Predicting for Good: Charity Prediction Markets

# Predicting for Good: Charity Prediction Markets
By Austin, harsimony
Published: 2022-03-22
Summary: Prediction markets can allow traders to legally put in real money, if the withdrawals are then routed to charities.

*This was our application to the FTX Future Fund. Due to time constraints, we haven’t collected as much feedback as we would have liked; please let us know what you think about this proposal!*

Your project
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**Does this proposal fall under one of the areas in our "Areas of Interest" page? If so, what area does it fall under? (It's fine if the answer is no.)**

Epistemic Institutions

**Please describe your project in under 100 words.**

Prediction markets work best when people can wager something they value. But past attempts at real-money prediction markets have been shut down by the CFTC.

Manifold Markets is building a charity prediction market (CPM). People can place bets using real money, but are required to donate all proceeds to charity. Since the money never returns to users, CPMs allow real-money betting while being consistent with financial regulations.

FTX Future Fund can allow us experiment with CPMs by providing a matching pool for user donations. This will increase participation in prediction markets, provide a testbed for real-money prediction markets, and boost charitable donations.

**If the project has a website, what’s the URL?**

[https://manifold.markets](https://manifold.markets)

**Please describe what you are doing very concretely—not just goals and long-term vision, but specifically what you are doing in the next few months.**

Manifold Markets is launching its first CPM next month with the goal of assessing demand and working out technical details. People will be able to use Manifold dollars to place bets and send winnings to their preferred charity from a pre-selected list. Manifold dollars will be converted into donations at face value (so $1 USD = $1 sent to charity). Additionally, we will subsidize these contributions using a matching quadratic funding pool of $10,000.

After running this CPM for roughly one month, we will increase the amount of prize money, offer a larger set of approved charities, and experiment with other questions and matching mechanisms.

After the second round of prize money is used, Manifold will solicit partnerships with charitable organizations, allowing them to match user donations in exchange for decision-relevant forecasts.

By subsidizing charitable donations, we hope to vastly increase the number of people who participate in prediction markets. After working out the difficulties of managing a large, active prediction market, we will explore the applications of prediction markets for institutional decision making, impact markets, and information bounties.

**What’s the case for your project?**

The primary reason to fund charity prediction markets is that they allow people to legally trade on prediction markets using something they value. Other reasons CPMs c

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