Optimizely (YC W10) helps raise $1.02 million for Haiti Relief with A/B testing

Too bad that money will probably be mishandled and squandered like most of the donation funds have been so far.

If you want to go directly to the results page without voting, here is the link: http://whichtestwon.com/haiti-fund-nonprofit-test?pollid=86

How appropriate do you think it is to run a split test for a charitable campaign where the bulk of the donations will happen quickly and the opportunity for longer term optimization is low? Did the fund approach you because they were interested in a test or did you suggest it? How quickly did they adopt the winning candidate as their only version?

The article notes "this one’s a bit of a no brainer" and four out of five random people on the Internet predicted the optimized version. Given these facts, it's hard not to interpret the results as having cost a substantial amount of donation money by testing something the designer involved already knew the answer to.

Perhaps you could elaborate on the benefits to Hatians or the non-profit of running this test?

>Please note: They didn’t measure form submissions.

That's a shame - It'd be interesting to know tidbits such as, which form had the highest donation per submission, etc.