Imagine that someone came to you with an idea for a startup business and offered you a chance to invest in it. Which of the following would you require before taking the plunge? Familiarity with (or at least a lot of information about) the people behind the project Very strong knowledge of the project’s “space”…
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The most important problem may not be the best charitable cause
I recently ran across a charity called Project AK-47 that declares: Over 100,000 kids are carrying machine guns in the armies of Southeast Asia. Instead of walking to school, they march to war. Instead of playing, they train to kill. If we don’t intervene, most of these children will be soldiers for at least 7…
Measurement is not as common as it should be. Why?
The idea that there should be more measurement appears to be one of the points of widest agreement in the literature on aid. But we believe that agreement in principle is unlikely to mean much until donors (both large and small) act on it. It isn’t enough to request better information; we need to reserve…
The root causes of poverty
GiveWell generally focuses on the question of how to get “bang for your buck” as a donor – help as many people as possible, as much as possible. Against this approach, one might seek to factor in the potential of a program to get at the “root causes” of poverty, and start – or be…