertisement. I'm not sure how influential that type of advertising is to a poor person who clicks thousands of advertisements per week to make a few $$.

Great info, Jesper and rehoot!

rehoot, where did you learn about the difference in prices for targeted vs. untargeted? Is there a good document that explains the how-to of doing web ads most efficiently?

I wanted to include some follow-up comments based on an email conversation with Nick Cooney. All of his observations are anecdotal, based on personal experience managing $50K in Facebook veg ads, so it's possible that the "official" recommendations are somewhat different.

Just wanted to point out that the CPC they [Facebook] recommend is sometimes what you need to bid, but sometimes you can bid much lower and still get your ad shown. (For example, when we started running US ads they recommend about .35 cents per click as a minimum, we did about .15, and had no problem getting the ad shown). [...]

We have indeed tried less than .15 [for US ads]. VERY occasionally we've gotten ads sub-10 cents, but that's very rare. Right now we have one ad doing well at .13. But mostly they're in the upper teens to .21. If we were spending less money per month, we could lower the CPC a bit. Of course, CPC is only one factor - the ultimate question is $ per new vegetarians(etc) etc., so for example our .13 CPC is not the best ad we have right now because some of our .18 to .20 CPC ads have a higher conversion-to-vegetarian(etc) rate. [...]

[It's not necessarily true that a] lower price comes from untargetted ads. Perhaps not targeting your ad can lead to lower prices. But you can also get lower prices by targeting certain demographics. ALL of our ads are targeted to specific demographics (age, sometimes gender) AND specific interests. Our audience for each add is between .5 and 4 million people. If you go lower then .5 million audience, CPC often starts to go up significantly. And yes, you are right - depending on the suggested bid FB gives you, a lot of times you can bid lower and still get signficant click throughs. It seems that FB [gives new advertisers] higher-than-necessary CPC estimates. The CPC estimates they give me now are pretty accurate. The CPC estimates they gave me when we started advertising where twice as high as necessary.

Re: Google Grants, yup, they seem great, and we actually applied for them a couple months back. I've been in touch with Google but apparently it's a painfully slow process to get approved, so we're still waiting on approval. But any group that can get approval should definitely use them - [...] in theory (if your ad gets shown/clicked enough) [they] are up to $10,000 in advertising per month I believe.

I wonder if 80,000 Hours, Global Happiness Organization, Giving What We Can, etc. should try a few online ads, at least as a pilot effort to see how they work.

I've considered doing this for Giving What We Can - we've got a free ad going on http://philosophybites.com/ which'll be an interesting experiment, and if the results are promising we'll consider paying...

In the case of Mechanical Turk, people who register are asked to click on an advertisement and answer a stupid question about it and get paid $0.01 as if there is a scientific study being conducted, but the intent is to get people to read the advertisement. I'm not sure how influential that type of advertising is to a poor person who clicks thousands of advertisements per week to make a few $$.

Maybe I'm over-optimistic, but I have enough confidence in the power of GWWC's information about cost-effectiveness that I think $0.01 spent conveying it even like this would generate donations > $0.01! Is this really about how much we'd pay, and could we restrict participants to those in 'rich' countries?

On Facebook, I've done some non-GWWC advertising and found some segments I wanted to target weren't much more expensive than being untargeted.

Thanks, tog! Let us know how the Philosophy Bites and other ads go.

How did you learn that Philosophy Bites would give you free advertising?

How did you learn that Philosophy Bites would give you free advertising?

Fortuitous networking I met Nigel Warburton at a Christmas party, and bought up GWWC (something I'm normally too hesitant about doing) - it turned out he knew of it and was sympathetic.

Awesome! Philosophy Bites is one podcast series where I've listened to almost every show.

I was talking to a guy today who was out fundraising, looking for people to get a direct debit with barnardos (a popular irish childrens charity). He was with 2 others, all wearing bright green t-shirts with the organizations logo on them.

I talked to him about how much money they manage to bring in, he said that that on average each person they get to sign up to a direct debit stays with the charity for 5 years with a total donation of over €1,000 (he spoke quite fast but I think he may have said over €1,700).
He is employed by this company http://www.totalfundraising.ie/ .
He said that each person has to get at least 3 direct debits per day (I don't know what he means by "has", presumably otherwise you dont keep your job?).
He said that last year he had raised over €1,000,000 for charity, I presume he means that when each of those people stays with their respective charities for 5 years and donates the average amount that that will equal over 1 million, which seems quite possible.
He said total fundraising take a cut and he gets paid, I wonder how much this is?

This all seems rediculously good, do 80k, GHO, etc do fundraising?

anyone how do online ads compare per donation?

EDIT: just thinking about this if your goal is to be a professional philanthropist to pay for ads/fundraisers/leafletters/etc it could actually be better to be a fundraiser.... anyone any thoughts on this?

EDIT EDIT: oops just realised it doesnt matter what you want the charity to do with the money! I wonder if pro. phils should be considering this? maybe there is an argument that you could be a pro. phil. and a fundraiser on your days off? or inspire people in your high-earning-workplace to donate?

Ruairi wrote:He said that last year he had raised over €1,000,000 for charity, I presume he means that when each of those people stays with their respective charities for 5 years and donates the average amount that that will equal over 1 million, which seems quite possible.

Wow! I've heard from another friend that good fundraisers can bring in millions of dollars per year, and I guess it's true. I decided not to go that route because (a) I don't think I would be a good fundraiser, and I can try to argue that I would be better off paying someone else to do it, but also because (b) the job really does not sound fun, so I'm selfishly avoiding it.

Ruairi wrote:EDIT: just thinking about this if your goal is to be a professional philanthropist to pay for ads/fundraisers/leafletters/etc it could actually be better to be a fundraiser.... anyone any thoughts on this?

Yeah, maybe, depending on how cheap fundraisers are to buy. I've often wondered why charities don't do more fundraising (including direct mail and ads), because on the Old Felicifia, Gaverick pointed to numbers indicating ridiculously high returns from fundraising campaigns. My best guess is that charities don't want to incur a long-term negative public image as an organization that's just out to make money, but I don't really know. You can also search the word "fundraising" in this thread for more discussion of the topic.

We should definitely ask 80K Hours to research this -- both as a career directly and as something that donors can seek to fund.

This is great stuff, Ruairi. I would love to hear more about fundraising if you learn further info from friends or online.

P.S., If you Google "masters fundraising" you'll see tons of programs devoted to this topic, like this. Apparently there's a huge field of study devoted to it.

Alan Dawrst wrote: I decided not to go that route because (a) I don't think I would be a good fundraiser, and I can try to argue that I would be better off paying someone else to do it, but also because (b) the job really does not sound fun, so I'm selfishly avoiding it.

oh, I think I would be a great fundraiser! much better than how I'd be in law or finance! I love people and talking with people, especially about things I'm passioante about:D! I think it sounds really fun!:D! I'd say after a while it would get less fun, but still I think much better than I banking! and if it would result in more total donations that would be so motivating:D!
I work on a fun fair during the summer and I really love meeting loads of people:)!

How do you argue that you're better off paying someone else to do it? If we say a fundraiser ( after we take away his pay and deducting for people not donating to other similar charities) brings in donations of, say, 200,000/year they can then pay for several more fundraisers, more than I imagine most professional philanthropists will be able to.

I can't believe I hadn't thought of this as a possible really good idea before, I'm worried there are other very obvious excellent careers I'm missing.

I've heard that Nintendo employ people from modelling angencies to promote their products in public, I think basically showing people how the games work, lol

Alan Dawrst wrote: We should definitely ask 80K Hours to research this -- both as a career directly and as something that donors can seek to fund.

totally, we could post on the google group?

maybe 80k arn't keen on it because some of them seem to be into singularity type stuff, I imagine it's much harder to fundraise on these issues so maybe pro. phil. could be better here? luckily I think painless insecticides and intervention in nature are definitely conventional enough (esp. painless insecticides) to talk about while fundraising. esp. tying it all in with veg/veganism.

The only thing I see against it is that maybe ads are even better, do you know how the hidden face of food ones have been going in terms of donations, etc?

Alan Dawrst wrote:We should definitely ask 80K Hours to research this -- both as a career directly and as something that donors can seek to fund.

Did you sign up for the 80K Google group, Alan? There's just been some discussion on what sort of research to prioritise...

Arepo wrote:Did you sign up for the 80K Google group, Alan? There's just been some discussion on what sort of research to prioritise...

Was just writing a reply to that thread when I saw your note here.

Ruairi wrote:oh, I think I would be a great fundraiser! much better than how I'd be in law or finance! I love people and talking with people, especially about things I'm passioante about:D! I think it sounds really fun!:D!

Awesome! Then this is definitely something to research more. Of course, it may be that the richest donors are more intimidating to talk to than visitors to the fun fair, but "people skills" help in either case. And there's probably lots of room for creativity and enjoyment as part of the job, if you take that angle on it. (Putting the "fun" back in "fundraising.")

Ruairi wrote:How do you argue that you're better off paying someone else to do it? If we say a fundraiser ( after we take away his pay and deducting for people not donating to other similar charities) brings in donations of, say, 200,000/year they can then pay for several more fundraisers, more than I imagine most professional philanthropists will be able to.

Very interesting. I was thinking the professional philanthropist would work at a normal job and then pay the $100K or whatever it takes to buy a fundraiser, but you're right: If the charity would make more from hiring the fundraiser than the fundraiser costs, then it should hire the fundraiser on its own. This gets back to the basic question of why charities don't do more fundraising. If we lived in a simple Econ 101 world, then charities would buy fundraising until the cost of an additional fundraiser was higher than the expected returns from hiring her. I assume this is nowhere near the case in practice.

Given that charities hire only so many fundraisers, the "good done" by becoming a fundraiser might be primarily the amount by which you're better than the next guy. But if fundraisers each bring in $1 million per year, then even if you're only 10% better than the next guy would have been, that's still ~$100K per year directly to the charity. Also, maybe the number of fundraisers isn't fixed: If you come along and persuade a charity to let you fundraise for them with no up-front cost, maybe they'd let you do it. (I have no idea; this is a new field for me.)

Ruairi wrote:The only thing I see against it is that maybe ads are even better, do you know how the hidden face of food ones have been going in terms of donations, etc?

Well, ads aren't a career. (Unless you work as a fundraiser who does fundraising through ads.) I'm not sure of the return on fundraising ads, because the Hidden Face of Food ads are for advertising the video on the landing page, rather than for soliciting donations. It may be the case that the video creates more vegetarians, some of whom become interested in animal activism and go on to donate to animal organizations like The Humane League, but this is a very delayed and diffused process.

yes exactly!

Alan Dawrst wrote:

Ruairi wrote:The only thing I see against it is that maybe ads are even better, do you know how the hidden face of food ones have been going in terms of donations, etc?

Well, ads aren't a career.

I think maybe I'm making some stupidly obvious mistake here but if we consider 2 situations;

1: charity x uses $100 on online ads, as a result they take in $1,000 in donations

2: charity x pays $100 for a fundraiser, as a result they take in $500 in donations

(I'm just making up these figures)

It would seem like the charity should spend all the money they're going to use for fundraising on ads, so then there's no need for me to be a fundraiser so maybe i should be a pro. phil. or something.

but if i go out and fundraise, take my salary from that money, the rest goes to the charity, and if this does turn out to be more than as a pro phil then is this not the better option?

I get the feeling this has something to do with returns and whether you have to put the money in in the first place or not???

Seems circular, but I think it isn't.

1. The best option is for the charity to put its money entirely into ads. You're free to work as a pro phil and donate your extra income.
2. If the charity won't do ads, but it will hire a person to fundraise, then it's better if you work for them.
3. If the charity won't accept either type of fundraising, then you should again be a pro phil because, by assumption, you can't be a fundraiser for them.

thanks:) but the best kind of pro. phil. is a fundrasiser (possibly),

supposing I fundraise $1,000 in one day, my wage is $100, the gain to the charity is $900.

as a pro. phil. my donations are less,

but if the charity has to pay my wage before I go and fundraise, then they should put it into ads instead, but if I raise my wage and donations this works out better???

maybe its more usefull of thinking of the situation as my entire salary belonging to the charity and then them having to pay me from that?

Ruairi wrote:but if the charity has to pay my wage before I go and fundraise, then they should put it into ads instead, but if I raise my wage and donations this works out better???

In reality, I don't think there are charities that are growing so quickly that they need money right now in order to put it into ads. If there are, then they could find lots of people who would be willing to do fundraising without pay for the year and then get paid extra at the end, so that they could get the cash in the mean time to do online ads. Or maybe they could take out a loan, or get angel investors, or do something else to get cash now. Needless to say, I doubt this ever happens for charities.

I think the main reason to consider fundraising is that you like it and you might be better than average. As we discussed, being just a little better than the next guy can make a huge difference in this realm.

P.S., Mathematically, if we assume

• $100 of ads buys $1000 of donations in 1 year
• $100 of people fundraising buys $500 of donations now

then the charity should do both of these in unlimited quantities, because both provide way-positive net income. The charity should take out an infinitely large loan and invest in ads, but at the same time, it should welcome as many people as it can find to do fundraising now also.

Of course, donations to a single charity are limited, so having more fundraisers might sometimes compete with the ads. In a model where the total amount of donations the charity can get is fixed (say, at $10,000), then the charity should just use whichever revenue method is cheaper, i.e., all ads paid for by loans. (This assumes the interest rate on the loans is <100% per annum.)

Of course, these assumptions are completely bogus. Don't treat these conclusions as having relevance to your own situation. I just thought this toy model would just help clarify things.

Eugene Khutoryansky has a webpage of his own where people go upon clicking his Facebook veg ads. Below is a fun string of replies in response to the first comment on the page.





However, caveat: Below is the image of the ad itself. This means that many people clicking through will already be veg, so many of the replies could be people who are just agreeing with the sentiment, rather than deciding not to eat meat because of the landing page.



The ads run by The Humane League are not quite as explicit about vegetarianism. They say things like "Help stop animal abuse" or "Find out why [band member X] leaves meat off his plate."

Some tips for improving conversion on Facebook ads, Google ads, and websites.

The Humane League is now targeting ads toward a new page, Who's Against Animal Cruelty? While writing replies to the commenters yesterday, I compiled a collection of the people who seemed most affected by the video. I only went one week backward and got tired after that. Here are the screenshots, in three chunks:

first, second, third

I believe the ads are shown equally for boys and girls, but clearly the responses do not have a proportionate gender distribution. (I wonder if we would be better off displaying the ads to only girls. One counterargument is that boys eat more meat, but their meat consumption is not nearly as much higher as their probability of caring about animals is lower.)

Boris asked a series of questions on the veg ads, to which I'll reply here.

How much are the ads costing per person?
$0.18 to $0.20 per click for US ads, although if you count "free" clicks that result when people share the link with friends, it comes to around $0.10 to $0.13. In foreign countries, ads can go as cheap as $0.02 per click. See "Donating toward Efficient Online Veg Ads" and all the links therein for more facts and figures.

Based on the survey by Nick Cooney that's cited in that piece, I estimated "a conservative maximum cost of $52 per new vegetarian." If you want to be generous, the price might be 10 times lower ($5-6 per new vegetarian), but that's probably a stretch.

The impact of a "new vegetarian" is unspecified, but Nick has some figures from the general population (not specific to this campaign) about how long people stay veg. He wrote in an email:

Reading some interesting studies now (all pertinent info to be shared publicly once i'm done with the research) about veg recidivists. About 1/3 stop within 3 years, about 1/3 stop within 3-5 years, about 12% stop within 6-10 years, and about 20% stop after more than 10 years of being veg. So even for the recidivists you get a good number of years without eating animals. Also, looks like most who go back to eating meat eat less meat than average. (better data to come in a couple months on this and many other cool things).

What's the approximate click-through?
Not sure. In general, Facebook ad CTR is 0.04% to 0.05%, although Nick thinks the Facebook-wide average might be closer to 0.1% (not sure). For the veg ads specifically, CTR is 0.08% to 0.09%. Fortunately, Facebook charges by cost per click (CPC), although better CTR means lower CPC. My speculation -- probably common knowledge to ads experts of whom I am alas not yet one -- is that Facebook's revenue per thousand impressions equals cost per click times clicks per thousand impressions, so if you double your CTR, Facebook should be willing to let you get half the CPC.

Nick has found that it's better to pay per click than per 1000 impressions, because when he tried the latter, it ended up being ~$1 per click. Usually people pay based on impressions if they care about getting brand recognition without generating clickthrough.

How many of the visitors post something?
This number can be guessed from Nick's survey mentioned above. 7% of visitors Liked the page. Probably a small fraction of those also leave a written comment.

What's the average time on site?
Nick says: "We do have this, courtesy of google analytics. Average time overall is around 1:30, though if you remove the bounce-back people, the average time on the page for non bouncers is around 6:30. Bounce rate is 85%. So a lot of people watch only a small portion then leave, but those who stay watch for about 6:30. (Not sure what google uses as benchmark to consider a visitor a bounceback)."

BTW, in the comments, many people say they couldn't make it through the first N minutes of the video, where N = 1 or 2.

Are you funding this out of pocket? Are there others joining in with funding?
I'm not funding these particular ads. Rather, The Humane League (THL) is getting them run through a grant from another organization. However, I will be funding similar ads through Vegan Outreach later this year. Also, a friend of mine will likely donate to THL and use his marginal contributions to fund more THL ads. In other words, you can donate to THL if you want to convert money into more ads. Nick says, "yes indeed, any marginal donations that people make will go to an equal dollar amount of additional ads, as long as they specify/as long as I know that's what the donor wants."

---

P.S., for a huge list of people affected by this video, check out these responses to ads run independently by Eugene Khutoryansky.

Some follow-up questions from Boris:

Is there room for more funding @ the Humane League?
Yes. The nice thing about ads is that they involve very little human effort (a few hours per month), so they can be scaled up easily with additional funding. The viewership isn't yet saturated (even in the optimal range of 15-25-year-olds), especially if we consider the possibility of going global with the audience.

As an aside, I'll just share some thoughts on the question of whether to do US ads or international ads. Vegan Outreach has a nice piece, "Why North America?," explaining the reasons they haven't yet gone global. In response, I wrote the following:

Great list of points. I would add one more: People in the US have more income not only for ethical food purchases but also to donate to Vegan Outreach [and The Humane League, etc.] when they see how important this cause is. I think this alone is a temptingly strong argument for US ads, although I don't know if it can overcome the 5-to-1 or greater cost differential.

Reason #2 in "Why North America?" is obviously highly relevant, and we could target ads based on (# chicken/fish eaten per person) / (cost per click) rather than just 1/(cost per click). #5 and #6 are important to consider as well. #3 doesn't apply in the case of ads (indeed, the opposite is true, which is why foreign ads are even on the table). [...]

I might modify that formula further to something like (1 + donatable-wealth factor) * (# chicken/fish eaten per person) / (cost per click), where the donatable-wealth factor captures the point that people in richer countries are more able to donate to [veg-outreach groups], as well as to have an influence on world opinion, technological development, etc. For example, maybe donatable-wealth factor is near 0 for Mexico but around 1-2 for the US. (These are just made-up numbers to illustrate.)

Would you be running ads to send people to the same website - or to create a new website?
I think further THL funding would go toward the same website. VO will be setting up a new landing page for my own donations to them.

Omegle has a cool new thing where you can ask a question and people talk about it ! Could be a way to have lotsa free online advertising if we made some program to do it automatically (I presume Omegle dont like this?), or if your question is popular Omegle will use it again Other people seem to have already done my first idea on omegle video, sometimes theres just an ad where there would usually be the other persons picture. You coulduse my first idea like mechanical turk.

Every few months i get addicteed to Omegle for a few days....

Cool site.

Perhaps I've been too much influenced by Eliezer's views on ethical injunctions, but I worry about trying to do spammed or m-turk comments "for a good cause." Bad reputations can stick with you for a long time, as GiveWell knows.

Of course, where to draw the line on this is fuzzy. I think it would be fine (encouraged!) to have friends post lots of questions like these.

Sometimes people's intuitions about what's ethical are funky, but we have to try and figure them out as best we can.

BTW, I love your question, "Is non-human animal suffering as bad as human suffering?" It seems relatively innocent, but it opens up a huge can of worms, including about wild-animal suffering (and about worm suffering, for that matter).

I think it's generally easier to not care about animals by just not thinking about them rather than by thinking about them and then concluding that they don't matter. The latter can be done, but I find it's less common. So just asking a question like this already frames the debate in a good way.

P.S., I might say "morally important" instead of just "bad" because it's not clear if the question means "morally bad" or just "intense."

Alan Dawrst wrote: Bad reputations can stick with you for a long time, as GiveWell knows.

Im not sure if i understand your link properly, he created two accounts on some site and used one account to answer a question from the other to promote givewell? tbh if thats it im really suprised people are freaking out so much.... I kinda expected stuff like that happens all the time.

cool thanks:)! maybe we could use it as a tool for guaging public opinion on an issue, although its not exactly a random selection of people.

I remember seeing on robert wiblins blog the other day someone asking on 4chan if people were glad they had been born, it might be interesting to try a question like that. But if people are gonna freak out about stuff like the givewell thing then maybe using it as a survey tool would be all one could really do. Although maybe it would be worth having people use sites like this to try and recruit new people to care about the same issues as us, especially since omegle lets you search for people with similar interests. (reasonable doubts about that last suggestion)

Ruairi wrote:Im not sure if i understand your link properly, he created two accounts on some site and used one account to answer a question from the other to promote givewell? tbh if thats it im really suprised people are freaking out so much.... I kinda expected stuff like that happens all the time.

Yes, that's right. I was also surprised it was considered so blameworthy when I first read the post. Sure, it's dishonest to pose as someone else (rather than to ask the question as yourself), but I didn't think it deserved that much vitriol.

Ruairi wrote:maybe we could use it as a tool for guaging public opinion on an issue, although its not exactly a random selection of people.

Yes to both points.

Ruairi wrote:But if people are gonna freak out about stuff like the givewell thing then maybe using it as a survey tool would be all one could really do.

The freaking out at Holden was because he used two accounts and pretended to be someone else. However, it's totally okay to talk about our topics as ourselves. The point is just not to spam the site with hundreds of automated posts. I think having lots of real human posts is fine and encouraged.

Just saw this on facebook;



Maybe donors to charity X could put up an ad saying "like this page and we'll donate $1 to charity X", but maybe the cost of the ads would make it not worthwhile?

Thanks, Ruairi!

EDIT: I misunderstood how the ad worked when I first read it. I thought Barretstown was a company and CountryLife was a charity, but actually it's the other way around. So my below comment is actually irrelevant to this ad. However, my original comment does say some interesting things, so I'll keep it.

As far as sponsoring ads for people to Like worthwhile organizations, it's a decent idea. I've seen a few such ads that charities have presumably funded by themselves. The rule-utilitarian in me is a bit worried that this contributes to a cheapening of what the Like button means, such that eventually it won't have as much signal as it does today, but it's hard to argue that this consideration overwhelms the potential upside.

---------------------------------------------------
[original post]

This seems to be one of several systems by which charities make money by giving advertising to merchants.

In general, I'm mildly wary of these schemes, because I fear that they might

• cause well-meaning people to waste their time trying to Like lots of things, when these people could be doing more effective work
• encourage well-meaning people to buy more stuff because of the aura that their shopping is helping reduce suffering, even if the fraction of money that goes to charity is tiny
• clutter up the Like pages of well-meaning people so that the other valuable links on their profiles are less visible.

That said, I'm open to being persuaded otherwise by hearing more on the topic.

We had a discussion of ads-based charity on the original Felicifia in the context of "free-click websites." Since it's no longer online, but I have a backup copy on my hard drive, I'm pasting the relevant sections of the conversation:

• by: Kletta @ Tue Oct 02, 2007 at 05:36:41 AM CDT
  
  Anyway, thank you very much for your post and Giving What We Can, and I'm looking forward to reading the website. BTW, you can apparently search to donate for the Fred Hollows Foundation at Everyclick and Lookle; currently, Lookle says it gives one (Australian?) cent per search.
  
• by: Alan Dawrst @ Tue Oct 02, 2007 at 08:55:51 AM CDT
  
  Thanks for the links, Kletta. One question I've always had about click-to-donate sites/search engines is whether they actually do good if you don't click on any of the advertisements or buy any of the products advertised.
  Advertisers might pay for the charities in one of two ways:
  1. A fixed fee per click on the click-to-donate site or per search on the search engine, determined ahead of time, or
  2. Some fraction of the total amount of sales that came from the click-to-donate site or search engine.
  
  If (2), then using the sites would not do any good without buying something. (But of course, buying something would be a terrible waste of money unless you were going to get the product anyway.) If (1), clicking without buying would make a positive impact. However, in the long run, one might expect that advertisers would adjust their fixed rate per click in accordance with the amount of revenue they get from the click-to-donate sites. So if you click without buying, might you cause them to pay a lower fixed-rate fee in the future?
  
  Even if the above concerns are valid, this doesn't necessarily mean it's bad to encourage click-to-donate sites among the general population, because most people wouldn't save the money they don't spend on consumer products and donate it directly to good causes.
  
• by: Kletta @ Sat Oct 13, 2007 at 21:36:54 PM CDT
  
  I think I haven't heard (2) called click-to-donate or search-to-donate, just shop-to-donate. For example, if you buy something through GoodShop, you apparently pay the same price as otherwise, but a few percents are donated to an organization of your choice. The Care2 Green Thumbs-Up seems to donate the same way. You can also shop to donate to The Hunger Site and its sister sites, such as The Child Health Site, which helps prevent and cure blindness, among other things. According to GoodSearch, "Other examples of socially-conscious companies which donate a percentage of their revenues or profits to good causes include Newman's Own, Ethos Water, Patagonia and Ben & Jerry's."
  
  As for clicks, I'm not sure which ones bring money; I haven't checked out all the sites. I'm guessing it could be similar to ordinary online advertising, but that, too, works in more than one way. Care2's race to stop breast cancer says "Care2 donates 100% of our net sponsor revenue, or roughly 0.5 cents per click ($5 CPM), up to one visit per day by any individual." On the race for big cats, Care2 also mentions CPM: it's usually $5, and it guarantees a $1 donation even if there are no sponsors. It also guarantees to donate at least $1 for every 1,000 clicks on its other races, and at least $1.70 for every 1,000 on the race to stop global warming, so each click will offset one pound of CO2. (I wonder why their race for children still counts 18,000 clicks per month per child, when Children International already gives the price of sponsorship as $22-maybe they just forgot to update?) On Wikipedia, I've read, "According to Martin Lewis at The Guardian, The Hunger Site probably doesn't make money for every click, only on clicks to the sponsor's sites, and those clicks might be worth 30¢ each. Each click on the 'feed the starving' button he estimates as worth 0.7¢, based on average click-through rates." At search-to-donate sites where users pick whom they want to benefit, wouldn't each search have to count, even if the sponsors only pay for clicking through?
  
  Some sites, like Youth Noise, have a fixed amount to be released by clicks. I seem to remember reading (in Dutch, which I don't understand…) that Woord en Daad has lowered its value per click from 0.25 € to 0.10 €, but I can't find it again. I know some sites that have simply closed down, like FreeDonation.com. I don't remember values per click decreasing, though I don't always know what they are in the first place; in Ripple's case, I just know "It ranges from 1c to 20c.". My problem is rather that I'm not sure if Care2, Planetsave or most of the other sites besides GoodSearch, The Hunger Site and Ripple are for real. (Like FreeRice, the sister site of Poverty.com , which has vocabulary practice with ten grains of rice for every correct answer.) I'm also worried about the criticism of food aid I've heard, but I hope these organizations know what they're doing.
  
  Even people who usually don't want luxuries (however defined) might want to keep the tradition of giving and receiving gifts on holidays, maybe for their loved ones' sake. I hope children can understand the concept of aid by age 4-6 or so, but before that, they might already want various things-and afterwards, they might still have different priorities than their parents. Anyway, some of the advertisers on click-to-donate sites have charitable goals themselves.
  
• by: Alan Dawrst @ Sun Oct 14, 2007 at 01:20:02 AM CDT
  
  Wow, Kletta, you've certainly done a lot of research on this!
  
  At search-to-donate sites where users pick whom they want to benefit, wouldn't each search have to count, even if the sponsors only pay for clicking through?
  
  In my experience, search-to-donate sites have ads on the sides. My presumption would be that they only make money when people click on the ads (not on regular web pages), but I don't really know.
  
  In general, it's also good to consider the time cost of click-to-donate sites. For instance, if instead of clicking on the pages, you could work at a job paying, say, $25 per hour (or else do research and prepare skills that has an expected present value of $25 per hour), you can make $0.42 a minute. Multiplying this by the amount by which your personal donations are more cost-effective than the donations of site sponsors, you may come up with a minutely amount that competes with click-to-donate sites. (Then again, it may not.)
  
• by: Kletta @ Fri Sep 05, 2008 at 09:56:44 AM CDT
  
  I wondered whether, when users can choose an organization to benefit out of tens of thousands (whose goals might even contradict each other), how much money each organization gets might depend on how many searches it was selected for, and not on during which searches the ads were clicked.
  
  I think I've read discussions about whether FreeRice (on which one can spend any amount of time, not just a minute a day) is an effective use of time, and I've heard the opinion that one should regard it as entertainment. The site itself certainly wants to help users learn, has recently added more subjects, and "is working to add more subjects and more material within each subject." I think the time cost can be different for different individuals; people can start using these sites at a very young age, and I've actually heard of FreeRice used in elementary schools. I've also wondered about how much electricity computers use, but someone might visit these sites while another program is running.
  
  Now FreeRice definitely looks genuine, and its beneficiary, the World Food Program, links to it. PlayPumps International also links to Savetheworldwithmusic.com , which is in launch phase. Lookle, too, has been mentioned in this article, and Forestgarden has linked articles about Care2 from its talk page on Wikipedia.
  
  FreeRice has increased its donation from 10 to 20 grains per correct answer (and long ago, its FAQ might have expressed hope to increase it further, but now it doesn't). And Freekibble and Freekibblekat might have increased their donation from 10 to 20 pieces of kibble per visit, then decreased it back to 10? Also, clickforcharity has a page of "Dead charity sites?", including one that I think used to allow clicks from everywhere before restricting them to the USA and Canada, and I think there are sites with (currently) no sponsors.

5 cents per click O.O are there any ones that go to animal charities?

Ruairi wrote:5 cents per click O.O are there any ones that go to animal charities?

I don't know any good ones. I seem to recall a site a long time ago that paid for pet food for animals in shelters, but it's not clear if this is even net beneficial, because pet food supports factory farming.

In any event, I have worries that free-click sites may not do good over the long term, because unless you waste a lot of money buying stuff, it seems like the companies should adjust things in such a way that your clicks won't count. (For example, when they see that they're making less revenue per click, maybe they'll pay less for clicks in the future?) But I have not studied the matter in depth.