The GiveWell Blog

Straw man? Or 75% of the population?

I’ve been ranting about how ridiculous it is to judge a charity by the % of its funds that go to administrative expenses, which I’ve dubbed the “Straw Ratio” because I was too lazy to find a prominent advocate of it so I just invented a Straw Man. Well, it turns out there quite a…

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Food, friendz, and figuring out how to improve the world

Elie and I had lunch with three people representing the Children’s Aid Society (CAS) yesterday. At this point we aren’t used to having meetings without a wiki handy for note-taking – and dealing with corn chowder at the same time intensified the challenge – but here are the highlights of what I remember: The meeting…

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Our first content-less meta-post!

I don’t have time for a real post today and I did two yesterday, so here are some scattered comments about what you can expect over the next few weeks: First off, there’s a blog carnival – which is an awful name for what I would prefer to call a “blogozine,” a collection of posts…

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One more thing

“I’ve got a great new charitable venture. What I’m going to do is separate the S&P 500 into socially responsible and socially irresponsible companies. I’ll go long the good companies and short the bad ones.* Of course, I’ll be doing this for altruism, not out of any knowledge of the companies – so I might…

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More thoughts on “responsible investing”

The debate on responsible investing continues, including some thought-provoking discussion of “blended value.” People are pointing out, rightly, that being profitable vs. being beneficial to society is not an either-or. A charitable foundation can make investments that it expects to recoup partly or fully, and still think of these as part of its charitable activities…

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I’m basically fine with investing in evil

I have plenty more ranting to do on the Straw Ratio, but apparently blogs are supposed to discuss current events or something, and the big story in charity blogging (yeah, charity blogging is a thing–I knew it wasn’t going to take much more time to get going than food blogging) is “social investing.” Specifically, the…

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