I would strongly suggest recanting the statement about AMF having "more money than they can use".
Part of the logic of donating to a single maximal-marginal-benefit charity is that your contribution works at the margin. You don't get to donate to a cancer charity and think "well, that wraps cancer up; now onto solving child abuse". In telling you about what "your money" is doing, AMF are being psychologically savvy, but they are also creating the illusion that your contribution is facilitating some sort of discrete satisfying chunk of work you can draw a line under.
Around here we like to think about charities as machines that take in money and spit out utility, but in the real world they're organisations with cash flows, long-term strategies and earmarked funds. The presence of such earmarked funds does not mean they have more money than they can use, and it would be awful if this notion got stuck in people's minds.
I appreciate what you're saying. Just going by the information I posted, that wasn't nearly enough information to conclude "AMF has more money than they can use". It merely raised the question - which I had answered here. :)
About a year and a half ago, I made a donation to the Against Malaria Foundation. This was during jkaufman's generous matching offer.
That was 20 months ago, and my money is still in the "underwriting" phase - funding projects that are still, of yet, just plans and no nets.
Now, the AMF has had a reasonable reason it was taking longer than expected:
"A provisional, large distribution in a province of the [Democratic Republic of the Congo] will not proceed as the distribution agent was unable to agree to the process requested by AMF during the timeframe needed by our co-funding partner."
So they've hit a snag, the earlier project fell through, and they are only now allocating my money to a new project. Don't get me wrong, I am very glad they are telling me where my money is going, and especially glad it didn't just end up in someone's pocket instead. With that said, though, I still must come to this conclusion:
The AMF seems to have more money than they can use, right now.
So, LW, I have the following questions: