Did I get your attention, political junkies?

So, a lot of people subscribe to the interesting theory that good works are best left to the private sector, not the public sector.

This idea makes sense in a lot of ways. We can all think of examples of services where private companies are 100x more accountable – and therefore efficient and effective – than the government. There’s only one tiny chink in this theory’s armor: in the year 2007, the government is 256 times as good at grantmaking as private foundations.

Beyond Philanthropy sums up why this is, while trying to make the opposite argument: “private consultants on foreign development projects cost government agencies $300,000 per year per head in salary and overhead costs. Private philanthropy annual consulting costs per head were only around $100,000 – less by nearly two thirds.” That’s it in a nutshell: the government has higher overhead. That is to say, the government plans, systematically evaluates, and publicly shares its decisions. Foundations don’t.

Check out the studies that have been done of the TRIO programs, the CCDP, and the work of USAID. They are rigorous, intelligent, and honest. They take a hard look at what’s working and what isn’t. They acknowledge their own limitations. They don’t try to throw sand in your eyes like some of the unbelievable puff pieces churned out by the private sector. And more importantly, they’re online. Want to know why the government is funding a Talent Search program? It’ll tell you. Want to know why Gates gave money to the WHO? Too bad. The pattern is thuddingly consistent … whenever Elie and I see a government agency in a charity’s application, our eyes light up because we know we’re about to get real information.

I’m not trying to be a Red here. In fact, I think the private sector could and should be far better than the government at grantmaking. But I know that it isn’t. Why not? Because in today’s language, “government” equals “controversy” and “charity” equals “Smile, give, shut up, and don’t even think about being critical and negative.” So, in an area (doing good) where results are far removed from “customers,” customers demand results from the government – and let foundations and charities get away with murder or whatever it is they’re doing.

FedEx is more accountable than the post office – start missing deliveries and it’ll go out of business, fast – but foundations and charities, today, are far less accountable than the government. Because we let them be. Because we don’t demand more. It doesn’t have to be that way. But don’t talk to me about the superiority of private giving … until and unless we do a better job with it.

The most common type of evidence non-profits have offered us in defense of their programs are independently produced evaluations. In my experience, though, these evaluations sometimes read more like propoganda than like objective assessments of a program’s impact. I came across one glaring example of this phenomenon when reviewing the Vocational Foundation’s application for a Clear Fund grant in Cause 5.

This report by Public/Private Ventures is generally quite positive about VFI, but the thing that caught my eye was the following statement on page 8: “Of the 87 percent of enrollees who complete skills training, 78 percent are placed in jobs. The placement rate is well above the New York City average of 39.6 percent for youth employment programs.*” VFI is twice as good as average – that sounds great.

But is it? The problem is that pesky asterisk. Following it to the bottom of the page, and reading the tiny type, you’ll find that in fact, the average placement rate for long-term employment and training programs, those that are comparable to VFI’s, is 64%. It’s not clear whether this is the percentage of graduates who are placed – in which case VFI is noticeably higher, at 78%, though still nowhere near twice as good – or whether it’s the percentage of enrollees who are placed, in which case VFI rings in at 68% (87%*78%), almost exactly the same as average. Either way, it looks like P/PV is highlighting a number that they know exaggerates the picture, and burying the more accurate story in a footnote.

The rest of the paper goes on to describe VFI’s method – the student selection process, curriculum, and individualized “case-management” – in attempt to understand why VFI’s method is successful, all with the assumption that the model is successful. And, it makes no attempt to give evidence for particular practices – the assumption underlying the entire paper seems to be that VFI is successful, and therefore everything it does must be “what works.”

Of course, we’ve seen some great studies too, those that work hard to assess whether a program is impactful and don’t fall into the trap of just extolling its virtues.

So, if you’re evaluating, don’t sell. Just give us the facts. And, if you’re reading a report, remember to read with a critical eye.

A couple questions for you. I think Cause 5 is going to come down to these questions.

1. Would you rather grant …

A. A program that helps severely unemployed/undermployed people, with barriers to employment including past convictions & drug abuse, get jobs paying $8-12/hr with no clear career path, such as security guard / nurse’s aid / administrative assistant, or

B. A program that helps already-employed people go from their $8-12/hr jobs to jobs starting around $30k/yr with a clear path to at least ~$40k?

2. Would you rather grant …

A. A program that takes a general-interest population and gets them into relatively white-collar-ish jobs (administrative assistant on the low end; computer support specialist on the high end), at great cost?

B. A program that takes people who are already interested in and capable of a particular, narrower, more “blue-collar” career (nurse’s aid; environmental resource technician; truck driver), spending far less to get them into these (equally well-paying) jobs because it’s primarily about getting them certified?

For (1), we need to know more about the connection between income and living standards in NYC … I personally feel like $8-12/hr does not count as “self-supporting,” especially when supporting a family is an issue, and so I’m leaning toward (B).

For (2), I feel that as long as there are still more people who want help than there are funds to help them, we should help the “low-hanging fruit” first: the people who just need a certification to get the job they want. So, that’s (B) as well.

What do you think?

I’m right sick of all the jabber about all the wonderful things that giving does for the giver.

Don’t get me wrong. I think that giving is beautiful. Yet, as soon as that becomes the reason you give, it becomes about 10x less beautiful to me. I think that giving because of what it does for you – whether you call it happiness or fulfillment or what – is crass and misguided and yuck.

And generally, this kind of giving looks very different from the kind I prefer. When the donor gives in order to achieve happiness or fulfillment or any other feeling, the donor is probably giving to his own town, or his own “people” (ethnicity, nationality), or whatever random disease has affected him personally. And making sure the gift is restricted so he can have the illusion that every dollar pays for heartwarming things like food instead of unsexy things like rent. And doing a lot of pointless/unhelpful volunteering and other interaction with the fundraisers and the beneficiaries and the site so that he can see and feel his dollars at work. And definitely, definitely not doing something boring and nerdy like picking apart the methodology used to examine the actual effectiveness of what he’s funding.

This kind of giving is still better than nothing, I guess, but it’s worse than a good cheeseburger.

Loud and clear: good giving is NOT about the donor. It’s about the people in need. Remember them?

One of my pet peeves is when donors are determined to fight the diseases and conditions that have affected them personally. I know, this is a personal/philosophical decision, and a lot of people I respect will disagree with my take. This blog is personal and unfiltered, as you’ve been warned before.

The Straw Man says, “I’ve had a loved one affected by cancer. I know how it feels, and that’s why I’m fighting cancer.” You know how what feels, Straw Man? Losing a loved one? Then why don’t you focus on that problem: try to get fewer people to lose their loved ones? How is losing a loved one to cancer different from losing a loved one to diarrhea?

You know why you’ve never lost a loved one to diarrhea, and why I haven’t either? Because it’s easy to prevent death from diarrhea. Because it’s totally insane that anyone ever dies from diarrhea. The people you know are privileged, and would never in a million years be at risk from diarrhea. That’s why diarrhea has never “touched” you or me directly. It’s also the exact reason that fighting diarrhea is such a good use of money.

Fighting diarrhea is simple and saves lives immediately. Nobody should be dying from it, anywhere, but they are – in large part because people who can help, people like you, aren’t around and haven’t seen them “up close,” and are focused on the specific, narrow kind of suffering you’ve seen, instead of on fighting human suffering as well as we can.

I used to think of myself as a “political junkie,” because I had strong opinions about what should and shouldn’t be left to the free market, what we should and shouldn’t be doing with our military, etc.

At a certain point I realized that I wasn’t a political junkie, and had never been one. Political junkies don’t actually talk about whether we should have universal health care; they talk about whether we’re going to get it. They almost never talk about who should be President; they talk about who from their party has the best chance of winning. “Political stories” in the media are the same. Every time I watch a debate, there is zero analysis afterward of whether one person’s positions seem more reasonable than the other’s; there are ungodly amounts of analysis of who “appealed to the voters” and “won the debate.”

I’m interested in the question, “How should the world be?” Politics isn’t for people who are interested in that question; it’s for people who are convinced they already have the answer, and are interested in how they can manipulate others to make it come about.

I want to form a theory (about, say, how to close the achievement gap); read what others have already done to test the theory; revise my theory; then try my theory out on a small scale; test it; revise it again. Political junkies are sure they already know how to close the achievement gap (they generally, though not always, inherit their solution from their party), and spend all their time fighting to get their idea implemented across the whole nation, which is of course a battle that takes decades and leaves no room for testing or learning about their solution. Charity seems like a better place for someone who wants to actually try something, see if it works, and try something else.

The problem is, in charity I’m running into the same phenomenon. I’m dealing with fundraisers who are sure that what they do is the best way to help people, and they’re spending their lives raising money for it.

Yes, there are some issues that I think are clear-cut, and I respect the people that fight for the right side. But I wish more people would step back and say, “Helping people is hard, not easy. My guess at how to do it is a guess, not a divine truth opposed only by evil people and the dupes who listen to them.

“There are evil people and interest groups on every issue, but even if we struck them down, we’d be left with the question of what to do. That’s the question I’m interested in.”