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novalis comments on Efficient Charity: Do Unto Others... - Less Wrong
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Pretty much a corollary of this is Steve Landsburg's (for some reason controversial) point that you should only ever be donating money to one charity at a time (unless you're ridiculously rich). The charity which makes the best use out of your first $1 donation is almost certainly also the charity which makes the best use out of your 1000th dollar as well. Once you've done the calculation, spreading your money between different charities isn't hedging your bets, it's giving money to the wrong charity.
See his Slate article for a slightly more fleshed out version of the reasoning.
There is one exception to this, which is political charities (ACLU, for instance). Giving to political charities, has a signalling effect: a political charity can say "we have twelve million donors," and this tells politicians that they had better listen to that charity or those twelve million people might be voting for someone else.
That said, a $10 donation is enough to get this effect.