Charity

A simple solution to poverty requires rethinking charitable giving

lborkowski — Mon, 03 Jun 2013 09:04:46 +0000

A simple solution to poverty requires rethinking charitable giving

I linked last week to Matthew Yglesias's Slate piece "The Best and Simplest Way to Fight Global Poverty," which reports on a study that gave unconditional cash grants to poor young adults in Uganda and found that four years later, recipients of the grants had more business capital and higher earnings than those in a control group. I thought about the study again over the weekend as I listened to a Planet Money podcast about a charitable school-building project in Haiti that exemplifies how hard -- and potentially less effective -- it can be to give poor communities assets like schools rather than just handing cash over to poor individuals.

At his Small World blog on Bloomberg Businessweek, Charles Kenney explores donors' reluctance to give unconditional cash and describes some of the research showing that such an approach might be effective:

Worldwide, richer people express fears about handing money to poorer people. Giving poor people money is no way to stop them being poor, the thinking goes: Surely they will just waste it. Instead, we design complex, bureaucratic programs like SNAP, the supplemental nutrition assistance program (formerly known as food stamps) to help poor families buy food and only food. That way, they can’t buy a trip to Disney World with our tax dollars.

...A growing number of studies suggest that this is wrong-headed, that just handing over cash even to some of the world’s poorest people actually does have a considerable and long-lasting positive impact on their incomes, employment, health and education.

Kenney's piece also made me think of a World Bank-funded study in Malawi (which I wrote about previously) that gave both conditional and unconditional cash transfers to girls and found that those receiving the transfers had lower HIV infection rates than girls in a control group who got no money. The researchers found lower HIV prevalance rates in both the girls whose grants were contingent on staying in school and those who received the money unconditionally.

If enough research shows that the biggest impact per donor dollar can come from unconditional cash transfers, large donor organizations might alter their project funding guidelines in response. But what about charitable donations from individuals? That's what I was thinking about while listening to Planet Money's "It's Hard to Do Good" episode about the efforts of Tim Myers, a retired Colorado contractor, to turn thousands of dollars in donated money into a school for Haitian children.

The saga began in 2010, when Planet Money's Adam Davidson and Caitlin Kenney traveled to Haiti to see what kind of impact post-earthquake foreign food aid was having on a rice-growing region, L'Artibonite, which was spared physical earthquake damage. One of their stories included clips from a visit to a school in Villard, where schoolchildren crowded into a one-room church for lessons and many students didn't have textbooks. After hearing about the schools' financial struggles, listeners wanted to know how they could give money to the school. The school's principal, Enselm Simpliste, set up an account to receive donations -- and when donors gave $3,000, Simpliste decided to use the money to build a schoolhouse. Months later, the Planet Money team returned to Villard and found that all the money had been spent, and all that Simpliste had to show for $3,000 was "a foundation, some concrete blocks and some rocks and sand."

The story didn't end there, though. Two Planet Money listeners, Tim Myers and Fred Ireland, decided to raise even more money and travel to Haiti to personally ensure the completion of the school construction. They launched a nonprofit called the Haiti School Project and began a series of trips to Villard. As a retired contractor, Myers figured he had the experience to oversee the project, but the group was committed to using local labor for the construction in order to ensure the money actually went to the community they intended to help. Myers calculated, though, that the project would cost more than $140,000.

Now, Planet Money reports that although the school isn't as elaborate as originally planned -- most notably, it's a single story rather than two -- the walls are up and construction is nearly complete. The Haiti School Project eventually raised $100,000, and has purchased textbooks and trained teachers as well as employing local residents. But Myers says it's been far more time-consuming and complicated than he originally expected. Plus, because Haiti doesn't have public schools, the project has essentially given a gift of a school building to Principal Simplice, and have only his non-enforceable agreement that he will use it to provide schooling to local children whose families struggle to afford school fees.

When asked in this latest episode if it might have been better just to write checks to schoolchildren's parents, Myers says, "Definitely. I could've saved myself a lot of heartache and money." But, he also doubts the group could've raised $100,000 if they'd been pitching unconditional cash for parents rather than school construction. "Don't people have this feeling that they want to be involved in something specific?" he suggests to Planet Money. "They want to see where their money's going. ... People like to feel like, when they give money for something, it's going for something specific."

It's important to note this school was the Haiti School Project's first (and, I'm guessing, only) attempt at building a school. Organizations with a long track record of building schools or health clinics or other physical assets have a better grasp of what each project entails and can probably spend donations more efficiently than Myers and his colleagues did. But the most efficient use of donations may be simply giving money directly to poor people. If more research accumulates to suggest this is the case, will those of us who enjoy visualizing the specific projects our donations support be willing to give just as generously, and trust the recipients to decide how to spend the money?

lborkowski Mon, 06/03/2013 - 05:04

Tags

Public Health - General

aid

Charity

unconditional cash transfers

I believe that you must be sure that the persons in charge of receiving the money, are honest and agree to be monitored by the providers.
Luisa

Con or Bust Auction Nearing Its End

drorzel — Sat, 25 Feb 2012 07:13:51 +0000

Con or Bust Auction Nearing Its End

Once again, Kate is running an auction to benefit the Con or Bust project providing financial support for fans of color(*) to attend science fiction/ fantasy conventions. The auction is run via LiveJournal, with a variety of cool items on offer in individual posts to that community, with an overall index here.

Among the items on offer are signed copies of How to Teach Relativity to Your Dog and How to Teach Physics to Your Dog (in your choice of several languages). You can also bid on some of our excess books.

Bidding ends at midnight Sunday, so you've got a little time left. Check out the lists of stuff, and get your bids in soon.

(* - "Fans of color" here meaning "non-white fans," not people with a deep attachment to particular hues. I am not interested in hearing your theories (if you have them) about how this is racist and discriminatory against white people. Any such comments to this post will be ruthlessly moderated.)

drorzel Sat, 02/25/2012 - 02:13

Tags

Charity

So I walked into the women's locker room and no one saw me!

omnibrain — Mon, 02 May 2011 19:09:59 +0000

So I walked into the women's locker room and no one saw me!

And you can too! All you have to do is win this gorilla costume. This is guaranteed to work in a women's locker room*. I can't vouch for its success rate in men's locker rooms since.. well... I don't really have to sneak in there. Anyway, all you have to do to have a chance of winning this amazing gorilla suit is to pre-order the new paper back version of Dan Simons' and Chris Chabris' book The Invisible Gorilla.

If you're not into sick horrible ideas like sneaking into locker rooms (because clearly, that is the only thing you could possibly do with that costume) you could also pre-order the book and do the complete opposite - donate to charity. According to the authors:

If you pre-order or purchase the paperback edition of The Invisible Gorilla on or before June 11, 2011, Chris Chabris and Dan Simons will jointly donate $5 to the charity you choose. The charity selected most often at the end of the promotion will receive an additional $2000 donation! We will donate up to a total of $25,000.

Whether you want to be a skeevy (is that spelled right?) locker room peeping tom or a god like charity giving machine you should definitely pre-order the book. I really enjoyed it.

* For this to work the women must be wearing only black shirts or white shirts and be passing two basketballs. In addition, you should make sure the women are counting the passes and have very low working memory capacity.

Also, if you want an idea of what the book is about keep reading...

From the authors website:

Reading this book will make you less sure of yourself-and that's a good thing. In The Invisible Gorilla, we use a wide assortment of stories and counterintuitive scientific findings to reveal an important truth: Our minds don't work the way we think they do. We think we see ourselves and the world as they really are, but we're actually missing a whole lot.

We combine the work of other researchers with our own findings on attention, perception, memory, and reasoning to reveal how faulty intuitions often get us into trouble. In the process, we explain:

* Why a company would spend billions to launch a product that its own analysts know will fail
* How a police officer could run right past a brutal assault without seeing it
* Why award-winning movies are full of editing mistakes
* What criminals have in common with chess masters
* Why measles and other childhood diseases are making a comeback
* Why money managers could learn a lot from weather forecasters

Again and again, we think we experience and understand the world as it is, but our thoughts are beset by everyday illusions. We write traffic laws and build criminal cases on the assumption that people will notice when something unusual happens right in front of them. We're sure we know where we were on 9/11, falsely believing that vivid memories are seared into our mind with perfect fidelity. And as a society, we spend billions on devices to train our brains because we're continually tempted by the lure of quick fixes and effortless self-improvement.

The Invisible Gorilla reveals the numerous ways that our intuitions can deceive us, but it's more than a catalog of human failings. In the book, we also explain why people succumb to these everyday illusions and what we can do to inoculate ourselves against their effects. In short, we try to give you a sort of "x-ray vision" into your own minds, with the ultimate goal of helping you notice the invisible gorillas in your own life.

omnibrain Mon, 05/02/2011 - 15:09

Tags

Invisible Gorilla Psychology Intuition Science Book

humor

neuroscience

Psychology

Con or Bust

drorzel — Mon, 28 Feb 2011 10:17:56 +0000

Con or Bust

Every year, Kate runs a fundraiser to help support SF fans who want to attend Wiscon, which takes the form of an auction of various cool items, such as a signed book about quantum physics. You can find a big listing of everything at the Con or Bust community on LiveJournal, but some items of possible interest to readers of this blog include:

If you're cheap but not that picky, there's a list of items with very few bids, that might be easily obtained.

All auctions run through 11:59 EST this Sunday, March 6. Comments closed, because you should go over there to bid and comment, not waste time faffing about in my comments.

drorzel Mon, 02/28/2011 - 05:17

Tags

Books

Charity

Pop Culture

Con or Bust Auction Signal Boost

drorzel — Sat, 22 Jan 2011 16:32:40 +0000

Con or Bust Auction Signal Boost

Last year, Kate was one of the people who helped organize a fundraising auction to send a few people to Wiscon. It's that time again, and she's seeking donations for the auction:

Last year, Con or Bust raised $6,183.89 and helped thirteen people of color attend WisCon. We weren't able to meet all the requests for assistance, however, so I'm tentatively setting this year's auction goal at $7,000. Bidding on the auction will start Monday, February 21, 2011, at 12:01 a.m. EST (GMT -5) and end Sunday, March 6, 2011, at 11:59 p.m. EST. You may post auction offers and make donations now.

If you're interested in donating or otherwise contributing, there are details at that link, and links therefrom. Comments are closed, here, because you should go over there to talk about this.

drorzel Sat, 01/22/2011 - 11:32

Tags

Books

Charity

Pop Culture

Now THAT'S a Noble Cause: Restoring Truthiness

drorzel — Tue, 14 Sep 2010 05:51:54 +0000

Now THAT'S a Noble Cause: Restoring Truthiness

Via Tom, the folks pushing for a Stephen Colbert rally on the Mall in DC (because if a clown like Glen Beck can do it, why not an actual comedian?) have found a uniquely useful way to try to boost their signal: encouraging charitable donations:

See, anyone can join a reddit or Facebook group or sign a petition. It takes, like, one minute and doesn't demonstrate much effort. So the rally movement has been looking for ways to show that they're serious, that they're willing to lift a finger to make this happen. And an idea has just been hatched: pony up some cash to one of Stephen's favorite charities.

Stephen Colbert is a board member of a non-profit called DonorsChoose.org. It's a place where schoolteachers can make a request for the supplies they need and aren't getting. As the name suggests, donors get to choose which specific teacher they want to support (lazy donors can just let the charity decide). If "Restore Truthiness" can raise a large sum of money, it will be a fantastic show of strength. And even if it fails as a publicity stunt, it'll still make a difference in our world.

Their donation page is approaching $90,000 at the moment, after less than a day (they also have an amusing entry page, if you don't mind the extra click). Normally, I'd save hyping DonorsChoose until the ScienceBlogs fundraiser in October, but this is too good not to promote. If you think this is an amusing idea, or would just like to help public school kids, throw them a few bucks.

drorzel Tue, 09/14/2010 - 01:51

Tags

They have given over $101,010 (their stated goal) at this point, less than 24 hours into the campaign as far as I can see.

Damn, that's impressive.

Why $101,010? Because 101010 is 42 in binary?!?

[...looking at the website...]

Apparently, yes.

Other People Need Your Help

drorzel — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 21:14:38 +0000

Other People Need Your Help

Several items in the general category of charitable activity:

Kate is running the Con or Bust auction again this year, with proceeds going to support people of color interested in attending SFF cons, principally Wiscon. Bidding is open through Saturday at 11:59pm ET, and items up for bid include many things that may be of interest to readers of this blog, including a certain book, plus a bunch of other stuff I will put below the fold.
I got email from the Nobel Prize committee the other day. Well, OK, the webmaster for Nobelprize.org. They have an "Ask a Nobel laureate" feature going on their YouTube channel, and the current laureate taking questions is Albert Fert, one of the Physics laureates from 2007. You can record a question for him through March 19, and they'll record and post his answers after that.
The favorite educational charity of ScienceBlogs, DonorsChoose is in another of these online contests to win money from major corporations, in this case the Pepsi Refresh Project. If they get enough votes, they can siphon off a tiny fraction of a percent of the money Pepsi earns selling junk to kids, and put it toward classroom and library supplies for schools. If this sounds good to you, go over there and vote.

And there's your charity shilling for the moment. I'll put a list of the Con or Bust items Kate thought might especially appeal to ScienceBlogs readers below the fold:

From Kate:

Custom necklace made from carbon steel retaining rings, "a true statement piece for every mad scientist"

all kinds of food, including Kate's chocolate chip cookies

DVD box sets of Stargate SG-1, seasons 1 and 2

collectible coins ("Actual value: probably under US $15; value in enjoyment and armchair traveling: incalculable!")

A lot of rare, signed, or collectible books, including an ARC of Cherie Priest's sequel to Boneshaker; a French-language chapbook of John Scalzi's story "After the Coup", and the promise of an ARC of Lois McMaster Bujold's next Vorkosigan book, CryoBurn

And offers that, as of yesterday, didn't have many bids

There's lots more stuff beyond these items, of course. But this should get you started.

drorzel Wed, 03/10/2010 - 16:14

Tags

Last second charitable donations

razib — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 12:23:49 +0000

Last second charitable donations

If you're getting in at the last second, please see GiveWell's top charities.

razib Thu, 12/31/2009 - 07:23

Tags

Culture

Charity

The Anti-Consumerist Gift Files: Righteous Giving

sastyk — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 12:02:43 +0000

The Anti-Consumerist Gift Files: Righteous Giving

The second night of Chanukah, my sons got clothes from their great aunt, which they received politely but unenthusiastically. As we were heading to bed that night, after a late night at our synagogue's annual Chanukah party, six year old Isaiah asked me "Mommy, will tomorrow night be another clothes present night?" When I told him I suspected not, since the next night's gift would come from Grandma, who likes to give toys, he sighed and said "It is ok if there's clothes, but I just needed to be ready for them." It can be tough to have good manners when you are little. We expect the kids to be gracious, but mastering that skill takes practice.

My kids get one present a night for Chanukah, and not big ones. Most of them come from family - from us, they will get blankets, a new kiddush cup (used for sabbath meals, and as much a gift to me protecting our collection of breakable kiddush cups) and homemade mittens. Grandparents will do what they do, and other relatives weigh in, so the presents get divided up over 7 nights.

Wait, seven? Yup. Because one night - tonight, in fact, the gift the children get is the chance to give an animal through The Heifer Fund to another family. We've been doing this for 4 years now, and the kids do look forward to it. They've been carrying the catalog around for several weeks, debating their choices. Some years they've combined their budgets to give large animals like llamas and water buffalo. This year they've come down in favor of everyone picking their own. Eli and Asher are both giving honeybees. Isaiah wants to give trees, because "trees are more important than anything!". And Simon is giving rabbits.

We make a ritual out giving tzedakah, which is sometimes translated as "charity" but really means "righteous giving" (the distinction is that it doesn't derive from the idea of "caritas" embedded in charity, but from the idea of giving a share by obligation). The kids pick their animals, and write letters to the new owners, offering suggestions for names for the animals and telling them about the animals on our farm. I doubt the letters ever reach anyone outside the immediate Heifer organization, but hey, they enjoy it. The kids are allowed to pick names for "their" animals (Asher and Eli will be naming only the Queen Bee, since I decline to hear suggestions for 50,000 bees) - one memorable year when Isaiah was a toddler and he won the "who gets to name the shared animal" contest, the llama we gave was named "Sticky."

It isn't always easy to get kids to grasp charitable giving - but they are starting to fully grasp it - I sat the boys down and told them that some people have no farm animals, and no access to the food, fertilizer and fiber that animals give. I asked them to think about what it would be like for us to have no goats, no chickens, no rabbits - to think about all the ways the animals are part of the farm and our lives. And they got it. Isaiah offered to send Heifer a couple of our chickens, maybe by mail. So far I'm sparing them (the chickens and the Heifer people) that. But I plan to take the kids to visit the Heifer demonstration farm in Massachusetts soon, and I'm glad the kids are willing to give something up to share.

All of which is a long way of getting at the point, which is that one of the best possible gifts is a donation to charity in someone's name. I like this much better than buying some overpriced product that donates a tiny percentage to charity, although that's better than nothing. So I give you three organizations that not only do really good things, but do a really good job of making people feel like they got a gift themselves when you donated in their name. Obviously, there's nothing to stop you from buying a little something for yourself in the way of feeling good either, and sending a donation in your own name. There are plenty of wonderful other organizations and I'd be thrilled if you'd like to list some of them below as well.

First is Heifer International: www.heifer.org which gives farm animals to families to poor to have them, along with agricultural knowledge. The families receiving animals then pass offspring on to other families in their community. There's nothing not to like about them. I think this is a particularly wonderful organization for children to use, because it is so clearly important and comprehensible.

Next, consider a donation to the Green Belt Movement - founded by Nobel Peace Prize winner Wangari Maathai, the Green Belt movement uses donations to plant trees in Kenya, protecting soil, providing natural cooling and carbon sequestration. Kenya is in the grips of a terrible, terrible drought right now, and more trees - and more education is essential.
http://www.greenbeltmovement.org/blog/entry.php?id=13

Or Consider The Water Project which brings wells and safe water to people in Africa with none. You can give someone a lifetime of safe drinking water - something that will become increasingly scarce as the world warms www.thewaterproject.org

Finally, not quite a charitable donation, but pretty awesome if you need something yourself or want to give a material gift, consider the bogo light, a solar powered light that can replace kerosene in many of the poorest places in the world, and which makes a wonderful emergency light here too. You can use their buy-one give-one program to get one for yourself and another for a poor village, or you can give both here: http://www.bogolight.com/

This is an easy sell for grownups, but I really encourage families with kids to make one or more of the gifts they give their children and grandchildren charitable. Your kids probably don't need more stuff - and teaching them to give graciously, just like teaching my kids to receive graciously, is a long term process, that has to begin early.

Sharon

sastyk Thu, 12/17/2009 - 07:02

Tags

Hi Sharon

Reminded me of a post a wrote a while ago - first time I had heard of tzedakah...

http://earth-blog.bravejournal.com/entry/18106

Thanks for the cultural journey.

This year instead of sending Xmas cards we're making postcards with a cute drawing of a sheep and other critters by my talented better half. The money we would have spent on commercial cards and the difference in postage (28 instead of 44 cents) is going to Heifer International to buy animals and tree seedlings.

Hi Sharon,

I love your heart. This year we gave to two local food banks (I think you call them pantries, down there) I don't know why I say "down there", since you're almost due east of us, here in Burlington, Ontario. Some parts of Canada, are South of some Northern parts of the U.S., even outside of Alaska. Boy, did I get sidetracked. We chose the charities this year instead of gifts to each other. Our girls are too young (3 and 4) to understand as yet, but we will take your suggestion for the future. One local foodbank can convert a $1 donation to $5 in food, buying discards from supermarkets and such. We can help a lot of people like that. The city next to us has just under 20,000 people using the foodbank every month. We are very well off by comparison, and what do we need? We have a roof over our head and food on the table. Plus, the warm feeling this gives me lasts a long time. Last year it was the United Way...the year before, it was a single mother who had left her abusive husband taking her 4 children with her and not bringing much with her but the clothes on their backs. We played secret Santa for them. This idea of giving for Christmas has stuck in us.

Oxfam Unwrapped is another good place to get gifts like this: http://www.oxfam.org.uk/shop/oxfam-unwrapped

Also, I wondered if any UK readers have seen something like the Bogolight for sale over here? I'd like to get one a bit closer to home if possible.

We're both "giving" and "receiving" donations to Heifer as gifts this year. I count the receiving end of this arrangement as a huge achievement this year. It sure beats the usual useless gifts we get from well meaning relatives.

Also, a gift card for the local grocery store is still on my list of things to pick up for the local battered women's shelter, plus some simple but real food for the foodbank (lentils, I think). Unfortunately, most of what I've seen for the foodbank at the local library collection point is chef boyardee style crapola.

Because of family backgrounds, we celebrate Hanukah and Christmas (as non-believers). We've always made the Hanukah celebration into an opportunity for charitable giving by the children. One gives to the local SPCA, the other is concerned with endangered species protection and gives to World Wildlife Fund. I'm pretty disgusted with how many mailings I get from WWF, so I tried to turn her to Wildlife Conservation Society, but she didn't want to change. I'll request them not to send mailings when I sign up - see how that goes.

For Christmas, we initiated charitable gift exchanges with the adults in the extended family a few years ago. It was a big hit, and lessens the burden of conspicuous consumption that is so hard to escape at this time of year.

Our family also does this for one night instead of presents we do not need. My stepson chose to give mosquito nets in Africa, I chose a mangrove replanting project in Louisiana and my husband chose a local food bank. Our one year old daughter will choose when she is older. Most years we would pick one project but this year we all had very different ideas and they are all worthwhile causes.

One of my favorite bus ads recently has been a series from Oxfam, saying "Sometimes giving a $^%$# isn't such a bad thing", advertising charity gifts of, among other things, manure.

If you feel that you have more time than money available for charitable giving, there are a number of options for making items that help others. As a knitter, two that I love are the Knit-a-Square project, to create blankets for AIDS orphans in Africa, and the Red Scarf Project for the Orphan Foundation of America, which provides Valentine care packages for college students who've aged out of foster care. I've been able to use just leftover yarn for the Knit-a-Square program, from my own projects, and from a box of yarn given to me by a friend, after her mother died.

The short sellers of philanthropy?

razib — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 00:04:44 +0000

The short sellers of philanthropy?

For the past few months I've been following The Givewell Blog. Here's a recent post, Why are we always criticizing charities?:

Recently, we've criticized (in one way or another) many well-known, presumably well-intentioned charities (Smile Train, Acumen Fund, UNICEF, Kiva), which might lead to some to ask: should GiveWell focus on the bad (which may discourage donors from giving) as opposed to the good (which would encourage them to give more)? Why so much negativity and not more optimism?

The fact is, we are very optimistic about what a donor can accomplish with their charity. Donor's can have huge impact -- save a life, improve equality of opportunity, or improve education. Our research process, and our main website, are (and always have been) built around identifying outstanding charities.

GiveWell hasn't set a bar that no charity can meet. Six international charities have met and passed the bar. Where most charities fall short, they succeed.

The problem is: because the nonprofit sector is saturated with unsubstantiated claims of impact and cost-effectiveness, it's easy to ignore me when I tell you (for example), "Give $1,000 to the Stop Tuberculosis Partnership, and you'll likely save someone's life (perhaps 2 or 3 lives)." It's easy to respond, "You're just a cheerleader" or "Why give there when Charity X makes an [illusory] promise of even better impact?"

We don't report on Smile Train, Kiva, Acumen Fund, UNICEF, or any others for the sake of the criticism; we write about them to show you how much more you can accomplish with your gift if you're willing to reconsider where you're giving this year.

Unless you have strong reason to believe otherwise, I'd recommend you choose a great charity as opposed to one that's merely better-than average. If you only have a fixed amount to give, why not support the very best?

My general stance is this: giving to charity has two ultimate outcomes. First, it often makes the donor feel good that they've done good. Second, it often does good. There's a third issue which is frictional: it does good for employees in the non-profit sector. In the market economy there is a principal-agent problem, but there's also the same issue among non-profits. Here's a recent post on Smile Train which I found disheartening, because I'd thought "Smile Train" was one of the "good guys," but it turns out that there're not perfect. But if true it is good to know these things.

Here's an article on the founders of GiveWell:

As hedge-fund analysts, Holden Karnofsky and Elie Hassenfeld made six-figure incomes deciding which companies to invest in. Now they are doing the same thing with charities, for a lot less pay.

Mr. Karnofsky and Mr. Hassenfeld, both 26, are the founders and sole employees of GiveWell, which studies charities in particular fields and ranks them on their effectiveness. GiveWell is supported by a charity they created, the Clear Fund, which makes grants to charities they recommend in their research.

Short sellers have a bad reputation. But they're probably necessary to keep the market honest.

razib Wed, 12/02/2009 - 19:04

Tags

Anthroplogy

Culture

Charity

The GiveWell dudes have a history of not being very honest.

For the past few hours I've been following that Metafilter thread, and I'm still only about a third of the way through.

There is also an article on their wiki about the debacle that might be useful.

There is certainly material here for an interesting discussion on ethics...