
The Greatest Good: What is the best charitable cause in the world? - nkurz
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/06/what-is-the-greatest-good/395768?single_page=true
======
noname123
Can't believe, no one has posted this yet.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GiveWell](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GiveWell)

"GiveWell is an American non-profit charity evaluator and effective altruism-
focused organization.[5][6] Unlike any other charity evaluators, GiveWell
focuses primarily on the cost-effectiveness of the organizations that it
evaluates, rather than traditional metrics such as the percentage of the
organization's budget that is spent on overhead.[6][7] GiveWell recommends
several charities per year. In 2014, its top recommendations were the Against
Malaria Foundation, GiveDirectly, the Schistosomiasis Control Initiative, and
the Deworm the World Initiative."

~~~
theycallhimtom
I'm guessing no one posted it because there was a whole section in the
original article on GiveWell.

~~~
snowai
Also [http://www.agorafund.org](http://www.agorafund.org) Allows you to give
to basket of charities selected based on principles from effective altruism.

~~~
rancar2
Just an FYI that the "administration fee is 5%. Additional PayPal processing
fees may apply." [http://www.agorafund.org/terms-of-
service/](http://www.agorafund.org/terms-of-service/)

------
reasonattlm
Clearly the SENS Research Foundation, as a 501c3 charity that gives you the
80/20 win for a good expectation value for your dollars to do the most good in
speeding up progress towards ending age-related disease. If you want to do
better than the SRF at assigning dollars to speeding up progress towards
ending age-related disease, you're going to have to spend some years reading
research and making connections. (I wish more people would, actually, no such
thing as too much help here).

Age-related disease kills ~100,000 people every day, and causes horrible day
to day suffering for hundreds of millions of others. Nothing else comes even
close as a single presently addressable cause of terrible things in the world,
and lack of money is the greatest obstacle to progress towards meaningful
treatments that address the root causes of aging and thus all age-related
disease.

~~~
rayiner
What indication is there that living longer would serve the greater good?
People living longer = fewer births assuming stable population, and a greater
percentage of life spent in older years. Even if you can make those older
years healthy, you'll never be able to capture the uncomplicated wonder and
joy of childhood and adolescence. You'd literally be trading a teenager's
first crush for an 80-year old's third marriage. The aggregate joy of society
will go down if SENS is successful.

~~~
mikekchar
I'm just going to have to guess that you aren't very old. I'm only 47, but I
have to tell you that at least for me life just keeps getting better every
year. I wouldn't trade this year for another year of my teens. I wouldn't
trade this year for _10_ more years in my teens.

Gradually losing health is unfortunate. I have to watch what I eat and be
careful with my lifestyle due to chronic illness. My vision has degraded
pretty badly and I'm forced to use a really gigantic font when I'm programming
(you don't want to know how much time I spend fiddling with my colours!).
These things pale in comparison to simply knowing what makes me happy.

I've worked hard to learn to be happy. Again, at least for me, I don't think
happiness is something that is given to you. It's something that you make
yourself. I suppose some people have a talent for it, like everything else,
but it's something that you can work on and get better at. Without trying to
sound arrogant there is no way that a child can have the kind of happiness
that I have every day, because they simply do not have the experience to do
it. They have a tumble of conflicting emotions which they have no control
over. You couldn't pay me to do that again.

~~~
rayiner
I'm 31, with a toddler. I can't compare anything I do with the joy she gets
out of the most mundane things. The first time she tasted chocolate? Blows me
going to Alinea out of the water.

~~~
homunculus
I'm not trying to disagree with you, I have a 7 month old son, but what about
the joy you felt seeing her being born? I know that isn't a mundane thing and
that you likely won't have it but a few more times but there are experiences
that children can't have, that are, at least, as transcendent as a child's
first taste of chocolate.

~~~
rayiner
But that's precisely the thing. In a stable population, births per year are
inversely proportional to life expectancy. So whatever joy seeing a child born
brings to people, there will necessarily be less of that per year aggregated
over the whole society. A society where everyone lives longer is necessarily
one with a smaller proportion of joyful idealistic children and a higher
percentage of cynical jaded older people.

------
JoeAltmaier
This resonates with me. I remember reading of a Stanford graduate who was
delivering meals to indigents in San Francisco and the Bay Area. I immediately
thought: how selfish. To give up a possibly lucrative employment in finance,
so she could personally experience charitable work, was a net loss to that
organization. Why not work on Wall Street and donate 90% of her income
instead?

This is a real choice. Joining the Peace Corp or helping rebuild levys after a
flood is humbling, giving and selfish, all at once. Instead work at what you
can do best; then donate so others can do the real work. This is practical
selflessness.

~~~
waxymonkeyfrog
Joe, this is Derek, the author of the piece linked above. I think you make a
good point. When I first heard Will explain "earning to give," a part of me
considered it off-putting and radical, but I've come to see it as an expansive
view of doing good, because I think there are a lot of people who (a) wouldn't
be good at charitable work or (b) would be good at charitable work but are
better at - and enjoy! - other work. For these people, it's inspiring to think
they can make a huge difference, too.

There is always the question: What happens if you discourage too many
wonderful, smart people from working at charities? And here, Will's answer
would be, I think, that if that starts happening, then we should reevaluate
the advice. But for now, I think, the earning to give philosophy carries
tremendous upside for getting more people to think of themselves as essential
contributors to charitable causes, no matter where they work.

~~~
vacri
As a counterpoint, a friend of mine was knocked by when she volunteered for a
local charity. "What qualifications do you have?"

The question sounds elitist, but the point was that charities often have
metric shitloads of untrained helping hands. What they need, right now, is
people that know how to manage, run finances, computer networking. Advanced
skillsets.

I actually think the 'earning to give' mindset would really just end up as
more consciential salve rather than a new way of thinking, much like people
already do with minor donations. "Working on Wall St" _changes the way you
think_. Case in point: another friend of mine was in a relationship with a
hardcore Anarchist for 5 years, and came from a poorish middle-class
background herself. She'd worked shitty working class jobs. She was pretty
exposed to the plight of the poor and aware of poverty issues. Then she got a
job in banking. A year later she got a raise of $10k, and she was negative
about it, bitching about "the government taking half in tax" and it going to
"useless welfare". Complaining that despite her tax load (seriously, got a
raise, and all she could do was complain), she still had to help out her
single-mother sister with money. Welfare was worthless, why should she have to
pay so much tax? She got a bit of a shock when I said "So... what about all
those other women like your sister who don't have a sister in banking?".

And here in our software bubble, I have a friend who earns 50% more than the
national average household income (average, not median). He talks as if he's
poor - and I see similar when I read conversations here on HN. It's awfully
common for a software developer to see someone else doing the same thing and
making a few dollars more, to then reclassify themselves as 'poor'.

The point is that where you work and who you associate with _change who you
are_ and how you behave - and, ultimately, have a good chance of removing
people from the pool of 'people who care' (like my banker friend above). I
guess that it's not that she didn't _care_ , it's just that she no longer
_saw_...

~~~
willmacaskill
I think that's a really important concern. At 80,000 Hours when we encourage
people to earn to give we ensure they're embedded in the effective altruism
community, take things like the Giving What We Can Pledge and so on -
mechanisms by which to ensure that our future selves don't fail to live up to
our ideals.

It's also worth bearing in mind that the rate of people becoming disillusioned
when they do direct work in charities also (anecdotally seems to me) to be
very high. Reason is that it's often very hard, often you don't feel like
you're having much of an impact. Whereas if you enjoy working in the lucrative
career you're in, the 'sacrifice' of donating even 50% isn't really that
great, so it's potentially easier to continue in that path. I'm genuinely
really unsure which has the greater dropout rate: earning to give, or direct
charity work. If I had to bet I'd say it was direct charity work.

------
reddog
Wow. This is a tough crowd. Its not enough to generously give your time and
money to charity, you have to have an effective data driven approach to your
giving or you suck. And if you can bill at $500 an hour, no helping out at the
soup kitchen for you -- that an inefficient use of societies resources. Back
to your cubicle, work some extra hours and give it to whatever causes our
models say are best. Kind of a cold and sterile way to approach giving.

~~~
ThrustVectoring
There's generally two things people want to accomplish out of charitable
giving - making the world a better place, and the "warm fuzzies" of helping
out.

The fact that getting the warm fuzzies isn't a particularly good way of making
the world better doesn't mean that you can't get the fuzzies, too. It just
means that there's a tradeoff involved, which means you want to make the best
tradeoff you can between the two.

Go ahead and volunteer at the soup kitchen while you make $500, or even $5000
per hour. I particularly encourage it if you find it emotionally rewarding or
motivating for the nitty-gritty work of making the world better.

------
willmacaskill
Hey - I'm the guy described in the post - if anyone wants to ask me about
anything to do with effective altruism, 80,000 Hours, Giving What We Can,
GiveWell (which I didn't cofound but is part of the same charitable movement),
or what Derek Thompson's household habits are, please do so! :)

~~~
Frompo
Some of the charities mentioned are clearly advocating for policy change
(lifting copyright and restructured tax schemes), and I think that generally
all charities must decide how to relate to the current structure of the world
because whatever the ill you are campaigning against preventive measure are
most effective at preventing suffering. So one question is if you see any
natural limit for when something goes from a charity to a political campaign
and vice versa. For instance, imagine the bizarre scenario where a
presidential candidate pledges a significant increase to foreign humanitarian
aid by taking from the foreign military aid budget. Will make that candidacy a
worthwhile charity (supposing the bizarro candidate has reasonable probability
of winning)?

An unrelated question is: why do you think there are so few investment
opportunities that are truly concerned with being ethical? The GiveWell
founders seems like they could have made an investment fund dedicated to
growing local companies in the poorer parts of the world. Direct cash
transfers are among the best ways of helping the poor, but stable financing
with modest return expectations seems like it could be pretty good too, with
the benefit of slightly growing the capital available to help. Or you could
imagine getting a significant amount of shares in Shell and turn up at
shareholders meetings and make them repair their pipelines properly and such
things.

~~~
willmacaskill
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.

------
Spooky23
Charity is about the donor as much as the recipient. Skip the pseudo-
scientific horseshit and do something that matters to you.

Personally, I tutor a couple of kids in math every once in awhile, donate to a
couple of religious organizations, a zoo, a local social services org, and a
few museums. I find it fulfilling. One of my best friends is devoted to a
particular state park -- he does trail cleanup something like 18 weekends a
year.

Going down some philosophical rabbit hole where your life is essentially a
dick measuring contest to figure out who is most selfless doesn't really do it
for me.

Skip the measurement and do something real.

~~~
sgentle
This is the worst kind of anti-intellectual nonsense. Do something real? What
does that even mean? Are malaria nets not real to you?

Instead of waving off the serious efforts of a large group of people to figure
out how to do the most good in the world as "dick measuring", I would
encourage you to consider why you find the idea of comparing different forms
of altruism so abhorrent that you refuse to even consider it as anything other
than a source of cheap jibes.

Perhaps you consider the lives of people in your community to be more valuable
than others. Perhaps you are less concerned with the good you do than how good
it makes you feel. Perhaps you believe that charity is only meaningful if
aligned with some higher power.

All of those would be meaningful arguments, but instead all you've given is an
invective against thinking. Why? What good could that possibly do?

------
oska
Providing women access to contraception and pregnancy termination services is
what I personally identify as one of the best charitable causes.

Helping women prevent the birth of unwanted children who will, on average,
lead worse lives than wanted children but who will still put additional strain
on the world's environment seems a very clear case of a worthy cause to me.

An example charity in this area is Marie Stopes International [1].

[1] [http://www.mariestopes.org](http://www.mariestopes.org)

------
mmrasheed
My two cents... Open your startup in the third world, developing countries.
Or, at least lead some people in those regions to grow their own problem
solving skills with IT and engineering. Or, travel to those regions with your
targeted donation savings and see the suffering of humans.

If charity means donating the money we think we no longer need, then we should
go for any of the charity foundations mentioned in other comments. But the
real charity would be to take our butts off our comfort zones, travel to the
targeted countries, experience the real suffering of humans, and to find out
how we can contribute with our top notch expertise in IT and engineering. Even
discovering hidden prospects in those regions and nurturing them for local
socio-economic development would be cool charitable work. Even, opening our
startups and employing local people would contribute more significantly in
those regions than millions of dollars in donations to those named charity
foundations. It will not only improve our skill in practical problem solving,
it will also enhance our spirituality.

~~~
willmacaskill
I think that startups where the users are principally people in poor countries
is a very promising area for socially minded people to work in.

Startups usually (but not always) generate value for their users in the form
of consumer surplus. Because of diminishing marginal utility of money, $1 of
consumer surplus in poor countries is worth 10x or more than $1 of consumer
surplus in rich countries.

Some examples: Wave (YC alum) is making sending remittances cheaper (taking
only 3% rather than 10% like Western Union). $0.4 trillion in remittances are
sent every year. Segovia is making benefit payments in India more efficient,
so that only 10% in lost in transactions rather than 50% as is currently the
case. Both of these in my view have massive social value (and are run by
people in the effective altruism community).

------
marincounty
I use the free preview at www.guidestar.org. I then download the 1040's that
are available. I go over the balance sheet. I look at the BOD. I scrutinize
every page in that download. I try to guesstimate how much funding goes to the
founders, and administration.

I then look at who's making the most money, including expenses, at the
nonprofit. I have found too many people use nonprofits to support a
comfortable lifestyle, and the cause comes second to their comfort. I have
found, in too many cases, one person(many times--a husband, and wife) makes a
lot of money, and the nonprofit doesn't seem to do much! This works for
smaller nonprofits.

As to the larger nonprofits--many make me sick. That money could go to other
causes. Off the top of my head these are the large nonprofits that need a
through forensic review before donating to: (1) Goodwill (2) Cars for kids
(when I reviewed this organization, they had one home in the Sierra foothills
for, I believe--12 children, and most of their money was spent on
advertising.) (3) St. Jude (correct me if I'm mistaken, but I heard they have
enough money to survive for the next 100 years, and that's accounting for
inflation, and growth?)

I love nonprofits. I just want to make sure that cause gets the money, or
expertise. I'm tired of the scams.

------
netcan
A point on "best."

There seems to be a lot of interest, some coming from the tech culture of
evaluating charity and its efficiency. This is a good thing and could make a
lot of difference. But for an individual that wants to give, you don't
necessarily need it. You just need to find _a_ destination for your donation.
Try to understand that single organisation.

I like the idea of simple things where the money = thing equation is
understandable. For example, I have a distant cousin in the Philippines who
builds "houses" for squatters with arrangements with land owners. It started
after the storm. He lives locally and understands building. It's about £400
per hut. Most of the cost is labour. Materials are largely donated. The crew
are locals that he knows. The recipients are living rough otherwise.

This may not scale to millions, but it works for individual donations. IE, you
can find a charity that has the capacity to take your donation. Understand
what they do and make an effective choice. It's a much easier problem to solve
than the "how to make global donations more effective" problem and is really
the problem at hand when _you_ make a choice.

Also..

 _Why was I doing it? Maybe the donation was the equivalent of an agnostic’s
prayer, on the off-chance the supernatural listens to altruism._

I like that. I'd apply an atheist version for myself. A prayer to human
solidarity and fraternity, the things I hope for. I don't expect to make these
things happen personally, but I can offer my prayer.

~~~
rictic
> You just need to find a destination for your donation.

The effective altruism counterpoint is that the same £400 is just about the
amount necessary to save a life from malaria or schistosomiasis. Usually a
child. The last number I saw was that ~$800 to one of GiveWell's top charities
can be expected to save a life.

The "how to make global donations" problem is hard, but it's important, and
we're fortunate that great work and research has been done. Let's use it to
put our charitable donations to their best use!

~~~
netcan
The choices between putting a roof over a family in The Philippines and saving
a child from malaria in Myanmar is an impossible one. Information can't solve
it.

I have nothing against Give Well's approach. I think it is important. I'm just
making the point that at a personal choice level, the "problem" is a lot more
solvable. You only need to know about one charity, really.

~~~
rictic
It's possible that I don't understand your response, because I don't see why
one only needs to know about one charity. On reflection, I don't think that it
is an impossible problem either. It's making uncomfortable tradeoffs - which
stopped me from considering this sort of question for a long time - but I've
come to believe that these questions are too important to flinch away from.

One thought experiment to consider: suppose the homeless family themselves had
to choose between a free wooden house or lifesaving medical care for their
child. What would most families choose? What would you choose in their place?
Is there a right answer?

------
Havoc
While not directly related to the article's line of reasoning, an honourable
mention goes to the Gates foundation - they're willing to take on some of the
more "risky" high risk high reward projects that other charities that are
accountable to the public can't risk.

~~~
justinator
My only question for the Gates Foundation is this: Didn't Mr. Gates make a
vast amount of his incredible wealth using questionable and indeed: illegal
business practices? There's the right place at the right time aspect of Mr.
Gates' situation, but there's also bullish nature of it.

Can Mr. Gates now be seen on the moral high road, simply because of the way
he's redistributing the wealth he attained (again: sometimes illegally) to
those very less fortunate? Do we just say, "Shit Outta Luck" to his
competitors?

I don't want these questions to be rhetorical, I'm actually very much
interested in other people's opinions and point of view.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Microsoft](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Microsoft)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_litigation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_litigation)

~~~
jbhatab
Irrelevant. We're talking about what he is doing while on top. There are more
than enough examples of people on top that are doing nearly nothing to better
the world.

~~~
dzhiurgis
Steve Jobs used to claim that best charity is doing business.

I (currently) think that best I can do is invest in myself, a.i. skip
entertainment and study hard things.

------
JesperRavn
For every dollar you earn, around 35% will be taken by the government and used
for things most of which could be classified as "charitable". Just because you
don't get a choice about taxation, doesn't mean that the choice to earn more
money it isn't an effective form of altruism. And just because the government
budget is huge, doesn't mean there isn't a 1-to-1 correspondence in the long
run between how much the government taxes, and how much it can spend. (EDIT:
and for actual charity, I go with Malaria. Dying sucks).

------
rikkus
The definition of charity seems to be giving money to those in need, but I
prefer a less specific definition: Helping those in need. To do this, you can
give money to 'charities', or you could perhaps try to help with systemic
problems by attempting to effect wider change: If you're able to influence
your country's government, isn't this more likely to have more effect,
especially in the long run?

------
foolinaround
one angle not addressed is there could be a social contract and relationship
between the donor and the recipient.

This currently assumes a single transaction, but what if the recipient had a
way to pay it back and/or pay it forward? If the donor had the opportunity to
view the results of the donation, the satisfaction from it and the
relationship obtained makes the sacrifice worth it.

If there was a system that helped to track it with the various privacy and
other concerns, that would be so awesome!

------
mari_says
Charity is the opposity of justice. It preserves a state of things, a division
among those who give and those who take. The best charitable cause is a world
without it.

------
onoj
My thoughts would be: 1) sponsor the private schooling of an orphan or
disadvantaged child - if they get the grades you pay direct for the school and
materials. (this system exists for most orphanages in most 2nd and 3rd world
countries but you can start at home.)

2) International work camps for peace - fully volunteer organization and you
get to see another country in a real way and do good work while doing so.

Both are 100% - 100% direct.

------
sai1511
Any service that your heart melts most for.

------
guelo
It seems like simple education would be more effective than directly buying
bed nets. How about subsidizing the cost for whole nations and educating with
billboards?

~~~
SixSigma
A common fallacy is that the donors know best.

It would be wise to consult the works of William Easterly [1] e.g. The White
Man's Burden [2]

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Easterly](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Easterly)

[2]
[http://www.davidmays.org/BN/EasWhit.html](http://www.davidmays.org/BN/EasWhit.html)

------
vmorgulis
Red Hook Initiative Center did a wifi mesh network.

[http://rhicenter.org/author/tony/](http://rhicenter.org/author/tony/)

I like this kind of ideas.

------
danieltillett
The greatest good will be accomplished by developing synthetic labour (AI).
This will generate so much profit that even a tiny taxation rate (0.001%) will
allow everyone to live as billionaires do now and allow us to solve all other
problems caused by (relative) poverty.

~~~
technomancy
Right, because the human race has a really good track record of allowing the
benefits of technological productivity increases to impact the poor in a
positive way.

~~~
danieltillett
Have you ever wondered why we are all so much richer today (even the poor)
than in the past? It is not because people decided the way to solve poverty
was charity. It is only because we have replaced human labor with artificial
labor.

More seriously once you have synthetic labor all the reasons for scarcity and
exploitation of the poor end. Sure there will still be people who are on the
bottom of society's pecking order, but their actual standard of living will be
far beyond those of our richest today.

~~~
technomancy
I think I get what you're saying, but even in Star Trek this doesn't work
without a source of essentially-perpetual energy.

~~~
danieltillett
It is pretty lucky that we are only 93 million miles away from exactly that :)

I actually did the calculations back in the early 1990s of how many dollars
you could generate by capturing all the solar output combined with synthetic
labor. It is something on the order of 10^24 times the entire world GDP. When
you have that level of resources then scarcity ceases to be a concern.

~~~
technomancy
TBH I do agree that this is possible; I just think we have a long way to go as
a civilization just in terms of basic human empathy and decency in addition to
the technical challenges. And the technical challenges pale in the face of the
sociological ones. I think that a lot of the oppression that happens in the
world isn't driven by scarcity but by bigotry and prejudice.

~~~
danieltillett
I think it is a bit of a circle - our economic system requires bigotry and
prejudice and these in turn help support our current economic system. Break
the need for oppression of the poor and my hope is we stop oppressing.

~~~
technomancy
I hope you're right! A lot of the assumptions surrounding scarcity are so
deeply-ingrained into the way we think that it's difficult to speculate on
what would happen otherwise.

