本文探讨了Double Impact平台的工作原理，该平台允许捐款者同时支持共和党和民主党，并将多余的资金捐赠给其他慈善机构。文章分析了该平台可能吸引的捐款者类型，以及其潜在的价值。作者认为，如果平台运作可靠，那些更倾向于捐款给慈善机构而不是政治党派的人可能会选择Double Impact。然而，文章也指出了该平台可能面临的挑战，包括交易成本、匹配慈善机构的困难以及捐款者对直接捐款给政党的偏好。文章最后探讨了该平台尚未普及的原因，并提出了可能的解释。

🗳️ Double Impact平台的核心机制是：捐款人可同时向共和党和民主党捐款。捐款总额多的阵营会将超出部分捐给其他慈善机构，其他资金则流向其他慈善机构。

🤔 该平台可能吸引的捐款者包括：更倾向于捐款给慈善机构而非政治党派的人；以及那些认为向两党捐款价值低于捐给其他慈善机构的人。

⚖️ 平台可能面临的挑战包括：交易成本、匹配慈善机构的困难以及捐款者对直接捐款给政党的偏好。此外，当一方获得的捐款为零而另一方获得非零捐款时，激励机制可能会失效。

💡 作者推测，Double Impact尚未普及的原因可能包括：人们认为直接捐款给政党的效果更好；或者“我通过Double Impact捐款”的价值不如“我捐款给X党”的价值。

Published on April 13, 2025 7:07 PM GMT

How it works

You donate to the Republican or Democratic pool. The pool with the highest amount donates what it has more at the margin to their political party. Everything else goes to other charities. For a better and more complete explanation, check out: https://doubleimpact.charity/

 

Should it work?

Assuming the platform is legibly reliable, I would expect the following people to donate to Double Impact instead of a political party:

Are homo economicusPrefers to donate to their political party lacking coordination mechanismsThinks the value of donating the same amount to both political parties is less than the value of donating to another charity

And this would create a lot of value assuming it's true that political donations are near zero-sum. (You could argue that they aren't–ex.: maybe they are a good way to educate the public about political issues.)

Even people who think donating to another charity is more valuable than donating to a political party might donate through that process if it seemed sufficiently likely that their preferred party will have less donations anyway as they would have a >50% chance of doubling their donation. That part seems like it would just be adding a transaction cost to get to the same outcome and so is actually a downside of the platform. Although maybe the transaction cost can be made extremely small and maybe there are still positive externalities like the information value of having money vote in that way. Also, that would require finding someone that would agree about donating to the same (or a comparable) charity as part of their matching (not just any charity), which might be quite hard for some people—possibly most people. If people did donate to Double Impact just to cancel the other side's donation but wouldn't have donated otherwise to a political party anyway, then that would also be a reason for the other side not to donate through that platform.

At some point this incentive mechanism would stop working because a party receiving 0 vs a party receiving non-zero would benefit more from having money at the margin.

But why hasn't this taken off nowhere near this level as far as I can tell? Any of the above assumptions might be wrong to some extent. 

Maybe it will take-off once the platform gains a reputation. (I know one of the founders and they definitely seem trustworthy to me.)Or maybe most political donors think donating money to their party goes further than removing money from the other party.Or maybe the value for saying “I donated to party X” is worth much more than “I donated to party X through the Double Impact mechanism” because it's more than 5 words. And more than 10 really: it requires reading–and understanding–a paragraph to an article worth of text.

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