Charitable Giving

Susan Athey shares how to apply machine learning in behavioral science experiments and use those applications in social impact organizations, especially designing for heterogeneous treatment effects in experiments. She highlights a specific project with a fintech company identifying approaches to increase contributions to charitable organizations.

Our economy runs on mutual interdependence. As we spend time in self-isolation, let’s think about all the people who depend on us to make a living: the Lyft driver, the dry cleaner, the child-care provider, the barista at the coffee shop.

Charitable organizations can use insights from behavioral economics to help people follow through on impulsive and deliberative intentions to give and to help choose recipients of the aid.

We test how donors respond to new information about a charity’s effectiveness, using varying letters, including ones that discuss the program’s impact as measured by scientific research.

Philanthropy helps solve social problems. But it needs to do more; rethink all its basics: its organizational model; its decision-making processes; its true intentions, its focus.