One recent experiment revealed something weird about charitable giving

[u/AlenaHerbert]

People didn't donate more. They donated differently.

And this is one of the more interesting studies I've come across recently so decided to share!

Researchers recruited 291 American donors and gave each of them $50.

The participants could keep the money or donate some (or all) of it to a nonprofit they'd never supported before.

Simple enough.

But there was a twist.

One group searched for charities using the regular internet, including Google and whatever tools they normally preferred.

The other used a specialized AI-powered nonprofit discovery platform, which combined verified nonprofit information with prompts encouraging people to explore different giving options.

The results were pretty fascinating:

• People using AI-powered platform were 79% more likely to support a nonprofit in their own city (!)
• They tended to choose significantly smaller organizations.
• They were more than twice as likely to support a nonprofit vetted by Giving Compass.

But here's my favorite part.

Both groups donated at almost identical rates and amounts.

New technology didn't make people more generous, but it changed where their generosity went.

Think about that...

A small community organization might be doing incredible work, helping people literally a few streets away from you, but if you can't find it, you'll probably donate to an organization you've already heard of.

Not necessarily because it's better - just because it's visible.

And that raises an interesting question about the future of AI-powered discovery:

When someone asks an assistant where to donate, which organizations actually make it into the answer?

Team exploring this broader problem at Snoika Foundation, particularly how smaller nonprofits can become discoverable without having the marketing resources of major international charities.

Well, nonprofit visibility is usually discussed as a fundraising or communications issue, but increasingly, it might also be a question of how algorithms distribute attention, trust, and ultimately money.

^{Important caveat: the experiment used a purpose-built discovery platform, not ordinary ChatGPT recommendations, so it doesn't establish that mainstream AI assistants would produce the same results.}

^{Source: Madeleine Alegria, The Search Algorithm Decides Which Nonprofits Survive, Johnson Center for Philanthropy, September 2026.}

[u/prdcedu]

This hits close to home — I'm rebuilding a tiny bilingual education nonprofit from zero, and discoverability is literally my biggest challenge right now. No marketing budget, no name recognition, just a mission. The finding that people gave the SAME amount but redirected it to smaller, local orgs is actually hopeful: the generosity is there, it's the map that's broken. My worry is the flip side — if AI assistants become the new Google for giving, who decides which small orgs get surfaced? That could either democratize philanthropy or just replace one gatekeeper with another. Really interesting share, thanks for posting the source.