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For anyone even more skeptical of where your money goes when you donate to a nonprofit, there are plenty of resources out there for researching this. CharityNav
by dklax77 7mo ago
For anyone even more skeptical of where your money goes when you donate to a nonprofit, there are plenty of resources out there for researching this. CharityNavigator is a popular one, but I donate primarily to GiveWell: https://www.givewell.org https://www.givewell.org
- morkalork 7mo agoBut which is more trustworthy? We need a charity watcher-watcher to tell us.
- bilbo0s 7mo agoThis is getting downvoted, but it's a salient point nowadays. Who watches the watchers? Because if it's no one, then all we're doing is vouching for what could easily be scams set up by who knows who to steer our money to dubious organizations for who knows what purpose. We shouldn't trust the watchers any more than we should trust, say, Feed the Children. Or Medecins Sans Frontiers. All these organizations should be watched in a comprehensive fashion.
- Recursing 7mo agoThe organization I work for does something similar and positively evaluated GiveWell in November 2025 (see https://docs.google.com/document/d/1U9H34ui_hvnPOwvsvcZF3VCC2ZDVrFiwgtptp4quXI8/edit?usp=drivesdk https://docs.google.com/document/d/1U9H34ui_hvnPOwvsvcZF3VCC... ) Personally, the more I look into GiveWell the more I think it's an amazing way to donate
- morkalork 7mo ago>Recursing apt username
- mtweak 7mo agoNot wrong
- myroon5 7mo agohttps://www.givingwhatwecan.org/2025-evaluator-research https://www.givingwhatwecan.org/2025-evaluator-research
- cm2012 7mo agoI use watsi.org since its been reliably vouched for on HN for a long time now
- hybrid_study 7mo agoyou beat me to it (_/\_)
- throw__away7391 7mo agoI worked with a large number of these so called "legitimate" charities and after what I saw I will never give a penny to any non-profit. You will have far, far more impact figuring out something you care about and directly spending $100 to accomplish that than giving $5000 to any of these organizations.
- cm2012 7mo agoIn what respect did you work with them? What is your main complaint? As far as I know, top GiveWell charities give malaria nets and stuff and it saves lives at fairly efficient rates.
- patmorgan23 7mo agoMalaria nets are band-aids, what really needs to happen is building up institutions and infrastructure that make the nets unnecessary.
- cm2012 7mo agoIts easier to build institutions without malaria making you sick all the time.
- dmix 7mo agoBurkina Faso was one of Bill Gates biggest donation spots and it's had an endless series of unstable leaderships, insurgencies and coups in the last decade. This scares away both foreign investment and foreign aid. Countries like that have made lots of economic progress but seem to be stuck in this endless cycle of instability which is the bigger issue if the solution is to develop proper industry and proper modern housing sealed from insects.
- cm2012 7mo agoJust because Bill Gates didn't solve all issues in Burkina Faso doesn't mean the donations were meaningless. Burkina Faso's GDP per capita has quadrupled since Bill Gates started donating, in addition to a lot of lifestyle indicators like child health and child mortality and so on. You certainly can't say his intervention made things worse.
- Simulacra 7mo agoIt's a start, but it's woefully inadequate. Just take the ARRL, which is supposed to be a nonprofit organization for ham radio. They waste money on lobbyists working on absolutely pointless endeavors, and achieve nothing. But don't worry, all of the executives are well paid.