Givewell, a charity evaluation and ranking organization, has recommended a new charity: GiveDirectly.
GiveDirectly transfers money directly from you, the donor, to poor people in Kenya to spend as they choose.
I'm excited to see Givewell add a third charity to their recommended list - one of my big objections to Givewell is that they are too small to evaluate a suitable number of charities. I find it fascinating that they have endorsed a very young charity. GiveDirectly is less than two years old. After listening to one of their conference calls, I've learned that Givewell believes direct cash transfer requires a lower burden of proof for effectiveness than other interventions (like vaccines, or clean water programs).
Still, endorsing a charity with less than two years of data feels like a big departure from Givewell's work in the past. Essentially, the leadership at Givewell believes in the theory of change behind GiveDirectly and is impressed by the GiveDirectly leadership. This is the same way that most donors and foundations decide on their giving. On a certain level, I don't object to Givewell doing the same. But Givewell has purposely set themselves apart from the wider philanthropic world by claiming a superior evaluation model and process that almost assures their recommended charities do more good with your money than other charities.
It will be interested to follow the response to Givewell's endorsement of GiveDirectly, and I am eager to learn more about the impact of direct money transfers.
-Selfish Blogger
Showing posts with label nonprofit. Show all posts
Showing posts with label nonprofit. Show all posts
Tuesday, November 27, 2012
Sunday, November 25, 2012
80,000 Hours
"How can I make the world better?" is a question every compassionate person has asked themselves - sometime in response to a very specific situation that involves the suffering of another, or sometimes in the abstract. For me, career choice has been part of my answer to that question. I saw two possibilities in front of me: either I make a lot of money in the for-profit world while helping (essentially) no one, or I make less money in the nonprofit world while helping others.
The compassionate individuals behind a new nonprofit called 80,000 Hours have offered a third option: make a lot of money in the for-profit world, and give most of it away.
In the your life, you will spend about 80,000 hours at work. Shouldn't you use that time to make the world better? I've chosen to work in the not-for-profit world so that my 80,000 hours are put toward helping others, rather than increasing my own wealth. But lots of compassionate people are drawn to the nonprofit sector. Even with the low wages, I've not seen charities struggle to fill open positions. But every nonprofit struggles for money.
What if more compassionate people were to take high-wage jobs, then fund the salaries of nonprofit employees? Instead of accepting a $40,000 annual salary and directly delivering services at a nonprofit, I could accept a $120,000 annual salary in the for-profit world, keep $40,000 for myself, and give $80,000 to pay TWO people to directly deliver services at a nonprofit. I could double my impact!
I haven't posted in the last year because, in addition to working full-time, I've been going to night school and studying for my CPA license. I may be leaving the nonprofit sector, and I may be earning a six-figure salary in a few years time. How I spend the rest of my 80,000 could be drastically different, and much further removed from helping others. Will I have the self-discipline to give most of my money to charity, and continue living a modest-wage lifestyle?
-Selfish Blogger
The compassionate individuals behind a new nonprofit called 80,000 Hours have offered a third option: make a lot of money in the for-profit world, and give most of it away.
In the your life, you will spend about 80,000 hours at work. Shouldn't you use that time to make the world better? I've chosen to work in the not-for-profit world so that my 80,000 hours are put toward helping others, rather than increasing my own wealth. But lots of compassionate people are drawn to the nonprofit sector. Even with the low wages, I've not seen charities struggle to fill open positions. But every nonprofit struggles for money.
What if more compassionate people were to take high-wage jobs, then fund the salaries of nonprofit employees? Instead of accepting a $40,000 annual salary and directly delivering services at a nonprofit, I could accept a $120,000 annual salary in the for-profit world, keep $40,000 for myself, and give $80,000 to pay TWO people to directly deliver services at a nonprofit. I could double my impact!
I haven't posted in the last year because, in addition to working full-time, I've been going to night school and studying for my CPA license. I may be leaving the nonprofit sector, and I may be earning a six-figure salary in a few years time. How I spend the rest of my 80,000 could be drastically different, and much further removed from helping others. Will I have the self-discipline to give most of my money to charity, and continue living a modest-wage lifestyle?
-Selfish Blogger
Tuesday, November 22, 2011
Holiday Generosity
This fabulous little article from The Chronicle of Philanthropy warms my heart. In the midst of a lousy economy, only 26% of Americans surveyed say they plan to reduce their charitable giving. And pay close attention to this stat: 79% would rather have a charitable donation made in their name than receive a gift they wouldn't use. As you're considering how to spend your money this holiday season, remember that most of your peers are shelling out to support good causes, and they'd like to see you do the same instead of regift that basket of smelly bath salts and lotions (you know the one I'm talking about).
Where should you send your gifts this year? Consider high performing nonprofits working to end poverty around the world, your local food bank, or the many great organizations working to protect animals.
How can you get your friends in on the action? Pick a charity or two and tell your friends and family to make a gift in your honor. You'll find that most causes allow your friend to make gifts through their website. If your favorite charity doesn't have and easy online giving option, or if you really want to keep track of how much money you're helping to raise, use a site like Shift My Gift to make it happen.
Here's to the beginning of an unselfish holiday season!
-Selfish Blogger
Where should you send your gifts this year? Consider high performing nonprofits working to end poverty around the world, your local food bank, or the many great organizations working to protect animals.
How can you get your friends in on the action? Pick a charity or two and tell your friends and family to make a gift in your honor. You'll find that most causes allow your friend to make gifts through their website. If your favorite charity doesn't have and easy online giving option, or if you really want to keep track of how much money you're helping to raise, use a site like Shift My Gift to make it happen.
Here's to the beginning of an unselfish holiday season!
-Selfish Blogger
Monday, September 12, 2011
Productivity
This weekend PETA Pack volunteers put on a fabulous vegan bake sale outside the Silverlake Trader Joe's to raise money for PETA's investigation fund. I stopped by and picked up a few delicious goodies (the pumpkin muffins and chocolate coconut truffles were outstanding!). They raised close to $200 and, from what I could see, it only took about 5 people to pull it off.
No doubt, bake sales are a fun way to introduce your work to the public and get volunteers engaged. The nonprofit I run holds a bake sale each winter that brings in a similar sum, and it seems to be the favorite fundraising vehicle of parent groups everywhere.
But are bake sales productive fundraisers? Consider how much each baker spends on ingredients and packaging. It's easy for me to shell out $20 for the ingredients and cute little goody bags to whip up some tasty treats for a bake sale. Add in the hours spent to plan and organize, bake and wrap, set up and sell (some of which might be paid staff hours), and the price tag on this type of fundraiser quickly adds up.
If each volunteer donated the equivalent cash they spent on ingredients, the organization might come out about even. They'd save the money spent on staff time and probably get half the cash or more - especially if someone prices your cupcakes at $1 each without knowing they cost $1.50 to make (that's happened to me). If each volunteer, instead of baking for hours, took 30 minutes to place a few phone calls to people they know and ask for a donation, the organization would easily exceed bake sale revenues. Simple! Increased revenues from significantly reduced staff and volunteer hours, but something that few volunteers will sign up to do.
The fact that bake sales (and car washes and rummage sales and other labor-intensive fundraisers) are so popular says something about how we relate to money. More people are comfortable giving away proxies for money, like their time or a dozen cookies, than actual cash. And more people are comfortable asking someone to spend 3 hours working a bake sale than asking for a $50 check (even if that someone is a lawyer who could have billed $600 during her 3 hour bake sale shift). We believe it is better to earn money than ask for money, even if earning it is more expensive for the volunteer, even if it is more expensive for the organization. Dollar-for-dollar, hour-for-hour, these types of fundraisers are less productive than the alternative: directly asking for money.
Of course, there is more to be measured from a bake sale than dollars alone. It's a fun event, so people want to get involved, which builds your volunteer base and makes supporters feel more deeply connected to your cause: you'll be able to count on those people in the future. It's a great way to do outreach: what better way to teach someone about your cause than by getting them to buy cookies? In specific cases, it can actually help some groups fulfill their mission. This is true in the case of PETA, who used their bake sale to introduce the general public to veganism in a tangible (and tasty!) way. Their bake sale would have been worth it whether it made a dime or not.
As donors and volunteers, I think it's important we start considering how we can be most productive and start being honest about when our time could do a lot more to help the causes we love. Look at the well-meaning groups who raise tens of thousands of dollars to fly themselves to poor countries so they can volunteer their time to build schools or dig wells. Without a doubt a new school makes a huge difference for a poor community. These groups are probably doing good work, and they usually bring one expert with them that this type of project needs. But just imagine how much that airfare - that tens of thousands of dollars - could do if it went to an established charity on the ground instead of the Airlines. It could certainly employ local workers to build schools or dig wells instead of college students, and that temporary employment could change outcomes for the families who benefit.
Is it better to do something than nothing? Almost certainly. Could we do more good if we focused on productivity instead of our own personal enjoyment? Absolutely. But in the example above, using the monies more productively by leaving the fundraisers at home means it's unlikely those monies would have been raised in the first place. It's a safe bet that traveling to a foreign country to make new friends and learn about other cultures was the driving motivator for many, and the driving motivator for their donors (mostly parents and friends no doubt). A similar fundraiser to employ local workers in a poor town unseen likely wouldn't have engaged people in the same way - it easily could have flopped and left the town with nothing.
So are the people who participate in these fundraiser selfish? Not anymore than the rest of us, and perhaps less than the general population. In the same way that most people don't think that buying a new car is a trade off for saving the lives of others (it is), those who help with a less-productive fundraiser don't think that they could run a more-productive fundraiser in it's place. Part of the blame for this rests with nonprofits that continue to run less-productive fundraisers while claiming the event is about raising money, instead of being honest that its purpose is volunteer engagement and outreach.
If we really care about a cause, and our goal is to raise money for that cause, it's time we start doing what it really takes: writing checks and asking our friends to do the same.
-Selfish Blogger
BTW, I'm running with PETA Pack. You can support my PETA Pack run here.
No doubt, bake sales are a fun way to introduce your work to the public and get volunteers engaged. The nonprofit I run holds a bake sale each winter that brings in a similar sum, and it seems to be the favorite fundraising vehicle of parent groups everywhere.
But are bake sales productive fundraisers? Consider how much each baker spends on ingredients and packaging. It's easy for me to shell out $20 for the ingredients and cute little goody bags to whip up some tasty treats for a bake sale. Add in the hours spent to plan and organize, bake and wrap, set up and sell (some of which might be paid staff hours), and the price tag on this type of fundraiser quickly adds up.
If each volunteer donated the equivalent cash they spent on ingredients, the organization might come out about even. They'd save the money spent on staff time and probably get half the cash or more - especially if someone prices your cupcakes at $1 each without knowing they cost $1.50 to make (that's happened to me). If each volunteer, instead of baking for hours, took 30 minutes to place a few phone calls to people they know and ask for a donation, the organization would easily exceed bake sale revenues. Simple! Increased revenues from significantly reduced staff and volunteer hours, but something that few volunteers will sign up to do.
The fact that bake sales (and car washes and rummage sales and other labor-intensive fundraisers) are so popular says something about how we relate to money. More people are comfortable giving away proxies for money, like their time or a dozen cookies, than actual cash. And more people are comfortable asking someone to spend 3 hours working a bake sale than asking for a $50 check (even if that someone is a lawyer who could have billed $600 during her 3 hour bake sale shift). We believe it is better to earn money than ask for money, even if earning it is more expensive for the volunteer, even if it is more expensive for the organization. Dollar-for-dollar, hour-for-hour, these types of fundraisers are less productive than the alternative: directly asking for money.
Of course, there is more to be measured from a bake sale than dollars alone. It's a fun event, so people want to get involved, which builds your volunteer base and makes supporters feel more deeply connected to your cause: you'll be able to count on those people in the future. It's a great way to do outreach: what better way to teach someone about your cause than by getting them to buy cookies? In specific cases, it can actually help some groups fulfill their mission. This is true in the case of PETA, who used their bake sale to introduce the general public to veganism in a tangible (and tasty!) way. Their bake sale would have been worth it whether it made a dime or not.
As donors and volunteers, I think it's important we start considering how we can be most productive and start being honest about when our time could do a lot more to help the causes we love. Look at the well-meaning groups who raise tens of thousands of dollars to fly themselves to poor countries so they can volunteer their time to build schools or dig wells. Without a doubt a new school makes a huge difference for a poor community. These groups are probably doing good work, and they usually bring one expert with them that this type of project needs. But just imagine how much that airfare - that tens of thousands of dollars - could do if it went to an established charity on the ground instead of the Airlines. It could certainly employ local workers to build schools or dig wells instead of college students, and that temporary employment could change outcomes for the families who benefit.
Is it better to do something than nothing? Almost certainly. Could we do more good if we focused on productivity instead of our own personal enjoyment? Absolutely. But in the example above, using the monies more productively by leaving the fundraisers at home means it's unlikely those monies would have been raised in the first place. It's a safe bet that traveling to a foreign country to make new friends and learn about other cultures was the driving motivator for many, and the driving motivator for their donors (mostly parents and friends no doubt). A similar fundraiser to employ local workers in a poor town unseen likely wouldn't have engaged people in the same way - it easily could have flopped and left the town with nothing.
So are the people who participate in these fundraiser selfish? Not anymore than the rest of us, and perhaps less than the general population. In the same way that most people don't think that buying a new car is a trade off for saving the lives of others (it is), those who help with a less-productive fundraiser don't think that they could run a more-productive fundraiser in it's place. Part of the blame for this rests with nonprofits that continue to run less-productive fundraisers while claiming the event is about raising money, instead of being honest that its purpose is volunteer engagement and outreach.
If we really care about a cause, and our goal is to raise money for that cause, it's time we start doing what it really takes: writing checks and asking our friends to do the same.
-Selfish Blogger
BTW, I'm running with PETA Pack. You can support my PETA Pack run here.
Tuesday, August 23, 2011
Priorities
When I interned with Amnesty International, I was deeply moved when my supervisor told me that Amnesty does not prioritize one human rights violation over another. How can you weigh rape against false imprisonment? How do you choose between the rights of women and the rights of children? You can't. Every human rights violation is wrong; every violation needs to be stopped. What a compelling position. And yet, how very unrealistic.
We live in a world of limited resources, so organizations like Amnesty operate with limited resources too. The act of distributing those resources is an act of prioritization. The staff hours spent, the volunteers mobilized, the leaflets printed to stay that man's execution were staff hours and volunteers and leaflets that didn't go toward helping women in Juarez or ending the genocide in Sudan. The hope is that nonprofits think carefully about how to use their resources - using them in areas where they can be the most effective and make the most difference. Well established groups like Amnesty, with a highly qualified board of directors and professional staff, distribute their resources strategically and calculate where they can have the most impact (even as they believe that one human rights violation shouldn't have to be prioritized over another). We prioritize whether we want to or not, but hopefully we do so consciously.
If you measured where you spend your resources - your money, your time, and your influence with others - what would it reveal about your priorities (whether or not you've consciously chosen them)? My first priority is me, followed by the nonprofit I run... Minecraft probably lands in my top 10. The causes that I really care about could rank a lot higher if I thought more about my priorities. I wonder how many of us unintentionally prioritize coffee over feeding a hungry child, alcohol over safe drinking water for a family in a third world county, or new clothes over a life-altering surgery for a poor woman.
Props to my friends at PETA, who can honestly say that the majority of their personal resources go toward making real, lasting change in our world.
-Selfish Blogger
We live in a world of limited resources, so organizations like Amnesty operate with limited resources too. The act of distributing those resources is an act of prioritization. The staff hours spent, the volunteers mobilized, the leaflets printed to stay that man's execution were staff hours and volunteers and leaflets that didn't go toward helping women in Juarez or ending the genocide in Sudan. The hope is that nonprofits think carefully about how to use their resources - using them in areas where they can be the most effective and make the most difference. Well established groups like Amnesty, with a highly qualified board of directors and professional staff, distribute their resources strategically and calculate where they can have the most impact (even as they believe that one human rights violation shouldn't have to be prioritized over another). We prioritize whether we want to or not, but hopefully we do so consciously.
If you measured where you spend your resources - your money, your time, and your influence with others - what would it reveal about your priorities (whether or not you've consciously chosen them)? My first priority is me, followed by the nonprofit I run... Minecraft probably lands in my top 10. The causes that I really care about could rank a lot higher if I thought more about my priorities. I wonder how many of us unintentionally prioritize coffee over feeding a hungry child, alcohol over safe drinking water for a family in a third world county, or new clothes over a life-altering surgery for a poor woman.
Props to my friends at PETA, who can honestly say that the majority of their personal resources go toward making real, lasting change in our world.
-Selfish Blogger
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