The general population cares more about effective giving than you might think: Results from a 2024 study in Australia

What happened when over 1000 Australiians were surveyed about their attitudes on charity? The vast majority (79%!) thought that effective giving should be the norm.

The survey was done amidst the cost of living crisis, which 8 out of 10 respondents say has caused them to reduce their charitable giving.

In fact, the cost of living crisis may make it more important than ever for donors to seek impact and transparency. As Giving What We Can’s executive director Luke Freeman put it in a recent press release, “While people may not have more to give this financial year, they can make their donations go much further.”

Interestingly, 87% of respondents said they would be willing to switch their donations to a highly-effective charity. This could provide a counter narrative to previous research showing that donors are resistant to switching their donations based on evidence, though it could instead simply indicate a difference between donor intention and behaviour.

The high percentage of respondents willing to switch their donations is even more striking when viewed in light of the fact that on average, respondents thought the best programs were only 1.44x better than average. Thus, people report a willingness to change their donation decisions even to get just a little bit more impact. (In reality, we estimate that many donors could achieve 100x more impact by changing their donation decisions, depending on their starting point, of course.)

Demand for information about charity efficacy was also surprisingly high, with a whopping 93% of respondents indicating they would consult a reliable source of information that compared the effectiveness of different charities and use this to guide their donation decisions! In contrast, only 3 in 10 respondents were confident their last donation had a lot of impact.

While "effectiveness" may mean different things to different people, it would seem donors are interested in maximising the impact of their donations; they just might not know how and where to do so.

Here’s the full report (with many more interesting findings!) as well as the press release.