A donation to charity wasn't enough to make people keep their New Year's resolutions, so stickK let them bet their money on going to an organization they actually despise instead.

the problem

people set goals they genuinely want to achieve but routinely fail to follow through, and standard accountability mechanisms are too easy to walk away from without real cost

background

what everyone would do

The standard financial commitment contract was forfeiting money to a neutral charity if a goal wasn't met, treating the size of the financial stake as the main lever for improving follow-through, the natural next step up from a plain, cost-free promise.

what they saw

Karlan and Ayres saw that losing money to a charity you're at least neutral about doesn't sting enough to reliably overcome present bias, meaning the standard commitment contract's weakness wasn't the stake's size, it was that the aversion driving people to follow through wasn't really about losing money, it was about what that money did next. Rather than relying purely on increasing the financial stake, the fix was directing forfeited money toward a designated 'anti-charity,' an organization actively opposed to a cause the user cares about, adding a genuine emotional cost on top of the financial one.

the move

In 2008, Karlan and Ayres launched stickK, a website where users write a binding 'commitment contract' for a personal goal, put up real money as a stake, and — critically — can choose to have any forfeited stake go not to a neutral charity but to a designated 'anti-charity,' an organization on the opposite side of a cause the user cares about (the platform curates paired anti-charities across issues like gun control, abortion, and the environment, so a user can pick the org that would make failure feel worst).

why it works

Letting users choose an anti-charity as the forfeit destination meant failure carried a second, non-financial cost, the specific discomfort of knowingly funding an organization working against something the user personally believes in, which is a sharper and more motivating aversion than simply losing money to a cause they're indifferent to. Because the platform curated paired anti-charities across contentious issues like gun control, abortion, and the environment, users could select the specific organization that would make failure feel worst to them personally, tailoring the emotional stake to their own values rather than relying on a one-size-fits-all penalty. This is why stickK's own tracked results found users who selected an anti-charity were roughly 15% more likely to succeed than those who chose a neutral charity or friend, demonstrating that the identity of the recipient, not just the size of the stake, was a measurable behavioral lever, exactly the applied test of commitment-device theory that made stickK a standard citation in behavioral finance and nudge design.

the payoff

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.

where it breaks

The mechanism depends on the user genuinely having a cause they care strongly enough about that funding its opposite feels meaningfully worse than simply losing money, a user without strong feelings on any available anti-charity's paired issue would experience little more than the plain financial stake, losing the added behavioral lever the mechanism depends on. It also depends on the user trusting the anti-charity forfeiture will actually happen and actually go where promised, a platform whose enforcement felt unreliable or where users doubted the money would genuinely reach the stated organization would undermine the credibility the entire commitment device relies on. And this approach requires users to be honest and clear-eyed about which causes genuinely motivate them, since choosing an anti-charity that sounds appropriately serious but doesn't actually provoke real personal discomfort would just reproduce the weak-penalty problem the anti-charity mechanism was specifically designed to solve, meaning the tool's effectiveness depends on accurate self-selection of a genuinely aversive target, not just picking any nominally opposed organization.

what came after

stickK is widely cited in behavioral economics as the clearest applied test of commitment-device theory, demonstrating that the emotional valence of a financial penalty's destination matters as much as its size — the anti-charity mechanism has since been adopted or referenced by other habit-tracking and commitment-contract products, and Ayres and Karlan's underlying research became a standard citation in behavioral finance and public health nudge design.

references

1. [1]stickK Allows You To Put A Contract On YourselfTechCrunch, 2008techcrunch.com
2. [2]The High-Stakes Way To Keep New HabitsFast Company, 2015fastcompany.com

keep it

same kind of clever

• 1944 · Juan Pujol García / MI5 (Agent Garbo)A double agent spent two years telling the Germans mostly true things so they'd believe him on the one lie that mattered
• 2008 · Airbnb (Obama O's / Cap'n McCain's)Airbnb's founders were about to be evicted and couldn't raise a normal seed round, so they sold election-themed cereal for $40 a box — and the stunt itself was worth more than the money.
• 400 BCE · Classical Athens (antidosis procedure)Athens made rich citizens prove their wealth by betting their entire estate on it