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Donation offsets

Redirect opposed donations into shared good.

When two donors would otherwise fund opposing efforts, they can redirect matched funds to a mutually acceptable destination.

Draft an offsetView offset examples

Legal posture

No custody / no escrow / no tax advice

Offset records use external-payment evidence and reviewer notes. The platform does not hold money or certify tax treatment.

One-screen example

A small redirect before any money moves.

Without the trade, A would give $50 to Cause X and B would give $50 to opposed Cause Y. If it clears, both redirect $50 to GiveWell Top Charities Fund. Reviewers check prior intent, payment proof, destination, and externality blockers.

If nobody trades

A gives $50 to Cause X. B gives $50 to opposed Cause Y.

If this clears

Both redirect $50 to GiveWell Top Charities Fund after review.

What reviewers check

Prior intent, payment proof, destination verification, and safety blockers.

Offset flow

Three steps make an offset reviewable.

01

State the baseline donations.

Say what each side would otherwise fund, and why that baseline is credible.

02

Choose a compromise destination.

Pick one named charity or fund both sides can regard as a shared good.

03

Set rules before reliance.

Record match, surplus, evidence, expiry, and anti-threat certification.

Offset questions

Answer ordinary questions before showing mechanism detail.

OK

what would each side donate without this trade

OK

how much each side redirects

OK

where the shared money goes

OK

why each side prefers this

OK

what proof reviewers check

OK

when the offer expires

OK

what would make this unsafe or invalid

Trust block

Offsets fail if the baseline is fake or coercive.

Factual trust

Receipts, prior giving records, or third-party attestations can support review.

Counterfactual trust

The donor must credibly show they would have made the opposed donation anyway.

Perverse-incentive screening

Threat-like baselines, coercive copy, and prohibited destinations are blocked.

Destinations

Available compromise destinations.

Global health and anti-poverty

GiveWell Top Charities Fund

A broadly legible anti-poverty and global-health destination for donors who want a compromise charity many moral views can endorse.

Open destination

Emergency public health

Direct Relief

A widely recognisable public-health charity for offsets that need a simple, high-trust compromise destination.

Open destination

Climate and air quality

Founders Pledge Climate Fund

A climate compromise destination suitable when both sides value broad reductions in climate risk or pollution harms.

Open destination

Animal welfare

ACE Recommended Charity Fund

A fund for neglected-animal interventions when both sides can agree that avoiding zero-sum advocacy is better than opposed spending.

Open destination

Future flourishing

EA Long-Term Future Fund

A long-run future destination covering existential risk and broadly shared future-flourishing concerns.

Open destination

Marketplace snapshot

Current offset activity.

Redirected so far
$0

Reviewed direct offset records only.

Public-good routed amount
$0

Completed offsets routed to broad public goods.

Active pooled commitments
$0

Committed pool amount, not verified redirection.

Active pools
0

Pools gathering commitments before verification.

Batch clearing dry run

Preview atomic offset lock before reliance.

This dry run reserves commitment inventory, checks ratio bounds, previews all-or-none settlement, and drafts final-lock terms without capture, custody, or reliance.

Matched side A
$1,000

Reserved only inside this preview bundle.

Matched side B
$1,000

Clearing ratio 1:1.

Compromise destination
$2,000

GiveWell Top Charities Fund

Atomic status
Ready for final confirmations

All required participants must freshly confirm before lock.

Commitment inventoryCommittedReservedStatus
2 Side A commitments$600$600reserved
1 Side A commitment$400$400reserved
2 Side B commitments$700$700reserved
1 Side B commitment$300$300reserved

Final lock proposal

Exact matched volume: $2,000 to GiveWell Top Charities Fund. Evidence standard: Proof of past donations.

No capture in preview

Capture allowed: no. Reliance-bearing: no. Required fresh confirmations: 4.

Fail-closed blockers

No preview blockers. Final lock still requires fresh confirmations and review.

Participant confirmation and lock boundary

Cleared trades need fresh participant confirmation records.

The platform does not infer moral surplus. Participants must explicitly confirm that the frozen agreement is preferable or acceptable relative to their own no-trade baseline before any clearing, capture, release, or reliance.

Preview-only confirmation bundle

Checkboxes and batch results do not authorize capture.

Clearing allowed: false. Reliance-bearing: false. Platform infers moral surplus: false. Checkbox authorizes capture: false.

donation offset preview no capture
Frozen snapshot bundle
  • Baseline: baseline-snapshot:demo-offset-v1
  • Terms: terms-snapshot:demo-offset-v1
  • Policy: policy-snapshot:donation-offset-preview-v1
  • Exposure: $1,000
Confirmation records
  • Proposal: drafted
  • Record: draft only
  • Fresh confirmations: 0 / 4
Consent quality

Consent quality: needs review. Notice record: recorded. Scope: final lock.

  1. pass
    Frozen baseline, terms, and policy snapshots

    The confirmation preview references baseline, terms, policy, and maximum-exposure snapshots.

    Keep these snapshot references stable until final lock.
  2. pass
    Participant surplus confirmation

    The participant explicitly states this agreement is preferable or acceptable relative to their no-trade baseline.

    Record this as a first-class participant confirmation before clearing.
  3. pass
    Matched-trade lock proposal

    A matched-trade lock proposal is drafted for the frozen counterparties, volume, ratio, destination, evidence, deadline, residuals, and fallback.

    Use this proposal for fresh final confirmations.

Recipient and destination verification

Payment locators are evidence until reviewed.

Recipient names, donation URLs, bank details, wallet addresses, and fiscal-host notes do not become reusable payment destinations until they resolve to reviewed recipient registry and payment-destination records.

Destination verification status

No capture or release before verified routing.

Capture allowed: false. Release allowed: false. Raw locator is payment destination: false.

donation offset preview no capture
Recipient registry
  • Recipient: GiveWell Top Charities Fund
  • Identity: registered recipient
  • Registry entry required: true
Payment destination
  • Kind: registered charity page
  • Review: needs review
  • Verified before capture: true
Reuse boundary

Free-text destination reusable: false. Reviewers must keep copied links and payment identifiers out of reusable routing until verified.

  1. pass
    Recipient identity

    The draft points at a registered recipient identity for the preview.

    Keep the registry identity frozen for final lock review.
  2. human review
    Payment destination routing

    The destination locator is evidence for manual review, not a reusable payment route.

    Create or review a payment-destination record before any capture or release.
  3. human review
    Anti-impersonation review

    Recipient names, URLs, bank details, wallets, and charity identifiers need anti-impersonation review.

    Run anti-impersonation review before relying on this destination.
  4. human review
    Jurisdiction review

    Recipient jurisdiction, payment-rail eligibility, and fiscal-host routing need review.

Externality and evidence burden

Direct consent is not enough to clear third-party harms.

Donation-offset previews must show nonparticipant-externality status, evidence burden, least-intrusive alternatives, impact-claim separation, and fallback behavior before any final lock or reliance.

Preview-only review bundle

No clearing, capture, or reliance before externality review.

Clearing allowed: false. Participant consent waives nonparticipant harms: false. Receipt creates impact claim: false.

donation offset preview no capture
Externality status
  • Recipient: GiveWell Top Charities Fund
  • Review: needs review
  • Required before clearing: true
Evidence burden
  • ordinary receipt or public log
  • Least-intrusive rule: true
Fallback

Policy: manual review. Fallback must be frozen before lock and cannot silently reroute funds or obligations.

  1. human review
    Nonparticipant externality

    Potential third-party, recipient, or public-good harms need review before lock.

    Resolve nonparticipant externality review before clearing or reliance.
  2. pass
    Externality summary

    The preview records a plain-language summary of third-party, recipient, and public-good effects.

    Keep private or sensitive facts out of public summaries.
  3. human review
    Anti-threat and manufactured-baseline review

    Donation-offset baselines need anti-threat review so direct consent cannot convert coercion into moral trade.

    Complete anti-threat review before any lock or public completed-trade count.
  4. pass
    Evidence burden

    The evidence plan is ordinary-burden and compatible with preview-stage review.

Safety and evidence authenticity

Evidence uploads do not create obligations.

Donation-offset evidence must remain claim-typed, source-authenticated, privacy-safe, non-transferable, and screened for financial crime, hazardous activity, cyber abuse, and process-integrity risks before any lock, release, or public completion claim.

Preview-only safety bundle

Hash storage is not authenticity review.

Clearing allowed: false. Evidence upload creates reliance: false. Hash storage proves authenticity: false.

donation offset preview no capture
Evidence and privacy
  • Privacy grant: not needed
  • Confidentiality/privacy: clear
  • Evidence authenticity: clear
Payment and transfer
  • Financial crime: clear
  • Non-transferable by default: true
  • Transferability: clear
Prohibited channels

Regulated goods: clear. Cyber abuse: clear. Anti-corruption: clear.

  1. pass
    Confidentiality and privacy rights

    No unauthorized private-data disclosure is declared or detected.

    Keep evidence scoped to non-private, claim-relevant proof.
  2. pass
    Evidence authenticity and synthetic media

    Evidence authenticity is reviewed separately from the payment or impact claim.

    Keep evidence source-traceable and claim-typed before it satisfies any lock or release gate.
  3. pass
    Financial crime, fraud, and source of funds

    No sanctions, stolen-funds, fabricated-receipt, refund-abuse, or circular-routing signal is declared or detected.

    Keep source-of-funds and receipt facts reviewable before payment reliance.
  4. pass

Authority and fairness

Participants may bind only themselves by default.

Donation offsets must keep baseline integrity, third-party obligations, representative authority, reporting integrity, civil rights, and autonomy/coercion review non-blocking before any lock, release, reliance, or completed-trade claim.

Preview-only authority bundle

Coerced consent is not participant surplus.

Clearing allowed: false. Participant may bind only self by default: true. Reporting suppression blocked: true.

donation offset preview no capture
Baseline and authority
  • Baseline integrity: non blocking review
  • Representative authority: self only
  • Third-party obligation: none known
Rights and autonomy
  • Reporting integrity: clear
  • Civil rights: clear
  • Participant autonomy: clear
Legal posture

Jurisdiction review: non blocking review. Baseline manufacturing blocked: true. Civil-rights review required: true.

  1. pass
    Baseline integrity

    The no-trade baseline has a non-blocking baseline-integrity review.

    Keep baseline-integrity review separate from moral ranking and participant consent.
  2. pass
    Third-party obligation

    No third-party duty, donor restriction, court order, contract, or professional obligation conflict is declared or detected.

    Document why the participant controls the relevant donation, evidence, and disclosure duties.
  3. pass
    Representative authority

    The participant binds only their own resources, or verified authority covers the exact action.

    Keep authority scoped to the exact donation, evidence, receipt, and time window.
  4. pass
    Reporting integrity

Donor-of-record and receipt preview

Receipts are legal facts, not impact claims.

Donation offsets must freeze donor-of-record, receipt, charitable-solicitation, and destination treatment before lock. Moral Trade does not provide tax advice or claim tax deductibility from a preview.

No capture preview

Tax and receipt handling is explicit before final confirmation.

Tax advice provided: false. Tax deductibility claim allowed: false. Receipt creates impact claim: false.

donation offset preview no capture
Frozen terms
  • Destination: GiveWell Top Charities Fund
  • Donation platform: External charity payment page
  • Donor of record: participant direct donor
  • Tax receipt: no tax benefit claimed
Before lock
  • Destination verification before capture/release.
  • No receipt benefit is double-claimed or silently reassigned.
  • Any DAF, employer match, or co-venture issue needs jurisdiction review.
Public metric boundary

Payment evidence can support gross transfer records. It cannot, by itself, prove causal impact, tax treatment, or moral value.

  1. pass
    Donor of record

    The draft names who is donor of record and states that Moral Trade is not silently reassigned as donor.

    Keep this treatment frozen for final lock confirmation.
  2. pass
    Tax receipt treatment

    No tax benefit is claimed from Moral Trade, and receipt handling is explicit.

    Do not represent receipts as moral impact or allocation power.
  3. pass
    Charitable solicitation and co-venture

    The draft uses external donation evidence without platform solicitation, match-promo, or co-venture claims.

    Keep the public copy clear that Moral Trade is not soliciting tax-deductible gifts.

Safeguards

Political campaign contribution offsets are prohibited.

No campaign offsets

Offsets are not for campaign finance workarounds or candidate contributions.

External evidence only

Receipts are evidence for review, not platform custody or legal escrow.

Manual review for risk

Unverifiable baselines and coercive proposals remain paused or blocked.

Further reading

Research sources for the offset structure.

Toby Ord, "Moral Trade"

Ord's examples motivate opposed-donation redirection and reciprocal moral trade.

Open the paper

Forethought on convergence

Compromise can work when different views value overlapping outcomes.

Open the article

Forethought on public goods

Shared goods can make compromise more robust than thin bilateral settlements.

Open the article
MoralTrade

A marketplace for productive difference.

Trade commitments, redirect offsetting donations, and join conditional funding pools. Moral Trade keeps the no-deal default, maximum exposure, evidence, settlement, and exit terms visible before reliance.

Research supports the mechanism. The public product is the marketplace and coordination infrastructure.

Marketplace

  • Explore trades
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Safety & transparency

  • Contextual credibility
  • Service status
  • Safety and anti-threat rules
  • Transparency

Learn

  • Interactive walkthrough
  • What is Moral Trade?
  • Research
  • Technical specification
  • Worked examples

Organization

  • Team and governance
  • Join the network
  • Support
  • Contact
  • Privacy
  • Terms

Moral Trade does not provide legal, tax, investment, or blanket impact certification. Payment, custody, authorization, settlement, and refund capabilities are disclosed at the point where a user could rely on them.

human review
Participant confirmation record

Draft confirmation records exist but are not enough to authorize lock, capture, or reliance.

Record fresh final confirmations for every affected participant.
  • human review
    Fresh confirmation count

    All affected participants must have fresh confirmation records before clearing.

    Collect fresh participant confirmations for the full affected-participant set.
  • human review
    Consent quality

    Consent-quality review is still needed before any reliance-bearing confirmation.

    Resolve consent-quality review before final lock.
  • pass
    Notice record

    A notice record is available for the confirmation scope.

    Use server-side notice timestamps for expiry and challenge windows.
  • pass
    Baseline-comparison acknowledgement

    The participant acknowledges that confirmation compares the frozen agreement to their own no-trade baseline.

    Keep the acknowledgement tied to this proposal version.
  • pass
    Confirmation scope

    The confirmation scope is final-lock or renewed-material-change, and fresh confirmation is acknowledged.

    Keep the confirmation scope immutable for this proposal version.
  • pass
    Amendment and supersession

    No unconfirmed material change is pending, or the amendment has renewed confirmations.

    Any later material change requires a superseding proposal and renewed confirmations.
  • pass
    Lock and capture boundary

    This bundle is preview-only and does not request lock, capture, release, or reliance.

    Keep capture disabled until all final lock and release gates pass.
    • Review jurisdiction and payment-rail eligibility before lock or release.
  • human review
    Prohibited-use review

    Recipient and destination use need prohibited-use, sanctions, and financial-crime screening.

    Complete prohibited-use review before capture or release.
  • human review
    Recipient control

    The destination needs proof that it is controlled by the recipient or reviewed fiscal host.

    Verify recipient control before any payment destination can be reused.
  • pass
    Free-text destination reuse

    No free-text, bank, wallet, or reuse request is being treated as a reusable payment route.

    Keep raw locators out of reusable routing records unless reviewed.
  • pass
    Evidence is not destination

    The participant acknowledged that submitted locators are evidence inputs, not payment destinations.

    Store raw locators as review evidence until a destination record is verified.
  • pass
    Capture and release boundary

    The participant acknowledged that this preview cannot capture or release funds before verification.

    Keep capture and release disabled until release-gate review passes.
    • Use the least intrusive sufficient proof packet for the claim type.
  • pass
    Least-intrusive evidence alternative

    The preview includes a least-intrusive-sufficient evidence alternative.

    Reviewers should reject later evidence escalation without renewed approval.
  • pass
    Impact claim separation

    Receipt/payment proof is separated from causal impact, outcome, and moral-value claims.

    Keep gross transfer, net payout, and impact claims separately labeled.
  • pass
    Nonparticipant consent boundary

    The participant acknowledged that direct participant consent cannot waive harms to nonparticipants.

    Keep participant surplus confirmation necessary but not sufficient for clearing.
  • pass
    Fallback and cancellation policy

    The preview states what happens if externality, evidence, destination, or review gates fail.

    Do not silently reroute funds or obligations outside the frozen fallback.
  • pass
    Lock and reliance boundary

    This is a preview-only bundle and does not request lock, capture, release, or reliance.

    Require final lock confirmation against a frozen proposal before reliance.
    • Agreement transferability and non-assignment

    Donation-offset obligations are participant-specific and non-transferable by default.

    Keep the proposal tied to the original participants and confirmations.
  • pass
    Regulated goods and hazardous activity

    No regulated goods or hazardous physical-world activity is declared or detected.

    Keep donation-offset terms away from dangerous physical-world activity.
  • pass
    Cyber abuse and digital integrity

    No unauthorized access, malware, botting, spam, phishing, scraping, or platform manipulation is declared or detected.

    Keep the offset away from unauthorized digital-system activity.
  • pass
    Anti-corruption and process integrity

    No bribe, kickback, vote-buying, improper-inducement, or process-integrity term is declared or detected.

    Keep recipient, payment, and evidence terms separate from entrusted decision-making.
  • pass
    Lock and reliance boundary

    This safety bundle is preview-only and does not request lock, capture, release, or reliance.

    Keep capture and reliance disabled until final lock, payment, evidence, and safety gates pass.

    • The offset does not suppress truthful reporting, complaints, investigations, or evidence submission.

    Keep truthful reporting and safety/legal cooperation outside the trade.
  • pass
    Civil rights and discrimination

    No protected-trait discrimination, protected-activity retaliation, exclusion, harassment, or segregation term is declared or detected.

    Keep recipient choice and evidence terms separate from civil-rights violations.
  • pass
    Participant autonomy and coercion

    No duress, dependency, acute vulnerability, crisis, or authority-pressure term is declared or detected.

    Keep confirmations voluntary and separate from dependency or authority pressure.
  • pass
    Jurisdiction and legal review

    Jurisdiction review is either not needed for this preview or is non-blocking.

    Keep jurisdiction/legal review tied to authority, receipt, disclosure, and payment terms.
  • pass
    Lock and reliance boundary

    This authority bundle is preview-only and does not request lock, capture, release, or reliance.

    Keep lock and reliance disabled until authority, baseline, legal, and fairness gates pass.
    • pass
    No double-claimed receipt benefits

    Receipt, donor-advised-fund credit, employer match, and comparable benefits cannot be double-claimed or reassigned.

    Keep receipt benefits outside moral-trade volume and impact claims.
  • pass
    Destination verification

    A registered compromise destination is selected for the preview.

    Verify payment destination before capture or release.
  • pass
    No tax advice or impact claim

    The participant acknowledged that Moral Trade gives no tax advice and receipts are operational/legal facts, not impact evidence.

    Keep public metrics separate from receipt, deductibility, and impact claims.
  • pass
    Final lock freeze

    Donor-of-record, receipt, solicitation, and destination terms must be frozen before final confirmations.

    Any later material change requires an amendment and renewed confirmations.

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