Disagreement = Counterfactuality for Matching Funds

By ellie @ 2026-07-06T19:37 (+2)

Much has been said about how hard it is to have valid counterfactual matching funds.

In particular, to summarize from Jeff Kaufman here:

• The clearest case of counterfactuality is "with 'general' donation matches, like an employer offering to match donations to any 501(c)3 organization." The average 501(c)3 is so much less effective than a highly effective charity that, even if your employer gives a fixed amount of money to charity, you can safely round to zero the positive value that would be had from their donations had you not claimed the match.
• You can also have clear counterfactuality where the matching funds are EA-aligned if your time-preference differs from the matcher's. As a specific example, Jeff says "Say I give $10 to Give Directly and Good Ventures matches my donation with $10 they wouldn't otherwise donate this year. If I hadn't donated, however, they would have kept that $10 to spend in a later year on an opportunity they consider approximately as valuable." and "If you, say, think current people matter far more than future people, however, then taking Good Ventures up on their match is great, because it gets them to spend money now instead of delaying and spending it on others later."

Allow me to posit a more general principle: Any time two actors agree about whether one thing is good but disagree about whether another thing is good, there is an opportunity to have meaningfully counterfactual matching.

To give an example:

• Person A thinks AI safety and global health are charities both good
• Person B thinks that global health is great but AI safety is throwing your money away
• Person A can credibly say they will donate money indiscriminately between the two causes, and person B would be truly motivated to donate more.

Perhaps, if you ignore overhead costs, you should probably offer matching funds instead of donating directly any time you are indifferent between multiple donation options, since it might spur others to donate as well.

AI Model Usage: Not used