Donate Unrestricted
Paul Graham argues that restricted donations, where donors specify how money must be used, are typically suboptimal because nonprofits understand their own needs better. Exceptions include umbrella organizations like universities and expert donors like the Gates Foundation. He urges donors to give unrestricted, trusting the nonprofit to allocate funds effectively. The essay also explores donors' mixed motives and nonprofits' reluctance to speak up due to financial anxiety.
The secret curse of the nonprofit world is restricted donations. If you haven't been involved with nonprofits, you may never have heard this phrase before. But if you have been, it probably made you wince.
Restricted donations mean donations where the donor limits what can be done with the money. This is common with big donations, perhaps the default. And yet it's usually a bad idea. Usually the way the donor wants the money spent is not the way the nonprofit would have chosen. Otherwise there would have been no need to restrict the donation. But who has a better understanding of where money needs to be spent, the nonprofit or the donor?
If a nonprofit doesn't understand better than its donors where money needs to be spent, then it's incompetent and you shouldn't be donating to it at all.
Which means a restricted donation is inherently suboptimal. It's either a donation to a bad nonprofit, or a donation for the wrong things.
非营利世界隐藏着一个诅咒：限制性捐赠。如果你从未接触过非营利组织，可能从未听说过这个词；但如果你接触过，这个词很可能让你皱眉。
限制性捐赠是指捐赠者对资金用途加以限制的捐赠。大额捐赠中很常见，甚至可能是默认方式。然而，这通常不是个好主意。捐赠者希望资金的使用方式往往并非非营利组织本来的选择——否则就没有限制的必要了。那么，谁更了解资金该花在何处呢？是非营利组织，还是捐赠者？
如果一个非营利组织对资金需求的判断还不如它的捐赠者，那它就不称职，你根本不该向它捐赠。
这意味着限制性捐赠本质上就是次优的：要么是捐给了糟糕的非营利组织，要么是捐错了方向。
There are a couple exceptions to this principle. One is when the nonprofit is an umbrella organization. It's reasonable to make a restricted donation to a university, for example, because a university is only nominally a single nonprofit. Another exception is when the donor actually does know as much as the nonprofit about where money needs to be spent. The Gates Foundation, for example, has specific goals and often makes restricted donations to individual nonprofits to accomplish them. But unless you're a domain expert yourself or donating to an umbrella organization, your donation would do more good if it were unrestricted.
这一原则有少数例外。其一是非营利组织是伞形组织，比如向大学进行限制性捐赠是合理的，因为大学名义上只是一个非营利实体。另一个例外是捐赠者确实和非营利组织一样了解资金需求，比如盖茨基金会有明确目标，常向特定非营利组织提供限制性捐赠以实现这些目标。但除非你本人是领域专家，或者捐赠对象是伞形组织，否则无限制捐赠能带来更大益处。
If restricted donations do less good than unrestricted ones, why do donors so often make them? Partly because doing good isn't donors' only motive. They often have other motives as well — to make a mark, or to generate good publicity [1], or to comply with regulations or corporate policies. Many donors may simply never have considered the distinction between restricted and unrestricted donations. They may believe that donating money for some specific purpose is just how donation works. And to be fair, nonprofits don't try very hard to discourage such illusions. They can't afford to. People running nonprofits are almost always anxious about money. They can't afford to talk back to big donors.
You can't expect candor in a relationship so asymmetric. So I'll tell you what nonprofits wish they could tell you. If you want to donate to a nonprofit, donate unrestricted. If you trust them to spend your money, trust them to decide how.
[1] Unfortunately restricted donations tend to generate more publicity than unrestricted ones. "X donates money to build a school in Africa" is not only more interesting than "X donates money to Y nonprofit to spend as Y chooses," but also focuses more attention on X.
如果限制性捐赠效果更差，为什么捐赠者还经常这样做？部分原因是行善并非捐赠者的唯一动机。他们常常还有其他动机——留下印记、获取良好公关[1]、遵守法规或公司政策。许多捐赠者可能从未考虑过限制与非限制捐赠的区别，以为指定用途就是捐赠的运作方式。公平地说，非营利组织也不愿努力打消这种错觉——它们承担不起。运营非营利的人几乎总是为资金焦虑，不敢对大型捐赠者说“不”。
在如此不对等的关系中，你不能指望坦诚。所以让我来告诉你非营利组织希望说的话：如果你想向某个非营利组织捐款，请捐无限制资金。如果你信任他们能花好你的钱，那就相信他们能决定怎么花。
[1] 不幸的是，限制性捐赠往往比无限制捐赠更容易引发关注。“X捐资在非洲建一所学校”不仅比“X向Y非营利组织捐款供其自由支配”更有趣，而且更能聚焦于X本人。