stickK boosted goal success by letting forfeited money go to an anti-charity

Standard commitment tools for personal goals — New Year's resolutions, gym memberships, informal promises to friends — routinely fail because the cost of quitting is close to zero: nothing concrete happens if you skip the gym or break the promise, so present-bias wins out over the future benefit almost every time.

Rather than rely purely on the size of the financial stake, Karlan and Ayres identified a stronger lever: aversion isn't just about losing money, it's about what that money does next. Directing a forfeited stake toward a cause the user personally despises adds a second, non-financial cost on top of the monetary one.

Let forfeited stakes go to an anti-charity the user opposes, adding an emotional cost on top of the financial one, which made users 15% more likely to succeed.

Losing money to a neutral charity doesn't sting enough to overcome present bias.

Funding an organization you oppose adds a non-financial, emotional cost to failure.

Users pick the anti-charity that makes failure feel worst, tailoring the penalty to their values.

The added aversion makes following through more attractive than the pain of funding the opposition.

To make a penalty bite, target what people hate, not just their wallet.

stickK's own tracked results found users who staked money were substantially more likely to hit their goals than those who set goals without a financial commitment, and specifically that users who selected an anti-charity as the forfeit destination were roughly 15% more likely to succeed than those who chose to donate to a friend or a neutral charity instead — turning the identity of the recipient, not just the size of the stake, into a measurable behavioral lever.