Re: bizarro candidate? Yes, certainly. (as long as they're actually going to be much better for the world and your donation will make a difference). Lower probability of larger upside can easily beat guarantee of doing more modest amount of good.

There's a lot of talk about 'impact investing' and I see potential there, but at the moment the 'impact' side of things is generally very poorly understood so it's not fulfilling its potential in my view.