The GiveWell Blog

Thoughts on the Sandler Foundation

(updated on: ) | by Holden

Note: Steve Daetz of the Sandler Foundation reviewed a draft of this post prior to publication.

Previously, we wrote about the tradeoff between expertise and breadth in philanthropy. We noted the traditional “program officer” model of philanthropy, in which staff specialize in particular causes, and we contrasted it with some other possible models that sacrifice true cause-level expertise, while allowing a philanthropist to work in more areas at once.

We cited the Sandler Foundation as an example of a foundation that appears to have a strong track record despite not following the traditional “program officer” model. Since then, we’ve had a couple of extended conversations with the Sandler Foundation’s Herb Sandler and Steve Daetz. We’ve tried to understand better how its approach differs from more traditional approaches, and what the pros and cons are. We’ve come out thinking that:

  • The Sandler Foundation appears to have an impressive track record; it has played major roles in the development of multiple impressive organizations. More
  • The Sandler Foundation does seem to have noticeable differences with the more traditional approach. Its staff are not subject matter experts specializing in particular causes, and they do not operate with fixed budgets for the amount of time and money spent on a cause. Rather, the Sandler Foundation is highly flexible and opportunistic, ready to put a lot of time and money into an idea when they find the right leadership, or stay out of a cause of interest entirely when they don’t. They often put a lot of time and energy into investigating and refining a grant early on, to the point where working on a single grant becomes a major part of their agenda; this is temporary, however, as they have a preference for reliable, recurring, flexible support (rather than continuously revisiting and revising the terms of grants). More
  • In many of the ways that the Sandler Foundation differs from traditional foundations, we think the Sandler model may be preferable. More

Notable Sandler Foundation grants
We discussed multiple interesting grants in our conversation with the Sandler Foundation. Below are some highlights:

I’m generally interested in cases where a foundation played a major role in the development of a strong and important institution, and at this point we’ve spoken with the heads of many major foundations and asked them about their major success stories. I think the above list compares favorably with comparable lists I’d be able to put together for other foundations’ work over the last decade (based in many cases on off-the-record conversations). This isn’t necessarily a fully appropriate comparison, since the Sandler Foundation explicitly prioritizes making large grants and helping to start organizations; it’s possible that other foundations have had equal or greater impact with larger numbers of smaller grants, and that it’s simply hard to put together comparable lists of highly tangible “success stories.” Still, my impression is that the Sandler Foundation has been quite successful in helping to build strong organizations, despite having a much smaller staff – and less subject-matter expertise – than traditional foundations.

The Sandler Foundation approach
From talking to the Sandler Foundation, I perceive it as diverging from traditional foundations on a couple of key dimensions:

1. The priority placed on funding strong leadership. The Sandler Foundation emphasized its preference for flexible, long-term support rather than constantly picking and prescribing projects. This sort of support is likely especially valuable to grantees, and even more so for new organizations trying to attract outstanding talent. At the same time, giving flexible and long-term support is a major “bet,” and seems most appropriate when one has very high confidence in the leadership one is supporting. The Sandler Foundation emphasized its extensive due diligence on leadership (for example, Sandler Foundation staff had over 30 conversations about John Podesta before supporting him to start Center for American Progress), and its high expectations for leaders: it aims to support people who are highly strategic, highly receptive to criticism and interested in self-improvement, and highly aligned with the Sandler Foundation on values and communication (“good chemistry” was emphasized).

2. A high level of “opportunism”: being ready to put major funding or no funding behind an idea, depending on the quality of the specific opportunity. The Sandler Foundation emphasized its lack of well-defined “budgets” for either money or time: its staff are often exploring several ideas at once with a low level of time commitment, and ready to substantially raise their involvement when a good opportunity presents itself. In the case of ProPublica, the Sandler Foundation first developed the basic idea for a nonprofit newsroom in 2006, and had 15-20 conversations with potential leaders; in May of 2007, when they met Paul Steiger, they quickly became interested in funding him and started putting much more time into the idea. At the same time, there are some cases in which the Sandler Foundation has explored an idea or an issue for a considerable period of time, and ultimately decided not to make any major grants. The general pattern seems to be that the Sandler Foundation puts a great deal of “front-end energy” into promising grant opportunities they’ve identified, and spends relatively less time on (a) pursuing ideas for which strong leaders haven’t yet been identified; (b) following up on a given existing grant (though it still spends substantial time on those as well).

The Sandler Foundation believes that cause-specific “program officers” are a poor fit for this model. The Sandler model relies on strong assessment of organizational leadership, with relatively few, large grants to trusted leaders. Program officers tend to have incentives to make more, smaller grants, and tend not to be well positioned for the funders to defer to their judgments about organizational leadership. Program officers also typically want pre-specified budgets, which the foundation leadership worries would make them insufficiently opportunistic.

What can we learn?
We don’t think the Sandler Foundation’s model is obviously the best one, and we don’t plan on fully emulating it. Among other things,

  • We aren’t fully aligned with the Sandler Foundation’s values and priorities, and we believe that our set of policy priorities doesn’t map very well to today’s most common political platforms. Because of this, it could be particularly hard for us to find leaders whom we feel fully aligned with.
  • We believe the “expert philanthropy” model has much to recommend it (more), and we plan to experiment with it.
  • We believe there can be a good deal of value in relatively small, low-confidence, low-due-diligence grants that give a person/team a chance to “get an idea off the ground.” We’ve made multiple such grants to date and we plan on continuing to do so.
  • We have a favorable impression of the Sandler Foundation’s track record, but we don’t have enough information to be highly confident in this.

With that said, we see the Sandler Foundation as something of a proof of concept that high-impact grants can come from opportunistic generalists.

For reasons outlined previously, we’re highly interested in trying out a philanthropic model that looks across multiple issue areas for the very most outstanding opportunities, and we think that taking a highly opportunistic approach – scanning multiple areas, waiting for outstanding leadership, keeping the bar high, and being ready to get very involved when an opportunity comes up – makes a great deal of sense for this goal. By taking this attitude toward many of our focus areas, we might be able to make the most of our generalist staff, and be able to keep our bar high for the opportunities we get most involved in (something that would be more difficult to do if we pre-committed to a smaller number of particular issues and ideas).

Note: another perspective on the Sandler Foundation is available in a January piece from Inside Philanthropy.

Notes from November convening on our policy priorities

(updated on: ) | by Holden

Last November, we held a day-long convening in Washington, D.C. to discuss possible priorities for Open Philanthropy Project work on U.S. policy.

Our main goal was to present our picture of several policy issues, as well as to receive input to inform upcoming decisions about which issue(s) we should focus on. For each issue, we laid out what sort of change we’d like to see, why we find the issue especially promising for philanthropy, what the current landscape looks like (including other funders), and what possible strategies might look like. We sought feedback on all of these points, as well as ideas for promising issue areas and promising strategies that haven’t occurred to us.

We’ve now posted a summary of points raised at the convening, a partial list of participants, and the briefing materials for the convening here:

Page on Nov. 10 policy convening

Many points were raised at the convening, and it served as an input into our overall strategy setting on U.S. policy (which we will be writing more about). Some of the highlights, from our perspective, were:

  • We had a fair amount of discussion of active vs. passive funding. Our discussion reinforced the importance of finding people we’re comfortable giving unrestricted support to if possible, while being willing to make compromises and engage in some degree of “active funding” on particular issues.
  • Reactions to the causes we’re considering varied considerably. Participants were generally quite positive on macroeconomic policy (feeling that aspects of it are under-attended to) and criminal justice reform (seeing, as we do, a window of opportunity). By contrast, there was a much more mixed and hesitant reaction to some other causes we’re considering, such as labor mobility. We aren’t necessarily inclined to favor the causes that received a more positive reaction, since we see a great deal of value in working on issues whose value isn’t widely recognized. However, hearing the different reactions helped us understand which of our potential causes might present particular challenges in terms of communications and coalition building.
  • We discussed the goal of strengthening the general community that shares our policy priorities (in particular, prioritizing both economic efficiency and global humanitarianism). One idea that came up in this regard was that of funding scholarships and fellowships, in order to encourage people to get interested in issues we consider important early in their careers. However, the convening also reinforced our view that this sort of goal will probably be easier to work on after we’ve done more concrete work and gained experience, strengthened our networks, etc.
  • We got many suggestions for potential causes to look into.

GiveWell is hiring

(updated on: ) | by Sean

We’re resuming hiring to expand our ability to identify outstanding giving opportunities. Filling the roles below would make a substantial difference to our research.

If you follow GiveWell and want to help us out, please share this post with anyone whom you think might be a good fit for the jobs listed below.

  • Research Analyst. Research Analysts are GiveWell’s primary staff and work on all parts of our research process. We hope to add a few entry-level research analysts this year, and are open to hiring individuals later in their career.
  • Summer Research Analyst. We offer summer positions to students entering their final year of undergraduate or graduate school with the hopes that they will become full-time employees following graduation.
  • Outreach Associate. Outreach Associate is a new position we’re hiring for. The role will have some overlap with that of a Research Analyst, but has a particular focus on outreach and communication with donors.
  • Conversation Notes Writer. Conversation notes are a key part of our research process. Conversation Notes Writers listen to conversations conducted by GiveWell staff and produce summaries. This position is flexible: it can be done from anywhere in the world at any time of day, but we ask for people who can commit at least 10 hours per week. We are currently looking to find 1-2 additional Conversation Notes Writers.

Putting the problem of bed nets used for fishing in perspective

(updated on: ) | by Jake Marcus

A recent article in the New York Times describes people using insecticide treated bed nets for fishing instead of sleeping under the nets to protect themselves from malaria-carrying mosquitoes. The article warns that fishing with insecticide treated nets may deplete fish stocks, because the mosquito nets trap more fish than traditional fishing nets and because the insecticide contaminates the water and kills fish (“the risks to people are minimal, because the dosages are relatively low and humans metabolize permethrin [the insecticide] quickly”). We recommend donating to the Against Malaria Foundation (AMF), an organization that funds distributions of long-lasting insecticide treated bed nets, so we’d like to address the concerns raised in the article.

Net distributions funded by the Against Malaria Foundation

We have reasonably high confidence that most people properly use the nets funded by AMF, because AMF requires distribution partners to conduct follow-up surveys on net use. These surveys show that 80% to 90% of households have nets hung up 6 months after distributions (for more detail, see our charity report on AMF). The survey methodology also dictates that interviewers observe whether survey respondents have hung their nets by entering their houses rather than simply asking them if they’ve hung their nets. We believe that the concerns raised in the article largely don’t apply to net distributions funded by AMF.

The prevalence of unintended use of nets

For net distributions more generally, the best data available indicates that usage rates range from 60% to 80%. Surveys asking respondents if they use their nets generally show usage rates of around 90%, but respondents may not want to report that they use nets in ways unintended by donors. One small-scale study found a usage rate of around 70% based on spot visits to homes compared to a usage rate of around 85% based on asking people, so our best guess comes from adjusting the survey rates downwards to correct for overreporting (for more detail, see our intervention report on long-lasting insecticide treated nets). Even taking into account the fact that some people won’t sleep under their nets, the program remains one of the most cost-effective ways to save lives. Given the very large numbers of bed nets distributed, we do not find stories of unintended use in a few areas particularly surprising. We view the anecdotes related in the article as unlikely to be representative of a problem that would change our assessment of the program.

The evidence on possible harm to fish stocks

Besides the harm caused by some people contracting malaria because they don’t sleep under their nets, which we already account for in our cost-effectiveness analysis, the article warns that fishing with insecticide treated nets may deplete fish stocks. In making this case, the article cites only one study, which reports that about 90% of households in villages along Lake Tanganyika used bed nets to fish. It doesn’t cite any studies examining the connection between bed nets and depleted fish stocks more directly. The article states that “Recent hydroacoustic surveys show that Zambia’s fish populations are dwindling” and “recent surveys show that Madagascar’s industrial shrimp catch plummeted to 3,143 tons in 2010 from 8,652 tons in 2002,” but declines in fish populations and shrimp catch may have causes other than mosquito net-fishing.

It’s worth comparing the evidence presented by this article to the evidence available on the benefits of bed nets. Randomized control trials consistently show large declines in child mortality from distributing nets and trends in malaria mortality and net coverage rates also suggest that mass distribution of mosquito nets has contributed to major declines in the burden of the disease. This evidence comprises one of the most robust cases for impact we’ve seen. The article makes the case for a possible harm to fish stocks relying on highly limited evidence.

Malaria control in waterside, food-insecure communities

The article does highlight a potential need to experiment with alternative approaches to malaria control in waterside, food-insecure communities that have very low net usage rates. In these areas, people shouldn’t have to choose between malaria and hunger. But again, we see this as a likely isolated problem, and a much smaller one than the problem of insufficient nets for preventing malaria.

Conclusion

We generally like to see reporting on both the successes and failures of foreign aid. However, we felt the reporting in this case presented an unbalanced view of the magnitudes of the benefits and harms of distributing bed nets.

Organizations promoting generous, effective giving

(updated on: ) | by Holden

GiveWell focuses on doing high-quality research on where to give; we put relatively little effort into marketing, community building, or encouraging people to give more. We’d like to give a shout out to some organizations – most of them relatively young – that do focus on this important work.

Giving What We Can is an international society dedicated to eliminating extreme poverty. It provides a variety of resources to encourage people to give generously, including a membership pledge for lifetime giving of 10% of income, a “try giving” program for shorter and more flexible giving commitments, and a variety of local chapters currently in the U.S., U.K. and Australia. It also encourages people to give as effectively as they can, with a similar definition of effectiveness to ours, and its charity recommendations draw on our research. Giving What We Can is part of the Centre for Effective Altruism, which engages in a variety of projects around the ideas of effective altruism.

The Life You Can Save is an organization founded by the philosopher Peter Singer (who has been one of the most influential advocates for using GiveWell’s research). It spreads awareness of things people can do to fight extreme poverty through a blog, outreach events, and a worldwide network of regional community groups. The Life You Can Save also provides a list of charity recommendations that draws on our research and encourages people to pledge a percentage of their income to these charities (the recommended percentage scales with income level).

Charity Science aims to educate the public about the “science of doing good.” It aims to make research on good giving more accessible and entertaining, and encourages donations to our recommended charities. It does so by running small-scale experiments to see what works and what doesn’t in spreading the word. Experiments have included encouraging birthday and Christmas fundraisers, where people ask for donations instead of material possessions. Charity Science also provides education through write ups, infographics, and presentations.

Raising for Effective Giving (REG), a project of GBS Switzerland, is a community of poker players interested in making a positive impact. It encourages poker players to pledge at least 2% of their gross winnings (which REG states generally translates to 5-10% of net income) to its recommended charities. Its recommendations are a mix of GiveWell-recommended charities and effective-altruism-associated organizations. The first- and third-place finishers in the most recent World Series of Poker Main Event were REG members.

Update on GiveWell’s web traffic / money moved: Q3 2014

(updated on: ) | by Natalie Crispin

This post covers the first three quarters of 2014 and is being published late due to staff focusing on updating GiveWell’s charity recommendations in the fourth quarter.

In addition to evaluations of other charities, GiveWell publishes substantial evaluation of itself, from the quality of its research to its impact on donations. We publish quarterly updates regarding two key metrics: (a) donations to top charities and (b) web traffic.

The table and chart below present basic information about our growth in money moved and web traffic in the first three quarters of 2014 (note 1).

Money moved: first three quarters

Growth in money moved, as measured by donations from donors giving less than $5,000 per year, continued to slow in the third quarter of 2014 compared with the first and second quarters, and was substantially weaker than growth in the first three quarters of 2013.

The total amount of money we move is driven by a relatively small number of large donors. These donors tend to give in December, and we don’t think we have accurate ways of predicting future large gifts (note 2). We therefore show growth among small donors, the portion of our money moved about which we think we have meaningful information at this point in the year.

Web traffic through November 2014

We show web analytics data from two sources: Clicky and Google Analytics. The data on visitors to our website differs between the two sources. We do not know the cause of discrepancy (though a volunteer with a relevant technical background looked at the data for us to try to find the cause; he didn’t find any obvious problems with the data). (Note on how we count unique visitors.)

Traffic from AdWords decreased in the first three quarters because in early 2014 we removed ads on searches that we determined were not driving high quality traffic to our site (i.e. searches with very high bounce rates and very low pages per visit).

Data in the chart below is an average of Clicky and Google Analytics data, except for those months for which we only have data (or reliable data) from one source.

The raw data we used to generate the chart and table above is in this spreadsheet.

Slowing growth?

The above indicates that our growth slowed significantly in 2014 relative to last year (and previous years). It is possible that the numbers above are affected by the fact that (a) growth in the second quarter of 2013 was particularly strong due to a series of media mentions (as we previously noted) or (b) differences in the way that our recommended charities track donations (we would guess that this could explain a difference of a few hundred donors). Our guess is that both of these factors contribute but do not fully explain the slower growth.

Note 1: Since our 2012 annual metrics report we have shifted to a reporting year that starts on February 1, rather than January 1, in order to better capture year-on-year growth in the peak giving months of December and January. Therefore metrics for the “first three quarters” reported here are for February through September.

Note 2: In total, GiveWell donors have directed $3.76 million to our top charities this year, compared with $2.16 million at this point in 2013. For the reason described above, we don’t find this number to be particularly meaningful at this time of year.

Note 3: We count unique visitors over a period as the sum of monthly unique visitors. In other words, if the same person visits the site multiple times in a calendar month, they are counted once. If they visit in multiple months, they are counted once per month.

Google Analytics provides ‘unique visitors by traffic source’ while Clicky provides only ‘visitors by traffic source.’ For that reason, we primarily use Google Analytics data in the calculations of ‘unique visitors ex-AdWords’ for both the Clicky and Google Analytics rows of the table.