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Grace Adams

July Newsletter 2022

Hello and welcome to our July Newsletter!

Earlier this month, we sent an announcement to our Giving What We Can Pledge members about our new pledge pin. This pin will be given to all Giving What We Can Pledge members who have been pledgers for over a year and are on track with their donations.

It’s an honour to be a part of a community that cares deeply about giving and improving the world, and this is a small way for us to thank our members for displaying an ongoing commitment to their pledge.

full pledge pin announcement along with some FAQs.

We’ve launched our yearly Giving Review and have been collecting data about the donations our community made in 2021.

If you could spend 5 minutes reporting your donations before the 31st July, please do so.

 It helps us measure our impact and hopefully provide better experiences for our members in the future.

announcement about upping the spending of the Gates Foundation

, some of us may feel that our relatively small, individual donations don’t matter.

We’d like to remind you that although your contribution may 

 like a drop in the bucket, it means quite a lot to the people, animals and planet it benefits.

By giving effectively, you are part of a community of donors who — together — are drastically increasing the size of that drop, making 

a meaningful, concrete difference to the lives of others

 and helping to normalise giving to those who need it. That’s incredibly important, because even with generous donations from large philanthropists, there's much more to be done.

-Luke Freeman & the rest of the Giving What We Can team

July Newsletter Summary

Member Daryl D'Souza started a new job and shared a donation publicly with his network!

Congratulate Daryl on his new job and his advocacy

The meetups team is hosting an EA Forum “Show and Tell.” Come and tell us about a forum post that you found interesting, didn’t agree with, didn’t understand, want to learn more about, etc., and we’ll discuss it together! Feel free to choose any post (old or new) on any topic or cause. Just come along and we can spend some time learning something new or debating something fun!

 (New York: Sat, Aug. 6, 6:00 pm; Sydney: Sun, Aug. 7, 8:00 am)

Tony Senanayake from IDInsight will join this session to answer some Q&A about his work with multiple organisations in the global health and development sector. Tony is a goldmine of knowledge and this is sure to be a fascinating discussion.

 (London: 10:30 am, Munich: 11:30 am, Mumbai: 3:00 pm, Singapore: 5:30 pm)

Our open forum is an event where you can come along with questions about effective giving and/or to meet others interested in effective giving. This event alternates between different timezones each month.


 (London 8:00 pm, Berlin 9:00 pm, New York 3:00 pm, Los Angeles 12:00 pm)

Why plant based meat is a scalable solution to feed the world

: Interview with Bruce Friedrich, ​​founder and CEO of the Good Food Institute (GFI) - Giving What We Can YouTube

 share their giving stories - Giving What We Can YouTube, 

Find audio-only versions of our new YouTube content on the 

 performed a meta-review of what works and doesn’t work to promote charitable donations. Read Peter Slattery’s 

Magnify Mentoring has opened up applications for their next round of mentoring

. If you are a woman, non-binary person, or trans person of any gender with enthusiasm to pursue a high-impact career path, consider applying before the deadline on 5th August

Peter McIntyre (formerly of 80,000 Hours) has launched a free online learning platform called 

, which introduces some foundational EA concepts aimed to help young adults (particularly teenagers) increase their impact on the world. Peter encourages the EA community to share the first course, 

A community member is developing a course on forecasting. If you’re interested, you can 

 to participate in this new online class.

 on its funding projections for 2022, stating that it doesn’t expect to have enough funding this year to fill all the cost-effective grant opportunities it has been able to identify. As a result, it is raising its cost-effectiveness bar for funding and increasing its fundraising efforts.

GiveWell has published several new research materials, including a 

 on the efficacy and cost-effectiveness of programs that train health workers to deliver maternal and neonatal health interventions, a 

 about two recent grants (totaling $562,000) supporting IRD Global’s tuberculosis team in Karachi, Pakistan, and 

 from a conversation with Drs. Edward Miguel and Michael Walker about a possible follow-up to a randomised controlled trial of GiveDirectly's unconditional cash transfer program in Kenya.

GiveWell is hiring for several positions, including 

in which donations to its Movement Grants program will be matched dollar-for-dollar up to $300,000.

 with information about the grants they made between September-December 2021

James Snowden, a GWWC pledger and former team member, has joined Open Philanthropy as 

Program Officer for Effective Altruism Community Building

 An exploration of the topic from Bob Holmes at Knowable magazine

Faunalytics has released the 2022 update of their 

Global Animal Slaughter Statistics & Charts

New data shows 10M fewer hens confined in cages in 2021 in Europe, as per 

by 2026, the Gates Foundation aims to spend $9 billion a year

“Is it really useful to ‘teach a person to fish’ or should you just give them the damn fish already?” asks Sigal Samuel 

 discussing the evidence behind ‘ultra-poor graduation programs,’ which are aimed at lifting the ultra-poor out of poverty through a combination of training and cash/assets. Samuel explores how these combo programs compare to simple cash transfer initiatives, and how the gap between “teach a man to fish” and “give a man to fish” is narrowing.

Evidence Action is hiring for some communications roles including a 

, a DC-based role working across a variety of communications workstreams with a heavy focus on digital, and an 

Kelsey Piper, Vox journalist and GWWC member, writes about 

 and how the controversy over the value of deworming interventions shows the need for effective altruists to reason under uncertainty.

The 4 greatest threats to the survival of humanity 

 on how we could be living in the most important century and explores the development of advanced AI.

Four lessons from effective altruism that we can apply to climate change

Centre for the Governance of AI has opened submissions for their 

, and are seeking promising pieces of research with relevance to AI governance. Eligible submissions include undergraduate and master’s theses, journal articles, and essays. Winners will be awarded monetary prizes and be eligible for mentoring.


Why plant based meat is a scalable solution to feed the world | Bruce Friedrich

You can now support Giving What We Can’s operations using our donation platform

This funding helps us to inspire donations to high impact charitie

 to help grow our community and multiply your impact.

 with Giving What We Can and effective altruism.

Discuss effective giving and effective altruism on the 

 for more news and articles.
Do you have questions about the pledge, Giving What We Can, or effective altruism in general? Check out our 

Caroline Wood

Do many charities fail to help people?

Whether their mission is combating malaria, improving global literacy, researching cancer cures, or fighting climate change, we naturally assume that charitable organisations have noble intentions. Indeed, the very word ‘charity’ 

, describing affectionate love towards fellow human beings. So it can feel incredibly mean-spirited to stop and ask whether charities 

 benefit the people they intend to help. If their motives are altruistic and their methods are plausible, shouldn’t we just trust them to put our donations to good use?

Unfortunately, this isn’t always the case: despite their worthy motives, many charities don’t help people as effectively as they could, and some even cause harm. Acknowledging this doesn’t mean we are being cynical and judgemental; rather, it allows us to make the biggest possible difference to alleviate the suffering of others by supporting causes using methods that have been proven to work.

For a perfect illustration of a charity that is ineffective at best and harmful at worst, look no further than 

. The idea is simple: children play on a specially-designed roundabout, water is drawn up through a connected borehole to the surface, and the result is a new playground

system for providing safe water. On the surface, it seems a brilliantly creative solution. Within a few years of launching, 

PlayPumps were being hailed as a game-changer solution

, having won a World Bank Development Marketplace Award, as well as sponsorship from 

PlayPump Example

when major flaws in PlayPumps’ design became apparent.

 The pumps often broke down, were difficult to maintain and repair, and could only draw water when the roundabout was in motion —  resulting in exhausted, weary children, compelled to keep turning the unwieldy devices long after the fun had worn off. When consulted by aid organisations, the communities said they preferred the previous hand pumps, which dispensed more water for considerably less effort. In 2007, 

UNICEF issued a highly critical report of PlayPumps,

key stakeholders in the water sector are not comfortable knowing that the $14,000 paid for each unit would have covered several conventional handpump-equipped boreholes or wells, thereby providing safe drinking water to far more people than one PlayPump can

It wasn’t simply a case of PlayPumps not being the best approach to the problem: they were actually getting in the way of better solutions. Yet the charity is 

We can find more examples from medical aid. Across the world, NGOs, pharmaceutical companies, and charities distribute medical devices and drugs to low-income countries, yet often these are highly unsuited to local contexts. At worst, this can result in

 ‘graveyards’ of defunct equipment cluttering up hospitals

high disposal costs for inappropriate medicines

 on the effectiveness of medical donations made between 2009–2017, researchers from the University of Sydney concluded that most did not fully comply with World Health Organization guidelines, and that “40–70% of donated medical devices are not used as they are not functional, appropriate, or staff lack training.” Other issues included lack of spare parts to fix devices that broke, instructions provided in non-native languages, equipment being donated without all the required parts, and devices requiring a different power voltage to that used within the country.

Six reasons why ineffective charities exist

Even when charities don’t cause outright harm, their effectiveness can vary massively

. But if certain charities are so much better than others, why do the less effective ones persist? Some of the main reasons include:

1. We underestimate the differences in effectiveness

Most people are unaware of just how large the differences in charities’ effectiveness can be. For instance, 

 found that members of the general public estimated the most effective charities helping the global poor to be only 1.5 times more effective than average charities, while charity experts estimated the factor to be 100.

Charities are not like ‘for-profit’ companies selling products and services. If one company sold its products at 100x the price of the market average, it would quickly go out of business. But as we are generally ignorant about the difference in effectiveness between charities, this means that 

donors do not consistently donate more to the most effective charities.

 Consequently, there is no equivalent market pressure in the charity sector, which allows ineffective charities to persist.

3. Charities underinvest in overhead costs

Often, charities try to minimise overhead costs to appeal to donors but this can lead to counterproductive outcomes

, such as underinvestment in staff salaries (making it hard to recruit skilled labour) and outdated administration systems. In contrast, 

 that well-organised charities backed by solid infrastructures and highly trained staff typically leverage greater impact from their funds.

4. Charities fail to consult their intended beneficiaries

Many of the pitfalls behind PlayPumps could have been avoided if the time and effort had been made to consult the people the charity was trying to help, and to understand their local environment. Similarly, many charities fail to involve end-users, assuming a (rather arrogant) ‘West knows best’ approach. In their review on medical aid, for instance, the Sydney researchers found that “few donor organisations conducted needs assessments prior to donations.”

In general, people’s generosity does not scale proportionately with the number who could benefit. For instance, 

that people were willing to spend nearly the same amount to save 2,000, 20,000, or 200,000 birds from a disastrous oil spill. 

Studies have also confirmed that we can be misled by ‘pseudoinefficacy’

, where if a vast number of people are suffering or at risk from a problem, we feel that acting to save a single life is just ‘a drop in the ocean’ and therefore less valuable. It appears that we are more drawn to causes where we can help the highest proportion of affected people, rather than focusing on the absolute numbers.

Our giving habits can be heavily influenced by our emotions, with the result that 

fundraising appeals that induce feelings such as empathy, compassion or guilt are more likely to move us to donate

. We can also be easily led by ‘trendy’ campaigns backed by celebrities (remember 

The great tragedy is that by being drawn to easily marketable gimmicks, more appropriate and sustainable projects are in ever greater danger of being neglected.”

We are also more likely to donate to causes we feel a personal connection with, even if they won’t achieve the most additional impact possible. For instance, in high-income countries virtually everyone has either battled cancer or known someone who has. Consequently, many can be more inclined to donate to cancer research instead of, for instance, malaria prevention, despite the fact that additional funding towards cancer research is unlikely to save as many lives as anti-malaria interventions.

The solution to ineffective charities: Effective altruism

If we want to do good in the world, it is important that we are aware of the differences in charities effectiveness, because these have huge implications for the world’s poor. When a weaker solution is backed at the expense of a better one, it ultimately means fewer lives saved or improved. What’s more, our budgets are limited, and every dollar donated to an ineffective charity is one that could have been given to an exceptionally high-performing charity.

Happily, we are free to donate our money as we choose. This means we can simply focus on 

for areas with the potential to make a strong impact. 

Indeed, doing the most good we can with the resources we have (including our time, career and income) is the fundamental principle of effective altruism

. But how do we work out which are the most effective charities?

Thankfully there are several organisations that have already done the hard work for us, rigorously evaluating charities through many lenses. Their assessments consider factors such as evidence of successful programmes, 

Blog

July Newsletter 2022

Do many charities fail to help people?

Pledge Pin Announcement

Bruce Friedrich: Why plant based meat is a scalable solution to feed the world

June Newsletter 2022

How flawed judgments limit the impact of charitable donations

Member Profile: Vasco Grilo

May 2022 Newsletter

Member Profile: Sonia Albrecht

EA Funds donation platform is moving to Giving What We Can