Singularity Institute is today's featured charity on Philanthroper.com
Philanthroper is a micro-giving site that profiles small charities hand-selected by their editors. Their site encourages donors to “give every day” by only requesting $1 contributions.
A group of Singularity Institute donors has stepped forward to match all donations given through Philanthroper today so I'd encourage each of you to give $1 now if you support Singularity Institute and have a US-based bank account (Philanthroper requirement). We'd like to have a healthy total raised by the end of the day. The fundraiser has already been featured on Gizmodo but please submit it to other news sites if you can.
I signed up and gave my $1.
Well, if the donations they have to match go beyond what they'd donate anyway, they would donate more than they otherwise would. Plus, the goal is to get YOU to donate more than you otherwise would.
I've rethought and I was half-wrong.
It was certainly rational from SIAI's point of view as Tiiba explained.
Also it was rational for SIAI supporters to give one of their dollars via Philanthroper as I'm pretty sure the expected extra money SIAI gets is x where $1 < x <= $2.
It might not be exactly $2 because we assume the matchers have not already decided exactly how much they will give over their lifetime. Future donations from them will be somewhat based on "have I given enough already?" which would be negatively impacted by past donations.
So for people to get their full $2, matchers need to promise to match the money and not feel warm and fuzzy about it.