4 ms·

I came across this a while ago http://www.givewell.org/ http://www.givewell.org/ It looked like a way to find more effective charities. What do you guys think?

michaelhoffman 13y ago
I first came across GiveWell when their principals engaged in dishonest behavior to pump it up on MetaFilter, an incident which is described here: http://mefiwiki.com/wiki/Givewell http://mefiwiki.com/wiki/Givewell Since then, seeing GiveWell mentioned anywhere leads to an immediate feeling of distrust.
- tedsanders 13y ago
  To be fair, they have devoted a top level navigation link to their page of mistakes. It seems like they try very hard to be transparent these days, even going so far as to publish notes on conversations with charities. But that was a shameful and embarrassing episode for them.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
jseliger 13y ago
Correct. I realize that I've been talking about this book a lot on HN lately, but Ken Stern's With Charity For All discusses both the promise of Givewell and the challenges—specifically, few nonprofits actually measure, or want to measure, the efficaciousness of outcomes. I'm a grant writing consultant who works primarily for nonprofit and public agencies, and by and large I tell clients not to worry about evaluations because funders don't care about them in a substantive way: http://blog.seliger.com/2008/04/24/studying-programs-is-hard-to-do-why-its-hard-to-write-a-compelling-evaluation http://blog.seliger.com/2008/04/24/studying-programs-is-hard.... Yesterday, j_s asked about Dan Pallotta's work, which is in the same vein; if you're interested in this subject, follow j_s's links: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6104569 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6104569. (I wrote more about With Charity For All here: http://blog.seliger.com/2013/06/02/with-charity-for-all-ken-stern-book-discussion/ http://blog.seliger.com/2013/06/02/with-charity-for-all-ken-...).
tedsanders 13y ago
Yes, I think GiveWell is the gold standard for choosing where to give.

michaelhoffman 13y ago

I first came across GiveWell when their principals engaged in dishonest behavior to pump it up on MetaFilter, an incident which is described here: http://mefiwiki.com/wiki/Givewell http://mefiwiki.com/wiki/Givewell Since then, seeing GiveWell mentioned anywhere leads to an immediate feeling of distrust.

tedsanders 13y ago
To be fair, they have devoted a top level navigation link to their page of mistakes. It seems like they try very hard to be transparent these days, even going so far as to publish notes on conversations with charities. But that was a shameful and embarrassing episode for them.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]

jseliger 13y ago

Correct. I realize that I've been talking about this book a lot on HN lately, but Ken Stern's With Charity For All discusses both the promise of Givewell and the challenges—specifically, few nonprofits actually measure, or want to measure, the efficaciousness of outcomes. I'm a grant writing consultant who works primarily for nonprofit and public agencies, and by and large I tell clients not to worry about evaluations because funders don't care about them in a substantive way: http://blog.seliger.com/2008/04/24/studying-programs-is-hard-to-do-why-its-hard-to-write-a-compelling-evaluation http://blog.seliger.com/2008/04/24/studying-programs-is-hard.... Yesterday, j_s asked about Dan Pallotta's work, which is in the same vein; if you're interested in this subject, follow j_s's links: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6104569 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6104569. (I wrote more about With Charity For All here: http://blog.seliger.com/2013/06/02/with-charity-for-all-ken-stern-book-discussion/ http://blog.seliger.com/2013/06/02/with-charity-for-all-ken-...).

tedsanders 13y ago

Yes, I think GiveWell is the gold standard for choosing where to give.