TLDR: Through the end of October, we are giving $3 (Up to $5k total) to The Humane League for each new person who tries out Tab for Ending Animal Suffering .  It is a free browser extension that uses a few ads on your new tab page to raise money for non-profits.  In the post, I share a little bit about what we've learned so far, and also ask for ideas on places to get the word out.

As a longtime forum lurker, I'm excited to make my first post and share my newest project: Tab for Ending Animal Suffering. (In October, we are running a campaign where $3 will go to The Humane League for each new person who signs up, so it is a great time to try it out!) 

I'm the co-founder of Tab for a Cause, and over the years, we've raised just shy of $2M for non-profits by providing an easy and free way to get involved. Tab for a Cause is a browser extension that replaces the default new tab page with one that has some beautiful background images along with a couple of banner ads. We use the money generated by the banner ads to fund non-profits. 

In addition to raising money, we've noticed that we often function as a sort of gateway to philanthropy for a relatively young audience (the largest age group is 18-30). We've found this is an audience that might care about broad causes (think "climate change", "reproductive healthcare", "poverty", etc.), but often isn't yet tied to specific non-profits and rarely donates more than $50/year. We know that over time, our users turn into donors, volunteers, and even start careers at non-profits they learned about from Tab for a Cause (GiveDirectly has been on our platform for a few years, and has graciously shared data on newsletter signups, donations, and applications originating from our audience). 

I've become interested in how Tab for a Cause might more intentionally act as an onramp to effective giving habits that will hopefully last a lifetime, and as such, I reached out to some EA groups that might fund this effort. Wonderfully, OP's FAW team found our proposal suitable for an experimental grant. As part of the grant, we partnered with The Humane League to create Tab for Ending Animal Suffering and also launched a marketing campaign across YouTube, Facebook, and Reddit. (Check out examples of our YouTube sponsorships: 1, 2, 3, 4)

Interesting Learnings so Far

1. YouTube has not been as successful (defined by $/user) as our other channels, which runs in contradiction to what we've seen with every other cause we've promoted. Our leading theory is that animal welfare is currently more "niche" in that it does have a strong base of support (hence marketing success on other platforms), but it lacks the broad appeal/awareness that is necessary for success on YouTube.
2. In addition to having a relatively small but strong and visible group of support, it is very clear from the comment section on our ads on Facebook that there is a surprisingly active group of "anti-animal welfare" people. We knew to expect a little of this going into the project, but it has been louder than anticipated and is something we've rarely experienced on our ads before. Before this cause launch, I think we had deleted fewer than 10-20 total comments (out of 10k+) on our ads; we are now deleting a few every day. 

It is very interesting how causes differ in their current distribution and reach of support and opposition. The vast majority of causes we work with have relatively diffuse support, but largely, people either feel positively about that cause or just don't think much about it. "Ending Poverty" is maybe a good example here. When we ask people to support Ending Poverty, people are broadly receptive, though are unlikely to mention that as their "top/primary" cause. However, as we are trying to get people to support animal welfare, we see mostly ambivalence, and then people who either hold it as one of their top causes or are actively opposed to it. 

Out of the scope of this post, but I believe there is a lot of good research about how these different types of issues translate into political and policy outcomes. For our own purposes in trying to reach and move people from light support of an issue to taking action, they clearly demand very different treatment. I suspect the dynamics of a cause drastically change the landscape of orgs that work on that cause, perhaps creating a bit of a feedback cycle. This is clearly anecdotal, but just within our partner non-profits, the ones working on relatively non-controversial issues (Hunger, Poverty, Education, Sanitation, etc.) look and act in pretty similar ways that differ from those working on issues with opposition (Reproductive Healthcare, LGBTQ+ Rights, Animal Welfare, etc.). My best example is probably in fundraising: non-controversial orgs tend to lean on funding from wealthy individuals, foundations, and government grants. When they make asks, they are more likely to lean on positive outcomes (save a life for X$, give a child the gift of learning, etc.). For the controversial orgs, they likely have a much smaller pool of foundations and government grants available, so they are a bit more dependent on individual donors, and that fundraising ask is more often driven by the opposition (help us fight back against X, your rights are at risk, etc.). 

Help + Feedback

We are hoping to have as much positive impact as we can through this project (and hopefully similar projects in the future). As such, I would love some help on a few things: 

1. Do you have recommendations on where we might be able to find groups of people that would likely be interested in using their browser tabs to help fund The Humane League? So far, we've had some success on Reddit and Facebook, but imagine there must be student orgs, online communities, etc, that we are not aware of.
2. Did reading about Tab for a Cause and our work spark any ideas about how we could use our platform in ways we may not have considered? Please share!
3. Are there things about Tab for a Cause not in this post that you'd like to hear about either in the comments or in a future post? 

I will share that I discovered EA through our users sharing GiveWell and other EA causes in our various feedback requests over the years. Those outreach efforts do work!