The GiveWell Blog

Spending the better half

(updated on: ) | by Holden

Our fundraising efforts have started, and dang, do I hate asking for money. For three years, I’ve had way more income than I can spend, and I’ve rarely had to ask anyone for anything. That’s a nice position to be in. This – especially for an abrasive guy like me – is tough.

A common saying in the world of charity is: “Spend the first half of your life making money, and the second half giving it away.” As it’s become clear that GiveWell needs to be a full-time project, this saying has popped into my head a lot, and never more than now. Why not put off helping others until I’ve given myself more help than I can possibly use? Why not stay in finance, which I like fine, until I’ve accumulated such a massive fortune that I can finance GiveWell all by myself?

In exchange for letting the world wait a decade or two, I’d gain the freedom to do this project my way and only my way. I wouldn’t need a business plan and an elevator pitch and the incredible amount of work that goes between thinking and communicating. I wouldn’t need to fundraise; I wouldn’t need friends and allies; I wouldn’t need favors; I wouldn’t need anyone’s approval or permission.

And so, I’d do a much worse job.

Not even my incredible brain can look at things from as many angles as a roomful of different people; not even my awe-inspiring self-discipline will make me consider those angles as sincerely and thoughtfully as I do when I have to. If I can’t make GiveWell speak to people enough for them to put their money behind it, it will go nowhere. And if I do make it speak to them but I can’t follow through, I’ll be humiliated and devastated in a way that wasting spare cash of my own could never make me. These are the pressures that startups face, and the world is a better place because of it.

That’s why you should be concerned that philanthropy is currently seen as something to do with the “second half” of your life. “Second half” here isn’t just chronological – it’s referring to the half that specifically isn’t where the philanthropist made their name. The second half is the half that lacks risk, accountability, and the people who keep one honest (a set of factors collectively known as the “eye of the tiger”). All the great foundations today are following the orders of people who’ve made their fortune doing something else, and who no longer have to consider any criticism they don’t care for. I have to believe that matters, no matter how good their intentions.

The first half of life is where people do great things or fall by the wayside. I want to spend that half “giving it away,” and if you’re a donor or just a supporter, you should be glad that’s the half you’re getting.

Nice guys finish last

(updated on: ) | by Holden

In addition to ~20 charity/philanthropy/social-goodliness blogs, I read one blog, TechCrunch, about for-profit Internet startups. I’d say I see about 10x as much negativity, sarcasm, skepticism, and criticism on TechCrunch as on those 20 improve-the-world blogs combined. That’s why I like TechCrunch.

If you check out the front page now, you’ll see TechCrunch questioning Google’s high-priced acquisition of DoubleClick, stating “We all know what sucks about LinkedIn [one of the most successful social networks in the world]”, and responding to Rolling Stone’s plan to create a social network with “The Rolling Stone audience may be too old to get into the social networking scene.” Nobody gets off easy.

Contrast with NetSquared, currently holding a vote to showcase 20 projects “remixing the Web for social good.” While TechCrunch picks only the most promising, highest-profile startups to write about, the ~150 NetSquared nominees were selected as follows: anyone who wanted to nominate a project did so. Yet while TechCrunch is constantly picking at its subjects for weaknesses, you’ll have a tough time finding anyone critical of anyone on NetSquared. Here are a few choice examples of the tone: all the projects are amazing, there is far too much to choose from, etc. Check out the specific discussions of projects and you’ll see the same: criticisms are few and far between, and always prefaced with “This is the most wonderful thing in the world, but …”

I believe the difference in tone is pretty constant between these two sectors – and it isn’t just the people, it’s the way people see charity. I’ve even heard my coworkers say things like “I think all charities are doing wonderful things” (I usually ask if they think the same about all businesses).

The thing is, in the business world it’s obvious to everyone that good isn’t good enough. You need to be the BEST, within your area, or else capital is better spent on your competitors – and you’re going to go under. But I don’t see why this is any less true of the nonprofit sector – all of it except the part about going under. Right now, there’s no mechanism for charitable capital (donations from individuals) to flow to where it’s best used, and that means no mechanism for inferior charities to go under, and THAT means no constant pressure to get better. That’s what we’re trying to change, because we think the people served by charities deserve the same relentless improvement and scrutiny that the people served by businesses benefit from.

We need kind people in the nonprofit sector, but I could go for fewer nice people. Nice people are always encouraging; they think everything well-intentioned is worth doing; they respond to my ideas with “OK” instead of “Wouldn’t it be better to ____?” They make good grandmothers, not good partners.

A quick, free way to support GiveWell

| by Holden

Over 150 projects have been submitted for the NetSquared conference at the end of May, and only 20 will get to go. The winners will be determined by an online vote, open until this Saturday afternoon … and you know what that means:

1. This is a popularity contest, and given how likable I am – we really need your help.

2. This is your chance to make a difference for free! We value each vote as being roughly the equivalent of a $267,343 donation.

So go here, after you’re done reading this awesome post: Vote.Givewell.Net. It will walk you through how to vote as quickly as possible. And when you’re done, send that puppy on to everyone you know and at least 10 people you don’t. This is the perfect chance to introduce people to GiveWell: our project proposal is snappy, our business plan is ready, and we have something for interested parties to do right away to help out.

There are a lot of other projects worth looking at, including Throngz (by fellow blogger Albert Ruesga), Maplight (politicians’ interest group connections at a glance), and HELP (connecting developed-world doctors with on-the-ground ones).

That address again: Vote.Givewell.Net. Catchy, huh? Put it in your away message (thanks to Molly for that tip). Put it on your rear bumper. Type it into your browser. Anything goes.

If you vote, tomorrow a child will smile at you.

If you vote and pass Vote.Givewell.Net on to 5 friends, next week you will have a hot fudge sundae.

If you pass it on to 15 friends, next month you will be nominated to the U.S. Supreme Court.

If you pass it on to 50 friends, you will never have to go to the dentist again.

If you pass it on to 500 friends, you will be personally responsible when GiveWell eradicates racism in 2053.

And if you don’t vote, tomorrow you will get a promotion and meet the love of your life … but you will have passed up an easy opportunity to help us out, and you’ll be kind of a flake. You don’t want that.

Vote.Givewell.Net

Announcing the Clear Fund

| by Holden

The goal of GiveWell is to make thorough analysis of charities (the kind currently exclusive to large grantmakers) available, useful, usable, and criticizable for any donor, large or small, who cares.

This has been our goal since last August, but we have come a long way in terms of strategy. Originally, our strategy was to do research on a part-time/”hobby” basis, and slap it all on a public website. As we discovered just how much there is to find, we investigated the idea of operating like Wikipedia: putting a lot of work into a basic structure that would allow thousands or millions of people to build the project up with their small contributions. But as we realized just how complex these problems are, and just how hard it is to find any useful information (and how useful it is to have large donations to use as leverage), we concluded that there’s really only one strategy that will achieve our goal well. That strategy is to create The Clear Fund: the world’s first charitable grantmaker whose reason for existence is to make its decisions accessible, useful, usable, and criticizable for all.

I believe that this is the biggest opportunity that exists to help make the world a better place. So on April 27, I will be leaving a great job to devote myself to it. Elie will be taking a leave of absence to help me when we most need it. At that point we will also “shed the cloak of anonymity,” i.e., publish our last names. The only reason we haven’t done so yet is to prevent mind-shatteringly stupid people from affiliating us with my employer.

We intend that detail about us to be available by the time it matters. In the meantime, we are being transparent in every other way, and that includes sharing all the details of our business plan: why we think we need to do this, what we’re planning to do, how much it’s going to cost, and what the benefits will be. If anyone wants to steal our idea, we encourage you to do so, although it would be nice to let us know. We’re doing this because we want the Clear Fund to exist, and for no other reason.

Since our definition of transparency involves making our materials not just available but useful, we’ve made our plan available at a few different levels of detail. Whether you have a little time or a lot, I encourage you to check it out and share your thoughts.

Clear Fund Business Plan

Every analogy has its limits …

(updated on: ) | by Holden

As illustrated by this raging debate between me and two guys at GiftHub. (If you want to get straight to the metaphor-gone-awry goodness, Ctrl-F “life partner.”)

Meanwhile, talking to people about my video game analogy, I’ve realized the biggest problem with it relates to the role of enjoyment. Enjoyment is the ultimate goal of playing video games, but not of charity. That’s because video games are about pretending to do what charity REALLY does (kill bad guys). Charity is enjoyable even though (in fact because) enjoyment isn’t the point.

There really is just no possible analogy that can capture how awesome it is to be actually spending my time trying to kill bad guys. Nothing else is remotely comparable.

Charity: The video game that’s real

(updated on: ) | by Holden

“How does helping people make you feel?” That’s what I’ve been asked, and my answer isn’t familiar from any publications on marketing or fundraising that I know of.

When I was younger, I loved playing video games. Single-player video games, without anyone watching. I didn’t get anything for my virtual accomplishments – not appreciation, or respect, or friendship. I didn’t even get the thrill of being good at something, because I knew that most of my friends were better than I was anyway. I didn’t think I was good at these games; I didn’t think I was building up any skill; in brief, I had no ulterior motives.

I just liked killing bad guys. Well, more than that, I hated not killing bad guys. When Heat Man killed my guy and stood around smugly, I wanted to throw the TV across the room, and I couldn’t stop until he was dead.

What sucked about this experience was that it was all fake, and in the back of my head I knew that. In the end I felt pretty empty and lame. Enter altruism – where the bad guys are ACTUALLY BAD GUYS. (See illustration.) Sure, I don’t get the same satisfying explosion when they die … I don’t even know to what extent, or whether, they die. So you can think of this video game as being more in the camp of something lame, like an RPG or something. But it’s infinitely better because it’s real. I don’t care whether the kids are cute, or whether the organizations are nice to me, or whether my friends like my decisions. As with video games, I probably spend 99% of my time frustrated rather than happy. But … Malaria Man just pisses me off. It’s that simple.

I’d call my attitude toward giving straight-up altruism. I’ve heard people deny that real altruism can possibly exist, but I don’t think any of them would challenge my description of playing Mega Man, even once I specify that it was the desired outcome, not the feelings, that kept me playing.

There are a couple key differences between my attitude and the motives I commonly hear ascribed to donors. One is the fact that I’m obsessed, and therefore I’m not looking for a pleasant minute-to-minute experience. Charities focus on making giving a pleasant, immediately rewarding experience for the donor, sometimes at the cost of being really truthful and helping the donor to understand; this is because they expect their donor to spend a few minutes, or hours at most. (And that’s all they’ll spend as long as there’s no clear outlet for using their brain as well as their checkbook.) Another key difference is that I’m not looking to feel validated or important or un-guilty or generally “good” in any warm and fuzzy way; I’m looking to actually kill the bad guy, not just prove to myself that I tried. No matter how it makes me feel, a charity is failing me if it doesn’t get results.