We recently argued that Smile Train has “more dollars than doctors” for its core program. In that light, yesterday’s Virginian-Pilot article (which quotes me) is interesting: The main story is that Smile Train has been trying to make substantial and unrestricted grants to another major cleft surgery charity, Operation Smile. This despite the fact that…
The GiveWell Blog
Month: December 2009
Going deeper on “room for more funding”: Underfunded grant proposals
We previously discussed some simple ways to get at the difficult question of “room for more funding.” One approach that has been more difficult than expected is asking charities themselves to help figure out where more funds are likely to go – answers tend to be vague and tend to target what the charities think…
Some simple ways to check “room for more funding”
We have been struggling with the “room for more funding” question since the first days of GiveWell, and we have gradually developed a variety of approaches to it. The most basic approach, and the one we’ve used for most of our history, consists of the following: Gain confidence in an entire organization; do not overfocus…
“Room for more funding” continued: Why donation restricting isn’t the easy answer
Yesterday we discussed the difficult question of “room for more funding”: how can a donor determine how more funding will translate to more activities? One common practice is to try to “force” your donation to fund the activities that attract you. Charities will formally honor your restriction by allocating your funds to the program in…
An essential question that no one is asking charities
If a charity demonstrates that its core program has changed lives in the past, is likely to change lives in the future, and gets great “bang for your buck,” is this enough reason to donate to it? We say no. The missing piece: Will more funding lead to more of the good program(s)? We generally…
Charity isn’t about helping?
One person who’s more critical of charity than we are or than David Hunter is is the economist Robin Hanson. He has stated that “charity isn’t about helping” and spelled out this view somewhat in a post about the founder of Rite Aid: when folks like Alex spend their later years trying to “do good”…