Yes! I've been wondering if LW's online community can coordinate and cooperate, and this is a good sign that it can.
I used to read everything that was posted to Main, but I wasn't even aware that this was going on until Alicorn contacted me about it through IM. I'd take this as a warning that a Main page post is probably significantly less effective advertizing than it once was (at least in terms of the proportion of membership reached if not in terms of absolute numbers.)
MIRI is now in a close race for the prize for the most total unique donors over the 24 hours, which adds a lot of additional value to $10 donations by people who haven't donated yet.
Miscellaneous thoughts:
It's very heartening to see so many of these golden tickets so far having gone our way. Go team! Yay for group cooperation! \(n_n)/
I am a bit confused about what happened at 3 and 4 AM, though. Since the early morning hours were being targeted specifically, did the other charities cooperate and focus their efforts specifically on those time slots, or were there just not enough people awake to win at those times?
EDIT: Apparently, the people running the fundraiser initially accidentally had it set up so that each organization was only capable of winning one hourly golden ticket, and after MIRI contacted them, they fixed it, permitting that 20-ticket winning streak.
(Also, DAMN do the matching funds run out fast. Yeah, that makes going for the 2000 dollar tickets rather than the matching funds a much better strategy than I expected. I didn't realize that the matching fund pool was for all charities combined.)
(And even though MIRI almost certainly would have come up with this strategy without the previous post on the matter, I’m still getting fuzzies by proxy for feeling like I helped raise awareness/strategize.)
For the year 2012 total revenue was $1,633,946. The financials for 2013 don't seem to be available, but probably it was even higher then.
I'm sure there are ways to do that, but very few people know how to use those tools.
As for MIRI staff staying up there are other reasons to do so, such as monitoring the giving patterns of other orgs, and monitor our attempts to win matching and coordinate those individuals.
(Also FWIW, I think you could have made the suggestion about automating the process, which is a great and helpful idea, in a much nicer and constructive fashion.)
The leaderboards for most unique donors seem pretty close between MIRI and the next contender, so additional $10 donations may be getting unusual value per dollar right now. (The first hour was close between MIRI and a different organization with both having something like 34 unique donors, so in that sort of situation, if the highest number wins, the expected value to MIRI of a donation might be on the rough order of $100.)
Yes.
The reason is that we have no real data about how many donations in any given hour will be enough to win the $2,000. So the trade off we decided to take is to increase our likelihood of winning a few hours, at the expense of having an even distribution over more hours. Since I'm happier to win a few by a landslide, than loose all of them by a hair. Also, more practically, coordinating the latter approach is much more difficult on a large scale.
They will not :(
All donations must be made through our page on Razoo. Razoo only accepts credit cards and debit cards.
(Cross-posted from MIRI's blog. MIRI maintains Less Wrong, with generous help from Trike Apps, and much of the core content is written by salaried MIRI staff members.)
Update: I'm liveblogging the fundraiser here.
Read our strategy below, then give here!
As previously announced, MIRI is participating in a massive 24-hour fundraiser on May 6th, called SV Gives. This is a unique opportunity for all MIRI supporters to increase the impact of their donations. To be successful we'll need to pre-commit to a strategy and see it through. If you plan to give at least $10 to MIRI sometime this year, during this event would be the best time to do it!
The plan
We need all hands on deck to help us win the following prize as many times as possible:
To paraphrase, every hour, there is a $2,000 prize for the organization that has the most individual donors during that hour. That's a total of $48,000 in prizes, from sources that wouldn't normally give to MIRI. The minimum donation is $10, and an individual donor can give as many times as they want. Therefore we ask our supporters to:
International donors, we especially need your help!
MIRI has a strong community of international supporters, and this gives us a distinct advantage! While North America sleeps, you'll be awake, ready to target all of the overnight $2,000 hourly prizes.
Hours to target in order of importance
To increase our chances of winning these prizes we want to preferentially target the hours that will see the least donation traffic from donors of other participating organizations. Below are the top 12 hours we'd like to target in order of importance. Remember that all times are in Pacific Time. (Click on an hour to see what time it is in your timezone.)
For the 5 pm hour there is an additional prize I think we can win:
So if you are giving in the 5 pm hour try and give right at the beginning of the hour.
Bottom line, for every hour you are awake, give $10 an hour.
Give preferentially to the hours above, if unable to give during all waking hours.
We also have plans to target the $300,000 in matching funds up for grabs during the event. If you would like to contribute $500 or more to this effort, shoot Malo an email at malo@intelligence.org.
For those who want to follow along and contribute to the last minute planning, as well as receive updates and giving reminders during the event, sign up here.