It's OK for a donor that provides matching funds to wish for, and to be granted, anonymity.

It's also OK for primary donors to be suspicious of this for any reason that they choose, including no reason at all.

Maybe the matching-funds donor is all peachy and clean. Maybe they're the root of all evil.

We don't know.

This lack of knowledge doesn't let people make an informed decision, and people are allowed to seek to make informed decisions and to get turned off when that isn't possible. :)

(For the record: I'm more motivated to toss a few dollars in the hat when there's a multiplier at play than when there is not. I don't really care who it is that supplies the extra money.

My mentality might lead me to a situation wherein my donation to the local orphanage is anonymously multiplied by a nearby orphan crushing facility that turns lost kids into soylent green, but it's a risk that I'm willing to take.

Others are free to be as averse or accepting as they wish.)

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AnthonyMouse an hour ago | parent | next [-]

> Maybe the matching-funds donor is all peachy and clean. Maybe they're the root of all evil.

If they were the root of all evil then shouldn't you want to donate even more, to increase the amount of money they donate to the non-profit and reduce the amount they have left for their evil doings?

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0xDEAFBEAD an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

The reason to avoid working with sketchy donors is so they don't unduly influence you. If they're anonymous, how can they influence you?

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ssl-3 an hour ago | parent [-]

Even when their matching donation is anonymous and the direct influence is zero, the orphan crushing facility wants the orphanage to be successful.

The orphanage's rising success serves to limit the supply of orphans. This means that there aren't as many free-roaming orphans available for crushing as more of them get taken off of the market.

This improves the supply-and-demand ratio for orphan-derived products. A successful orphanage means that the the orphan crushing facility can make more money while doing less of that tedious work of -- you know -- crushing orphans.

(I don't know what kind of secondary or tertiary games could be played with anonymous matching donations to archive.org; my creativity has limits. But I do know that my support for enabling people to make informed personal decisions is approximately boundless, as anything less would be stifling.)

	▲	0xDEAFBEAD 31 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		I think in this hypothetical, the existence of an orphan-crushing industry should make you reluctant to donate to orphanages regardless of who's doing the donation matching.