Keep Charity Science running

Our first year was a success (we raised over $150,000 for effective charities), so now we are doing our first public fundraiser to cover our operating costs. We are raising $35,000 CAD ($29,602 US, £19,555) to fund all of our 2015 activities.

What is Charity Science?

Charity Science (previously Effective Fundraising) is an organization that conducts experiments in building awareness of and raising funds for the most scientifically based charities. We measure and evaluate this success based on money moved to scientific charities that would not have been donated to them otherwise.

At Charity Science, we focus on fundraising for the end charities that help the global poor, but we need funding to do this important work. Historically every dollar that we spent on Charity Science lead to us raising over $9 for our end charities.

Reasons to Donate

Why donate to us compared to other charities?

• In 2014, we raised over $150,000 for topGiveWell charities, which means that for every dollar donated to our operations, we raised nine. If we don’t receive funding, we can’t do these activities anymore.
  
• We record detailed data and act based on it.
  
• We have admitted failure publicly and shut down experiments that have not worked.
  
• We work at extremely low costs -- even by charity standards -- spending less than $35,000 for three to four full-time staff. Check out our budget.
  
• We have a widely praised commitment to transparency. We produce detailed reports so others can learn from the experiments that we have run.
  
• Our fundraising still has many opportunities to continue to scale as we try new ideas we haven’t tested yet.
  
• We now have a positive track record and expect to continue improving.
  

What have we done in the past?

An important question to consider when donating to any charity is track record, so what has Charity Science done in the last year? We have run 3 experiments in an extremely lean and cost effective way. Our one year report and 6 month report are publicly available (and these are the internal reports we use to make our decisions, not just glossy donor reports used for fundraising). That being said, here is the most up to date summary of what we have done in the last year.

Money moved over 2014 (all sums in Canadian dollars)

We raised over $9 for every $1 spent in 2014. Over the past six months (after moving to our current mix of activities) we raised over $16 for every $1 spent. This was far higher than our predictions for this year.

Money moved over time

Our fundraising has large spikes from our peer to peer events (which were run in September and December). We do not expect to be able to raise December level amounts every month, though we do expect that we’ll raise more money throughout 2015 -- especially in January - July.

What do we plan on doing in the future?

We make both our budget and our month to month activities public. Our plan is essentially to scale up our past experiments that have worked (peer-to-peer fundraisers like walks, birthdays and Christmas) and to continue to experiment with new ways of raising funds and awareness (sponsored events, online fundraising, local events, etc). For example, we are organising a large sponsored fundraiser which will be run simultaneously by local EA groups around the world.


What would we do if we raised more than $35,000?

In the past we have not accepted donations that exceed our basic costs or would have otherwise gone to our recommended charities. Now that Charity Science has a track record we feel confident that it is worth putting more money and resources into. Therefore, we have created an expansion plan for what we would do if we exceeded our goal.

Our expansion plan consists of hiring more staff to conduct more fundraising experiments. We expect each additional full-time staff member would cost around $20,000 with a part-time staff member costing half of this. The types of experiments we would try would depend on the skill set of our new staff member, but would potentially include corporate fundraising, gala events, legacy fundraising, and niche marketing. We’d also be interested in expanding our existing events, such as running the Charity Science walk in multiple cities.

What would you do if you raised less than $35,000?
If we are unable to raise $35,000 we would slow our expansion and, if need be, one of our current full-time staff (likely Joey) would switch to doing earning-to-give to support the project. This would slow down the project considerably. 

Ways to donate
Donate in American dollars - http://bit.ly/15CmrSv
Donate in British pounds - http://bit.ly/1z2h7SU
Donate in Canadian dollars - http://bit.ly/18kDmuS

Donating through this website involves a small transaction fee. If you intend to donate $500 or more, please email us instead to arrange a bank transfer or a donation by cheque. We can give Canadian tax deductibility for any sized donation and can give international tax deductibility for donations over $500 (please email us before donating). You can also donate in US dollars and British pounds. You can donate monthly through this website or by emailing us.