To me, the most interesting part of the recent discussion of FORGE (see the last several posts on Tactical Philanthropy) is the disclosure that moving to a more effective model directly caused a loss of revenue, because it lowered volunteer involvement.

In a nutshell, FORGE runs programs for refugee communities; it shifted from having volunteers manage the programs to having the refugees themselves manage them. (More here). I’ll take FORGE at its word that the refugees were easier to manage (it’s plausible to me that they were more plugged into their communities and therefore more effective).

But apparently, the lack of work for volunteers translated directly into a loss of funding, because volunteers doubled as fundraisers. Logically, I’d think that if you were volunteering for a cause you were passionate about, and then you were released in order to make the program more effective, you would now be more excited (not to mention having more time) to raise money from your friends. But that isn’t what happened.

This story matches with anecdotes we’ve heard from many people in the nonprofit sector, claiming that volunteers are essentially useless in program terms (i.e., they cost more time to manage than the value they add). I believe that to many charities, using volunteers is a way to get people personally involved with, excited about, and personally invested in the organization so that they’ll donate and fundraise, the real value-added.

I’ve generally found that adding a new person into a work process nearly always costs a lot of time, especially up front, for training and managing. It can be worth it if (a) they’re going to put in enough hours to overcome that cost eventually; (b) the task they’re working on is extremely well-defined, meaning minimal management. As we get more systematic about our research process, we are able to use volunteers more effectively (and in fact have several working well now, with more slots open); but there have been times in the past when we’ve had far more requests for volunteer work than useful things for people to do. (When this has happened we’ve simply turned away the volunteers – our policy is to take volunteers only when we have good work for them.)

Next time you’re thinking of volunteering for a charity, ask yourself if you’re looking to do good or feel good. If the former, take a hard look at whether what you’re doing is really worth as much to the charity as a donation.

(As a side note on FORGE: I applaud FORGE’s honesty about past mistakes in this area. I agree with Sean’s claim that “in a world with limited transparency, we need to celebrate transparency on its own.” And I even think that there’s some argument to be made for promoting and supporting FORGE just for showing unusual honesty. However, I also agree with with Curtis Chang that FORGE hasn’t yet made a good case for its actual impact on people’s lives.)

In addition to our charity-specific investigations, we’re looking to review as much literature as possible on the following questions. Note that these were originally posted to our email list, before it went public.

1. What is the evidence that aid works/has worked at all? That it has caused reductions in infant mortality, economic growth, or anything else?
2. Has aid worked better in some parts of the world than others? Are there any broad patterns in where and when aid works (as opposed to what interventions)?
3. Can we expect health aid to create economic growth? Can we expect economic aid to work in areas where health is poor?
4. Why have some parts of the world emerged from poverty while others haven’t? Is there anything aid can do to make the former more likely? (#2 is about whether aid has accomplished proximate goals like improving health – #3 asks what the biggest success stories are and whether there’s any plausible case that aid *could* accelerate them.)
5. What are the risks of aid causing harm, and what evidence is there for their severity? Possibly ways that aid can cause harm include:
   • Overpopulation due to declining mortality
   • Crowding out government aid; encouraging governments to remain corrupt
   • Talent drain: turning all of Africa’s brightest into health/aid workers
   • Economic distortion: outcompeting private farmers and for-profit aid companies with subsidized prices
6. What is the current allocation of aid across the world? How much of it is going to programs that don’t work or aren’t proven? How much of it is going to programs that appear overfunded?
7. How can one determine whether an intervention is funded to capacity?

Via Joanne Jacobs: San Francisco Chronicle reports that Oklahoma and Georgia have seen no improvement on achievement test scores since implementing universal preschool programs. It also refers to a discouraging-sounding large-scale study of Tennessee’s preschool program, although it doesn’t give a specific citation (and I can’t find one online).

A couple things to keep in mind:

• All of the discouraging results cited here refer to achievement test scores. Possible impacts on mental health, later life outcomes, etc. are not discussed.
• The Tennessee finding is reported as excluding “at-risk kids.” We’ve always thought it very possible that early childhood care is most beneficial to at-risk children, and indeed that the gains for such children may account for the entire observed effects.

Our existing position on large-scale preschool programs is that no strong evidence exists for their effectiveness. The programs discussed here are unusually high-intensity programs, so the findings do call into question whether replicating the encouraging results of model programs is even theoretically possible.

Note that none of this discussion pertains directly to our current top charity in early childhood care, the Nurse-Family Partnership (our review here).

Malaria is one of sub-Saharan Africa’s biggest killers; lymphatic filariasis is one of its most debilitating. Malaria matters reports on new efforts to combat both at once, as they are both mosquito-transmitted. We’re surprised that there isn’t a longer history of such efforts.

Donors interested in microfinance shouldn’t miss the recent posts by Philanthropy Action. Note that Philanthropy Action is co-edited by Timothy Ogden, a member of our Board of Directors.

The coverage discusses papers that we don’t yet see at Innovators for Poverty Action (co-host of the conference and a favorite source of ours). To me the two most interesting posts are:

• A challenge to the conventional wisdom that microfinance should target women. Personally, I don’t find the analysis here very compelling – it’s looking at grants, not loans, and as such the characteristics of clients could be very different from those of a typical microfinance program. I’d be very interested in seeing the same analysis for loans.
• The results of the first true randomized controlled trial on a microcredit program – finding “no impact of access to credit on outcomes for education, health, or women’s empowerment.” This directly contradicts our current, weakly optimistic take, not to mention conventional wisdom. We eagerly anticipate checking this paper out once it becomes available.

As a reminder, our blog is a personal and informal forum, and does not represent the official views of GiveWell. Our About This Blog page states:

While our main site features researched and edited content, aiming to present all our information in a neutral way for you to make your own decisions, our blog is highly personal. Posts do not represent the official views of GiveWell; they represent the unfiltered opinions of project members, who may (and often do) disagree with each other.

We aim to share all of our thoughts relating to the choices faced by individual donors. The Prop 8 issue strikes me as a particularly good opportunity, to the point where I’ve made a personal donation partly on “ROI” grounds (as opposed to purely personal grounds); so I’ve posted my personal decision and reasoning. In general, we have a principle of full disclosing our values and biases, rather than denying or hiding them.

However, GiveWell the organization, as represented by the Board of Directors as well as Elie and me, does not officially endorse or oppose Proposition 8 (and the donation I referred to was a personal one).