I usually follow Givewell's recommendations as they do a ton of research into which charities have the most impact (the maximum lives saved per $). I also like to give to some far future stuff, usually those associated or endorsed by the Effective Altruism movement just in case AI risk becomes a reality
Charity Navigatior and many similar sites fixate on unhelpful stats like the percent of the budget "wasted" on admin expenses and overhead to an unhealthy degree. To operate effectively charities need to spend money on high quality leadership and support staff, and while doing good motivates many to accept lower pay they can still be pricey.
Furthermore, the more complicated what the charity is doing the more it generally costs to hire competent employees. If a charity wants to hire employees to rigorously evaluate whether their interventions are working, this will also add to overhead.
More controversially, I think the fixation on charity CEO pay is also misguided. They still generally earn less than they could working for similar non-charitable organizations, and being good at CEO-ing is a difficult skill. Hiring a bad CEO can tank an organization. (It's definitely also possible to spend a lot of money on a bad CEO, it's not a guarantee of quality.)
In fact, higher overhead (a negative factor in Charity Navigator's score) correlates with a better Givewell recommendation.
> The mean of the fundraising expense ratio for charities (the money spent on fundraising divided by the total expenses of the entire organization) that earned a gold, silver, or notable rating by Givewell (41 charities) is 0.073, while that of the charities reviewed by Givewell but not ranked well (253 charities) is 0.054 (p-value of 0.05, i.e., statistically significant at the 95% level). The mean of the administrative expense ratio for charities that earned a gold, silver, or notable rating by Givewell is 0.102, while that of the charities reviewed by Givewell but not ranked well is 0.092 (p-value of 0.35). Adding administrative and fundraising together, the mean ratio for charities that earned a gold, silver, or notable rating by Givewell is 0.174, while that of the charities reviewed by Givewell but not ranked well is 0.147 (p-value of 0.11).
(Note that I weakly suspect this person might be misusing p-values, and should be less confident in the causal nature of this correlation. However, that is still sufficient to prove that overhead isn't inherently evil)
As an analytical person I understand the value of maximum economic efficiency and value measured in these terms. On the other hand when it comes to humanitarian concerns, the human element can be somewhat more expensive and less efficient than (for example) airlifted bags of grain, but far more valuable and encouraging to the recipients. Programs like child sponsorship with letter-writing are expensive and not nearly as efficient as straight up meal delivery, but the impact, as evidenced by the children’s handwritten replies, seems to be significant in non tangible ways.
I think the cannonical "efficient" charity would be incenticide treated bug nets. Against Malaria Foundation distributes them to entire villages, but the largest effect is for children 5 and under, for who catching malaria is much more likely to be fatal.
Grain has some potential negative effects, squashing local food industry, etc, but it's not like domestic bug net companies and a key part of the economy in the same way farming is.
I dunno, I feel like stopping kids from dying is better to focus on first compared to letter writing. But I'm a bit of a Utilitarian, and an aspie, so perhaps I undervalue the human element.
I don't think GiveWell would rule out a charity because it considers the human element in a way that makes it less economically efficient.
The question is just, is it overall more efficient at broadly "bettering people's lives" in a way they can measure? That's it. If you can show that letter writing is a worthy trade-off by e.g. looking at long-term impacts, I'm sure they'd be for it.
Perhaps you object to the fact that they require measurement. Fair enough, the best things in life are free. But the "bags of grain" (really, "bags of malaria pills") approach is already at a disadvantage to the "give someone a flock of chickens" approach, because the latter tells a story and tugs at our hearts. That doesn't mean it's worse, but I think GiveWell's thesis is, that also doesn't mean it's better.
Absolutely, but the impact is definitely still there and I think we just need better metrics to capture the more complex results. After all, it's likely possible to do child sponsorship well and poorly.
As a side note airlifting in grain in often far more expensive than buying the grain closer to the target area, and causes significant economic harm by putting people employed in farming and the grain supply chain out of work (sometimes the very people the intervention was supposed to help). The main reason we do it is the domestic grain lobby.
> Two-thirds of food for the billion-dollar US food aid programme last year was bought from just three US-based multinationals.
> The main beneficiaries of the programme, billed as aid to the world's poorest countries, were the highly profitable and politically powerful companies that dominate the global grain trade: ADM, Cargill and Bunge.
For-profit capture of foreign aid is a much larger problem. For example, remember the news stories after Trump announced cuts to foreign aid saying many retired generals had signed a letter saying foreign aid was vital to protecting our troops? Most forgot to mention that that letter was organized by a trade organization of big defense contractors that regularly win foreign aid contracts (and employ ex-generals)
I just give to GiveWell and let them distribute the money. I believe in their research and their approach, and I trust them to allocate donations efficiently.
Compassion International. It gives impoverished children food, education, and hope. The third may be the most important. Over years of sponsoring children, we have seen some that went on to post secondary schools and even became professionals.
+1 for Compassion International. We've been sponsoring children through them for 20 years. We get to know the children personally with cards, letters and Christmas gifts.
We were just contacted by one of our first children from Nigeria. She "aged out" of the program, and we hadn't heard from her in years. She found us on FB (unique last names have an advantage). It's been great catching up with her again. Watching her go from a little girl to a mid-twenties woman has been wonderful.
Children's Healthcare of Atlanta (https://www.choa.org/). First heard about them through local talk radio that does yearly fund raisers with matching donations. Then found from work more than one coworker who has a child cared there. This is the only "for the children" I subscribe to.
St Vincent De Paul Georgia (https://www.svdpgeorgia.org/) . Grew up Catholic so I knew about them, have local donation center near me that I contribute items and time too. Simply put, these small town points are where people get help. It is far better to help at this level instead of the #support that far too many subscribe to
I donate to the local food shelf that serves people in my neighborhood. Donating money to food shelves is about 10x as effective as donating the equivalent amount of goods purchased at retail.
You guys should consider donating to the International Anti-Poaching Foundation[0][1] which fights these poachers. The founder, Damien Mander[2], is an Australian ex spec-ops sniper who is using his military experience to train the park rangers since they, unlike the poachers, tend to be poorly equipped and trained as well as understaffed.
There is also the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust[3][4] which takes care of elephant and rhino orphans (most of them are orphans due to poaching). For $50 a year, you can become a sponsor of a particular animal and they'll send you photos and updates about how your sponsored animal is doing. You can for example sponsor this little fella [5][6].
I donate to the Dublin Rape Crisis Centre (Ireland); I was drawn to do it after two rugby players of world renown more or less got away with assaulting a girl.
- Walker School ( walkercares.org ) - special education and behavioral care for children and their families. Why Support? This is a local organization that serves a population of young children that often, but not always, have endured tremendous trauma and/or abuse, and typically have no where else to go. The Walker School helps them recover and rehabilitate and find them a permanent, safe home to re-enter mainstream society and become productive happy kids and eventually adults. A $1 to help get a kid back on track early saves a $100+ supporting someone through adulthood.
- Museum of Science ( mos.org/ ) - if you are ever in Boston, please make a trip halfway across the river and check it out. It is one of the best science/engineering museums in the country. Why Support? Not everyone is going to be a scientist, engineer, mathematician, etc, but the Museum offers vital community outreach to show what these disciplines can offer society. We can't all play for the Patriots/Celtics/Bruins/etc, but a lot of people can enjoy watching them and enthusiastically support them. I see the museum as the "Local Sports Team" for STEM.
-Wikipedia (I use it very often, I also edit it too, which is a time-donation that everyone should do!)
-LLS (Leukemia Lymphoma Society, they have had decent success in supporting some drug candidates, my family member works at LLS so I have some good perspective)
-350.org (climate change is a huge threat, 350 is one of a few that is fighting against it)
-Sam Harris's podcast (not really a charity but ...AI safety, meditation, rationality, identity politics, religion in society, he covers a lot of interesting topics).
Regularly, I donate to Battersea Dogs & Cats Home in London. Animals, I feel, are thrust into a poor situation and have less means to help themselves (not at all implying some people aren't also in this situation).
Doctors Without Borders just because of their ability to get care to almost any part of the world. I consider my contributions to it a form of compensation for my tax dollars that go without my consent to fund our hungry war machine.
With the recent US tax law changes, I created a charitable giving account via my brokerage to bunch up donation contributions to the account and then parcel out this account balance during the intervening months. Edit: this also allows anonymous contributions, which tends to defeat some charities' tendency to send unsolicited commercial mail.
Somewhat off topic, but I very recently started working on a global charity search engine based on open data sets. The thinking is that you often care about location of operation and not (just) about base country. End goal is to provide api for other platforms to build on, like a platform about sharing donation preferences:
Most of my giving is to GiveWell’s top charities, to be disbursed at their discretion. I think that as an incredibly high-earning, incredibly wealthy person by worldwide standards, I have a duty to help relieve the burden of global poverty.
It’s not tax-deductible, but I do give a little bit of money every year to scihub. I’d like to start giving to someone that fights industrialization’s assault on biodiversity, but I don’t know who that would be.
I really want to be on board w/ the EFF because of all the good I see them doing on the legal side, but the PR department (or whoever writes for them) are just such a putoff. It makes me second-guess how effective they would be with my money. Obviously no org is perfect, I just really wish they would tone the language down to a more "level headed" message for the greater good.
The title and first paragraph set an unnecessary tone. There are ways to say the same thing which aren't immediately off-putting to those not "on your side" yet.
This is how I feel about the ACLU. I donate to them because they're helping families separated on the southern border, but their PR is just so... Fox News. Except left-wing of course.
A friend of mine from High School who has totally devoted her life to bottom-up organizing for social change made a FB post of these organizations which she recommends because she says that's where your money goes the furthest.
--- Lawyers for Good Government[0], which sends human rights lawyers to the parts of mexico where migrants are stuck because of this whole Fortress America thing Trump's doing
--all the groups in the community justice exchange[1], which pay people's bonds/bail to get them out of prison/detention, for example Chicago Community Bond Fund.
---Upavim Community DVLPT Foundation[2] (indigenous Guatemalan community organizing and Mayan language interpretation)
---No More Deaths/No Más Muertes[3] (every dollar = a gallon of water in the desert where migrants die of thirst, plus abuse documentation and help finding missing people)
---Uprooted & Rising[4] -organizing to change food systems for the better
Groups that send me excessive mailings: and actually stuff in the mail I didn't ask for.
I used to give to the NRDC, but they keep sending me so much junk mail. I got gloves in the mail from the American Society for Prevention of Cruelty to animals (I have no relationship with them). World Wildlife Foundation sends me a ton of stuff too (sticker and cards), so they're off my list.
It costs about $2500 to save a life by donating to GiveWell's top charities.
And yes, they publish an absurd amount of data to back this claim up, including a carefully-annotated spreadsheet which you can plug your own assumptions into.
153 comments
[ 5.1 ms ] story [ 214 ms ] threadhttps://www.givewell.org/
https://www.effectivealtruism.org/
Furthermore, the more complicated what the charity is doing the more it generally costs to hire competent employees. If a charity wants to hire employees to rigorously evaluate whether their interventions are working, this will also add to overhead.
More controversially, I think the fixation on charity CEO pay is also misguided. They still generally earn less than they could working for similar non-charitable organizations, and being good at CEO-ing is a difficult skill. Hiring a bad CEO can tank an organization. (It's definitely also possible to spend a lot of money on a bad CEO, it's not a guarantee of quality.)
In fact, higher overhead (a negative factor in Charity Navigator's score) correlates with a better Givewell recommendation.
> The mean of the fundraising expense ratio for charities (the money spent on fundraising divided by the total expenses of the entire organization) that earned a gold, silver, or notable rating by Givewell (41 charities) is 0.073, while that of the charities reviewed by Givewell but not ranked well (253 charities) is 0.054 (p-value of 0.05, i.e., statistically significant at the 95% level). The mean of the administrative expense ratio for charities that earned a gold, silver, or notable rating by Givewell is 0.102, while that of the charities reviewed by Givewell but not ranked well is 0.092 (p-value of 0.35). Adding administrative and fundraising together, the mean ratio for charities that earned a gold, silver, or notable rating by Givewell is 0.174, while that of the charities reviewed by Givewell but not ranked well is 0.147 (p-value of 0.11).
(Note that I weakly suspect this person might be misusing p-values, and should be less confident in the causal nature of this correlation. However, that is still sufficient to prove that overhead isn't inherently evil)
http://freakonomics.com/2011/06/09/why-ranking-charities-by-...
Not really the same thing as GiveWell's analysis. To use the first example I checked, compare
https://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm?bay=search.summar...
to
https://www.givewell.org/International/charities/Heifer-Proj...
Grain has some potential negative effects, squashing local food industry, etc, but it's not like domestic bug net companies and a key part of the economy in the same way farming is.
I dunno, I feel like stopping kids from dying is better to focus on first compared to letter writing. But I'm a bit of a Utilitarian, and an aspie, so perhaps I undervalue the human element.
The question is just, is it overall more efficient at broadly "bettering people's lives" in a way they can measure? That's it. If you can show that letter writing is a worthy trade-off by e.g. looking at long-term impacts, I'm sure they'd be for it.
Perhaps you object to the fact that they require measurement. Fair enough, the best things in life are free. But the "bags of grain" (really, "bags of malaria pills") approach is already at a disadvantage to the "give someone a flock of chickens" approach, because the latter tells a story and tugs at our hearts. That doesn't mean it's worse, but I think GiveWell's thesis is, that also doesn't mean it's better.
As a side note airlifting in grain in often far more expensive than buying the grain closer to the target area, and causes significant economic harm by putting people employed in farming and the grain supply chain out of work (sometimes the very people the intervention was supposed to help). The main reason we do it is the domestic grain lobby.
> Two-thirds of food for the billion-dollar US food aid programme last year was bought from just three US-based multinationals.
> The main beneficiaries of the programme, billed as aid to the world's poorest countries, were the highly profitable and politically powerful companies that dominate the global grain trade: ADM, Cargill and Bunge.
https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2012/jul/18/u...
For-profit capture of foreign aid is a much larger problem. For example, remember the news stories after Trump announced cuts to foreign aid saying many retired generals had signed a letter saying foreign aid was vital to protecting our troops? Most forgot to mention that that letter was organized by a trade organization of big defense contractors that regularly win foreign aid contracts (and employ ex-generals)
https://sites.duke.edu/lawfire/2018/02/21/should-we-be-askin...
We were just contacted by one of our first children from Nigeria. She "aged out" of the program, and we hadn't heard from her in years. She found us on FB (unique last names have an advantage). It's been great catching up with her again. Watching her go from a little girl to a mid-twenties woman has been wonderful.
I can't recommend them enough.
St Vincent De Paul Georgia (https://www.svdpgeorgia.org/) . Grew up Catholic so I knew about them, have local donation center near me that I contribute items and time too. Simply put, these small town points are where people get help. It is far better to help at this level instead of the #support that far too many subscribe to
Last week I launched a site to try and raise money for 10,000 nets for AMF [1]!
[0] https://www.givewell.org/
[1] https://giveanet.org/
[2] https://github.com/justicz/giveanet
https://www.foodpantries.org/
There is also the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust[3][4] which takes care of elephant and rhino orphans (most of them are orphans due to poaching). For $50 a year, you can become a sponsor of a particular animal and they'll send you photos and updates about how your sponsored animal is doing. You can for example sponsor this little fella [5][6].
[0] http://www.iapf.org/en/
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Anti-Poaching_Fou....
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damien_Mander
[3] http://www.sheldrickwildlifetrust.org
[4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Sheldrick_Wildlife_Trust
[5] https://www.sheldrickwildlifetrust.org/orphans/murit
[6] http://instagram.com/p/sigT3IAUKb
- Walker School ( walkercares.org ) - special education and behavioral care for children and their families. Why Support? This is a local organization that serves a population of young children that often, but not always, have endured tremendous trauma and/or abuse, and typically have no where else to go. The Walker School helps them recover and rehabilitate and find them a permanent, safe home to re-enter mainstream society and become productive happy kids and eventually adults. A $1 to help get a kid back on track early saves a $100+ supporting someone through adulthood.
- Museum of Science ( mos.org/ ) - if you are ever in Boston, please make a trip halfway across the river and check it out. It is one of the best science/engineering museums in the country. Why Support? Not everyone is going to be a scientist, engineer, mathematician, etc, but the Museum offers vital community outreach to show what these disciplines can offer society. We can't all play for the Patriots/Celtics/Bruins/etc, but a lot of people can enjoy watching them and enthusiastically support them. I see the museum as the "Local Sports Team" for STEM.
-LLS (Leukemia Lymphoma Society, they have had decent success in supporting some drug candidates, my family member works at LLS so I have some good perspective)
-350.org (climate change is a huge threat, 350 is one of a few that is fighting against it)
-Sam Harris's podcast (not really a charity but ...AI safety, meditation, rationality, identity politics, religion in society, he covers a lot of interesting topics).
They help people without access to traditional loans fund businesses, farms, etc. Whatever is paid back is easy to put right back into another loan.
I also plan on donating to the local LGBTQIA+ organization this year on behalf of a friend who requested it for her birthday.
The make affordable eyeglasses for poor countries, teach them how to make the lenses, repair the glasses etc.
They're working on solutions to problems we all face.
https://github.com/juliuszelf/global-charity-search-engine
I made an earlier attempt a few years ago, this page shows more about the 'why':
http://juliushuijnk.nl/project/charitius/
In case utilitarianism is the correct moral framework.
https://www.splcenter.org/
An attempt to slow the US' descent into fascism.
https://www.actionagainsthunger.org/
It really fucks with my head that people are starving.
It’s not tax-deductible, but I do give a little bit of money every year to scihub. I’d like to start giving to someone that fights industrialization’s assault on biodiversity, but I don’t know who that would be.
https://donate.wikimedia.org/wiki/Ways_to_Give
EFF, because they fight for a bunch of tech issues I support.
Software Freedom Conservancy, because they do a bunch of legal legwork for open source projects.
Internet Archive, because they're doing a bunch of good work preserving our culture.
TPT (PBS), because we should have high quality non-commercial education and entertainment.
ACLU and ACLU-MN, because they fight for important legal rights for all Americans and Minnesotans.
Planned Parenthood, because they provide critical education and medical services for underserved people.
The title and first paragraph set an unnecessary tone. There are ways to say the same thing which aren't immediately off-putting to those not "on your side" yet.
--- Lawyers for Good Government[0], which sends human rights lawyers to the parts of mexico where migrants are stuck because of this whole Fortress America thing Trump's doing
--all the groups in the community justice exchange[1], which pay people's bonds/bail to get them out of prison/detention, for example Chicago Community Bond Fund.
---Upavim Community DVLPT Foundation[2] (indigenous Guatemalan community organizing and Mayan language interpretation)
---No More Deaths/No Más Muertes[3] (every dollar = a gallon of water in the desert where migrants die of thirst, plus abuse documentation and help finding missing people)
---Uprooted & Rising[4] -organizing to change food systems for the better
[0] https://www.lawyersforgoodgovernment.org/
[1] https://www.communityjusticeexchange.org/nbfn-directory
[2] https://www.facebook.com/pages/Upavim-Community-DVLPT-Founda...
[3] https://nomoredeaths.org/
[4] http://uprootedandrising.org/
I also made a one-time donation to the Live Like Roo foundation this year as a birthday present to a friend.
Every few years I'll donate to a GDQ when they're working with Medecins Sans Frontieres.
I used to donate to the EFF, but no longer.
massachusetts audubon: https://www.massaudubon.org/
cornel lab or ornithology: https://www.birds.cornell.edu/home/
PEOPLE: Sometimes people need a little help.
Food For free:https://foodforfree.org/
walk for hunger (My neighbor walks yearly)
kiva.org (micro loans. I found 50$ on the street and made a donation years ago. They keep paying the loans back so I've kept adding to the loans.)
TECH: Stuff I use that I want to support so it keeps up.
Libre Office, aquamemacs, sequel pro, wikimedia foundation, archive.org
MEDIA: Public radio (WGBH/ WMBR)
DON't GIVE LIST:
Groups that send me excessive mailings: and actually stuff in the mail I didn't ask for. I used to give to the NRDC, but they keep sending me so much junk mail. I got gloves in the mail from the American Society for Prevention of Cruelty to animals (I have no relationship with them). World Wildlife Foundation sends me a ton of stuff too (sticker and cards), so they're off my list.
And yes, they publish an absurd amount of data to back this claim up, including a carefully-annotated spreadsheet which you can plug your own assumptions into.
https://www.givewell.org/how-we-work/our-criteria/cost-effec...
It's really hard for me to argue that there's a better way to spend your money.