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atorm comments on Efficient Charity: Cheap Utilons via bone marrow registration - Less Wrong
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I think that that might make more sense then the way charitable giving tends to happen now, but it seems like it would be an unstable system. As money flooded in to the most efficient charity, it would eventually find itself with more money than it could effectively use (Doctors Without Borders apparently had this problem with Haiti with regards to 'earmarked' money for disaster relief of a specific area), and its efficiency would go down. All of the donors would then direct their money to the next charity on the list until the same thing happens, and then move down again. I see two problems with this. First, how do you know when to move down the list, and second, how do you know when to move back up the list, i.e. when the first charity needs donations again.
Note that GiveWell carefully tracks room for more funding in its charities. They channeled funding to VillageReach until it had a few years worth of funding at the margin, and then moved on in their recommendation. But they keep track, and when VillageReach again shows that it can use money effectively it will be recommended easily. The problem with Haiti was that there were a lot of donors giving because of the TV images and charity fundraising even though it was clear that there was a surfeit of funding.
If those donors had been more sensible they could have used the recommendations of a service like GiveWell to identify the top organizations. Likewise for scientific research one can back a lab or fund that can allocate resources among many different experiments (or unrestricted grants to Doctors Without Borders which it can allocate to locations of greatest need). This doesn't seem to be too much of a problem in practice, as well as theory.
Wow, GiveWell seems to be really good at what it does. The Haiti thing was a problem, but it DID spawn a lot of giving that otherwise wouldn't happen. Perhaps the organizations who advertise during emergencies shouldn't accept earmarked donations and instead take advantage of the surge of sympathy for disaster victims to acquire funding for the entire program. Or are there laws preventing that?
Some people want to give you donations earmarked for Haiti. You tell them you only accept unrestricted funding. Many fewer donate.