Jenny Aker and Michael Clemens: “Privately and publicly, donors, MFIs and practitioners are expressing concern about the impact of [recent] studies on the future of microfinance.” David Roodman: “I’ve been surprised by the predominant negativity of the new wave of comments from the NYT article.” Ultimately, the idea of “true” person-to-person lending is somewhat silly,…
The GiveWell Blog
All posts by Holden
Chess in the Schools
The New York Times recently profiled Chess in the Schools: The Chess-in-the-Schools program has sought to foster analytical skills on the theory that these will help students succeed academically. The group teaches 20,000 children a year and calculates that it has taught 425,000 children since 1986. Children gather to learn the game at the group’s…
Perspectives on donor irrationality
Jeanne Panossian left two very interesting comments on our blog discussing donor irrationality, from the point of view of someone running a small charity. On donor illusions: ” … It takes extraordinary ethical fortitude to openly tell people how complicated your organization is, normally a donor has made their basic decision in the first 15…
My greatest fear about microfinance
How much of microfinance’s popularity in the world of philanthropy comes straight from this story? I was shocked to discover a woman in the village, borrowing less than a dollar from the money-lender, on the condition that he would have the exclusive right to buy all she produces at the price he decides. This, to…
The Carter Center
Early in 2009, we were extremely excited about The Carter Center. It seemed so strong that we devoted weeks to understanding it in depth. As discussed in a blog post we made at the time, several of its programs work on extremely promising “neglected tropical disease control” activities, and there’s a truly unusual amount of…
Medicine and philanthropy
David Leonhardt’s excellent piece on health care reminded me of the debates within philanthropy. For most of human history … [doctors’] treatments consisted of inducing vomiting or diarrhea and, most common of all, bleeding their patients … Yet patients continued to go to doctors, and many continued to put great in faith in medicine ……