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Bernadette Young

Looking back at the career of Professor Alan Fenwick

Last week I was able to attend a lecture marking the retirement of Professor Alan Fenwick, Director of the Schistosomiasis Institute. It was a fascinating insight into both a remarkable endeavour and a remarkable man, which I want to share with the Giving What We Can community. A huge thank you to Alan for the lecture and for providing the images in this post for me to use.

Professor Fenwick treated us to a retrospective of a career spanning five decades, which took him from a Chemistry degree to spearheading the campaign to eradicate a terrible disease. 

When he joined the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine to do a PhD, it was with the aim of developing a molluscicide to kill the snails that are the intermediate hosts for the schistosome. This work took him to the field in Arusha, developing pesticides with the Tropical Pesticide Research Institute, and to Sudan with the Wellcome Trust, collaborating with teams working on malaria control. It was here (between mountwaain climbing, golf, writing pantos, playing cricket and Scottish dancing) in 1977 that they conducted trials of a new agent – Praziquantel. It was only 40 years ago that we first we had an effective treatment for schistosomiasis!

After leaving Sudan, Prof Fenwick became chief of party for a group charged with eliminating schistosomiasis as a health problem in Egypt. It is astonishing to see the prevalence of this disease plotted over time – from over 35% in 1983, and down by an order of magnitude to less than 2% at the end of his time there (and less than 0.5% in 2010). I think sometimes we lose sight of what a tremendous achievement it is to take a disease affecting literally 1 in 3 people and make it rare in the course of a lifetime.

At the end of his time in Egypt, Prof Fenwick acknowledges he probably could have retired. Instead, he turned his expertise, eminence and a lifetime of connections to do more good. He sought a grant from the Gates Foundation to work on schistosomiasis elsewhere. A modest request for $50 million was unfortunately turned down, but when a meagre $34 million was offered, Prof Fenwick “reluctantly agreed” and founded the 

Here we heard just what a unique and remarkable position he was in to do this work. He made contact with Dr Narcis Kabatereine, who many years ago had introduced himself at a meeting as “the Ugandan schistosomiasis control officer, with no budget”. I can’t do justice to the story of their search for the Minister of Health, whose agreement was critical to release the funding for treatment, but in telling the story, Prof Fenwick gave some demonstration of why he has been such a successful organizer and fundraiser, as well as evidence of the value of playing golf. Together with Dr Kabatereine, SCI developed a national program to eradicate schistosomiasis in Uganda, and Dr Kabatereine remains an adviser to SCI on African capacity building.

Prof Fenwick acknowledged the immense contribution of the pharmaceutical industry to global health and the control of neglected tropical diseases. Merck KGaA committed 20 million tablets of praziquantel per year in 2007: that donation has now reached 250 million tablets a year. GSK and Johnson & Johnson are likewise donating hundreds of millions of tablets a year. This is both an incredible gift, and a challenge. The safe and effective distribution of these treatments is an enormous undertaking.

About half of SCI’s work in distributing these treatments is funded by large government grants. Individual donors fund the remainder. It is here that our histories meet: Prof Fenwick describes a meeting with “some Oxford philosophers who were interested in cost effective giving”, and it wasn’t much later he was attending the launch of Giving What We Can in 2009. Since then, SCI has benefited from a ‘new wave of donors’, who cite GWWC, Givewell and The Life You Can Save as their sources. Good Ventures, the ENDFUND and some very generous individual donors have also made a huge difference to the operational capacity of SCI, as we can see in a map showing the earliest mass deworming operations (in blue), their next expansion (in red) and current coverage (red, blue and green). Bear in mind that in 2002, in Africa only Egypt had a schistosomiasis control programme.

Prof Fenwick is modest about his contributions, as evidenced by mention of his OBE – which he deprecatingly describes as recognition of “Other Buggers’ Efforts. But it’s clear he has led a charge to drastically change the impact of an actual scourge. It was clear from the pictures he posted throughout that the face of this work has changed over 50 years. The team taking over the reins, who will be the new champions of Neglected Tropical Diseases. Afterwards, I had a chance to talk to Dr Sarah Nogaro, a SCI programme manager working with both established distribution programme in Burundi, and new programmes in Madagascar. I left with a real sense of optimism: these are experts guiding local action, supporting locally led deworming. They have passion, and a huge commitment to the work they are doing.

A moment that stuck with me was Prof Fenwick’s remark, in acknowledging his mentors, that “everybody has somebody in their life without whom they would never get where they are going”. Mostly, we get to have that kind of impact on just a few people. But disease can stop people from getting anywhere. There are millions of people who, without the work of SCI and the funding of its supporters, would probably not have been treated for worms, and whose progress has been forever changed. What an utterly outstanding project to be a part of, and what an extraordinary man it is, who has given so much to that project.

We wish him every joy in a well-earned retirement.

Larissa Hesketh-Rowe

Introducing Effective Altruism Funds

An explanation of EA Funds and why it may be a more effective donation option for many individuals.

 (which runs Giving What We Can) has launched 

. We think this could be a more effective option for many individual donors, so we are now recommending this to our members. We have also added it to our 

Effective Altruism Funds allows individuals to pool their donations with others from across the community to help individual give more effectively. Donors can contribute to four different funds that represent areas that are important (affect a lot of people or animals), tractable (have good evidence of what works best) and neglected (not enough people are supporting that area). Each Fund is managed by an expert (currently including staff from 

) who we believe has extensive knowledge of that area.

 managed by Elie Hassenfeld from GiveWell 

 managed by Lewis Bollard from the Open Philanthropy Project 

 managed by Nick Beckstead from the Open Philanthropy Project 

Given the success of Effective Altruism Funds so far we may expand the funds to cover other important and effective areas if there is sufficient interest. If you have an idea for a fund or a Fund Manager, please fill out 

What might Effective Altruism Funds be more effective than your alternatives?

Below are four arguments for why Effective Altruism Funds might be higher impact than the alternatives available to many donors.

1. Donations to EA Funds may be at least as good as the Open Philanthropy Project’s last dollar

Donations to Effective Altruism Funds could be at least as good as the Open Philanthropy Project’s last dollar in the following three ways:

a) Providing a funding stream for more unusual, risky or time-sensitive projects, particularly where the Open Philanthropy Project might have brand-risk concerns

While the Open Philanthropy Project’s program officers have considerable freedom in their grant making, there may be additional giving opportunities that are not a good fit for the Open Philanthropy Project. Effective Altruism Funds gives Fund Managers a pool of funding they can make grants from with more brand separation from Open Phil, possibly allowing them to take greater risks. Fund Managers might also encounter giving opportunities that are particularly time-sensitive, or very small, where the need to go through management is prohibitive.

b) Providing additional funding to organisations where the Open Philanthropy Project already provides a high proportion of total funding.

The Open Philanthropy Project currently tries to set an upper limit on the proportion of a charity’s budget they will provide so that no charity becomes overly dependent on money from them. If Effective Altruism Funds generates recurring donations from a large number of donors then the Fund Managers may be able to use this money to fully fund an organisation already identified because they will be using funding from a broad range of donors rather than just relying on funding from the Open Philanthropy Project. This would save the charity from spending additional time raising funds from many small donors individually while still providing a diverse range of funders. We are not confident that this does not leave charities still too reliant on the Open Philanthropy Project however so this reason in favour of the funds holds less weight and is something we will review.

c) Trading off against the Open Philanthropy Project is a very good worst-case-scenario

It could be that Fund Managers are unable to find any more promising opportunities, and donations through Effective Altruism Funds and so money from the funds just swapped with money that would have been donated by the Open Philanthropy Project anyway. However, this might not necessarily be a bad thing. If this happened it would mean that your donation is at least as good as the Open Philanthropy Project’s last dollar. As Carl explains:

In principle one could donate to the donor-advised fund (DAF) of Open Phil, directly increasing its ultimate donation capacity. At the moment, this doesn't seem to be set up, but one could instead donate to something that Open Phil is donating to (inframarginal), and request that it 'funge' you by reducing its own donation to that charity by the corresponding amount, increasing the reserves of Good Ventures and other Open Phil backers accordingly. So the marginal Open Phil/Good Ventures dollar sets a minimum standard for risk-neutral donors: if you don't expect to do better than Open Phil, just arrange to get 'funged'.

To determine whether trading off with Open Phil is better or worse than the alternative we need to know how good Open Phil’s last dollar would be.

Open Phil’s current view on the value of their last dollar is:

”... On balance, our very tentative, unstable guess is that the “last dollar” has higher expected value than gifts to GiveWell’s top charities today.”

Thus, it seems quite plausible (although uncertain) that trading off with the Open Philanthropy Project is higher impact than the current alternative of donating to GiveWell-recommended charities.

2. Donating via Effective Altruism Funds may provide more value through specialisation and comparative advantage

Effective Altruism Funds allows individual donors to pool their donations with others who share their worldview and values, then delegate some of the research and decision-making to people who are likely to be best at this. To make an effective donation, currently individual donors must try to answer all of the following questions, given their values:

Which interventions are likely to make progress in solving the problem?

Which charities executing those interventions are most effective?

Which charities have a funding gap that is unlikely to be filled elsewhere?

Time spent answering these questions is time not spent doing other worthwhile activities. Donating to Effective Altruism Funds means you can spend time deciding which cause areas you value (the main question where differences in world-view or personal values may lead to the biggest differences in donation targets) but delegate the other decisions to an expert.

This is particularly important as questions (3) and (4) require timely information and knowledge of other funders’ intentions. Program Officers at major foundations have a particular comparative advantage at answering (2) and (3) since they spend virtually all of their working time thinking about how to allocate money to achieve the most good in any given cause area. These people are also particularly well suited to answer (4) as they have up-to-the-minute information about the largest funder in the space.

3. Strong track record for finding high-leverage giving opportunities: the EA Giving Group DAF

The Long-Term Future and Effective Altruism Community funds are currently managed by Nick Beckstead, a Program Officer at the Open Philanthropy Project who has helped advise a large private donor on donation opportunities for several years. The fund Nick manages was an early funder of CSER, FLI, Charity Entrepreneurship and Founder’s Pledge.

We think this represents a strong track record although the Open Philanthropy Project’s recent involvement in these areas may make it harder to find unfunded, promising opportunities in these areas in the future.

4.Possible long-term benefits of Effective Altruism Funds

As well as the increasing the effectiveness of individuals’ donations in the short term, we believe that the existence of, and further development of Effective Altruism Funds, might have significant longer-term benefits including:

a) Exploration of new funding opportunities

 Long term Effective Altruism Funds might increase the incentives for researchers to explore new areas for potential donations. This would be both because the Effective Altruism Funds would cause money to be available for allocation based on the research and because in the future we hope to encourage new Fund Managers to create new funds with different focus areas than the current options.

b) Acting as a training ground for new Effective Altruism researchers

 A future version of Effective Altruism Funds might also have a lower barrier to entry than, say, getting a job as a Program Officer at the Open Philanthropy Project. This would allow more people to try out in-depth charity research to see if they should specialize in it. It also provides a clear feedback mechanism for this kind of research, namely, whether the Effective Altruism community chooses to donate to your fund.

, it might be possible in the future to use the Effective Altruism Funds infrastructure to initiate a number of interesting, related projects. Two examples are moral trades and coordinating donor lotteries.

There are likely other interesting experiments that can be conducted with the donation infrastructure required for Effective Altruism Funds if it grows in size.

Why not donate directly to top charities?

We’ve chosen the Fund Managers based on their expertise and track record of making good grant decisions based on hours of research. With more money at their disposal than the average individual donors we expect them to be able to find some of the best giving opportunities available at the time they regrant their fund. This could be funding a particularly timely and promising-seeming project in their fund area or even supporting a promising new charity (one that might become a top charity in the future) to get started.

If no such new opportunities are available when the Fund Managers go to donate their fund then they will give the money to top charities like those recommended by GiveWell and Animal Charity Evaluators. This means that the “worst” thing that your donation could go to is some of the best charities out there and it could fund something even better.

By combining our donations we also give top charities a more steady income stream, especially if a lot of people set up recurring donations. Charities can easily see what is in the funds and speak to a few Fund Managers about their potential donations rather than trying to second guess a huge community of people.

Outside of global development and animal welfare, there are currently no evaluators helping donors find top charities to support. We hope that Effective Altruism Funds will help fill that gap for Giving What We Can members who wish to donate to other effective areas to fulfil their pledge.

Why might you choose not to donate to Effective Altruism Funds?

The Centre for Effective Altruism and Giving What We Can aim to increase donations to the most effective charities. To that end, we only want people to use Effective Altruism Funds if doing so is their best option for doing the most good. We believe it may not be the best option for some people, especially those moving large amounts of money and spending considerable time determining where to allocate their donations.

Some of the things you might want to consider before switching to using Effective Altruism Funds include:

1. Your views on the initial Fund Managers

We set up Effective Altruism Funds using Fund Managers from Open Philanthropy Project while we test to see how popular this platform would be because the Open Philanthropy Project is already one of the largest funders in these areas and they are recognised experts. This does mean however that a lot of donation decisions are currently concentrated in the hands of a small group of individuals. In the future, we aim to create a wider variety of funds with a wider variety of Fund Managers but this is something to bear in mind for now.

2. Specific value disagreements with Fund Managers

Some donors may choose to donate elsewhere if they find that they have specific disagreements with the worldviews of the Fund Managers. For example, you might have different views on the best ways to reduce the number of animals suffering in factory farming (say promoting a vegan lifestyle versus working with corporations to encourage their use of free range animal products) than the Fund Manager.

 for each fund you can see past donations made by the Fund Managers in order to get an idea of whether or not you share their values.

You might think that you will make a better donation decision than the Fund Managers if you have better information than them in specific cases. For example, you might have inside information on a particular cause or organisation or an unusually strong personal network that has enough knowledge and diversity of views to provide you with an advantage.

One thing to consider when making any donation is how risk-averse you are. Think about whether you would prefer your donation to have a 100% chance of saving one life or a 0.1% chance of saving 10,000 lives (which is the equivalent of saving 10 lives in expectation).

As discussed in the section on why this might be higher impact than donating to top charities, our Fund Managers are looking for promising new charities that may not yet have the robust evidence behind them that, for example, GiveWell’s top charity list requires. This more high-risk, high-reward approach means even the Global Development Fund (typically a low-risk area with strong evidence behind the interventions) has some level of risk to it. The other cause areas supported by our current funds involve more risk but could do a lot of good in expectation.

If you are not comfortable with your donation being riskier and instead prefer to be more certain of doing good, even if it means you might do less good overall you might prefer to donate only to GiveWell top charities.

5. Your trust in the Centre for Effective Altruism

Behind the scenes, the structure of Effective Altruism Funds operates similarly to a 

 with the Centre for Effective Altruism (CEA) operating as the DAF. Donations go to CEA and are put aside until the Fund Manager recommends a donation. CEA’s trustees must then approve the donation before the donation is sent to the recipient. Just as in a DAF, making a donation through EA Funds surrenders ownership of the donation to CEA with the understanding that the Fund Manager will have advisory privileges over how the fund is used. We chose this structure so that we could try and minimise fees on donations and make the donation process as seamless as possible but it means you are trusting us with your donation. While we expect to follow the Fund Managers’ recommendations in the vast majority of cases there may be unexpected cases that would require CEA's discretion to resolve. Some examples include Fund Managers resigning, Fund Managers ending their term with money remaining in the fund, Fund Managers making recommendations that are not in keeping with the description of the fund, etc. We are unlikely to have planned for all cases and may need to exercise discretion to resolve unforeseen circumstances.

What's happening to the Giving What We Can Trust?

If you want to support our top charities (those currently recommended by GiveWell) you can still donate to the 

. In the future, we plan to move the payment infrastructure supporting the trust over to the same platform as Effective Altruism funds so that you can support individual, top charities there too in the same way that you currently can with the Trust. If–taking into account all of the points discussed in this post–you think that donating to Effective Altruism Funds is likely to be higher impact, get in touch at 

 to find out about switching your donation from the Giving What We Can Trust to Effective Altruism Funds.

What does this mean in practice for Giving What We Can Members and the pledge?

Nothing about the pledge itself has changed. It is still a lifetime pledge to “give at least ten percent of what I earn to whichever organisations can most effectively use it to improve the lives of others”. We simply believe that Effective Altruism Funds could be one of the best ways to do so at present.

A huge thank you to all of our members for all of your contributions to our recent pledge campaign which has seen 318 new members join Giving What We Can. This blog post gives some information on what to do next if you are a new member.

Welcoming over 318 new members to the Giving What We Can community

Happy 2017! We’re probably a bit late to say that but so much has happened in January already that it seems to have raced by.

 which saw 318 new members join Giving What We Can and 114 start Try Giving. This took us to 2575 new members by the end of the pledge campaign but today we're already on 2,629 members! A big welcome to all the people who are new to our community.

This has been our best campaign yet, December was a record breaking month with 171 new members joining in that time and yet this month we’ve already had 190 new members take the pledge. The image above (a huge thanks to volunteer José for designing it) is based on our dashboard data (see the graph below), the spike at the very end shows December and January, our recent pledge campaign.

We’re really excited to see our community growing so quickly. Together we’ve already donated over $20 million to highly effective charities which is a staggering amount. In 2015, (the most recent year for which we’ve conducted our full giving review) members recorded over $1.3 million just to the 

 this could have prevented as many as 425 premature deaths from malaria!

Most commonly our new members from the pledge campaign noted that they first heard about Giving What We Can from their friends which is a great testament to all of our current members who have been spreading the word. Thank you so much for supporting us and encouraging others to give more and give more effectively. These extra donations mean more children safe from malaria, better quality of life for people suffering from various neglected tropical diseases, less animals suffering in factory farming and more progress on preventing existential risks. This is what our work is all about. If you’d like tips on talking to your friends about Giving What We Can we have lots of resources and ideas on 

It’s been fun being involved in such a lively and creative campaign but now our focus is getting to know our new members better and working out how to support them.

If you are new, there a few important things you can do now.

Now that you’ve pledged to give 10% of your income (or 1% of your spending money while you’re a student or unemployed) to the organisations that can most effectively use it to improve the lives of others, it’s good to get into the habit of giving early. If it is financially viable for you, consider setting up a direct debit to a charity to come out of your account just after your pay cheque, that way it’s easier to budget and you won’t forget.

If you’re unsure about where to donate have a look at 

 to find top organisations that are working the most promising areas.

You can also make your donations go further by finding out about things like tax deductibility for charitable donations in your country. We've written up some 

If you have any questions please feel free to 

We ask all of our members to record their donations in 

. This helps you see what your money is achieving and whether or not you’ve met your pledge for the year. This is our main source of data for assessing the impact we and our members are having so it’s really important we get as much information as possible.

We are all trying to do the most good we can by donating a significant portion of our income to effective organisations. This means we’re part of a growing community all working towards a similar goal. If you need help with something, have questions or want moral support you have a community of over 2,600 Giving What We Can members to draw on, not to mention over 30,000 people who’ve signed up to the Effective Altruism newsletter because they want to improve the world. A few of us from the Centre for Effective Altruism (which runs Giving What We Can) will also be in touch with new members about chatting on Skype. If you’re already a member and haven’t spoken to one of us feel free to request a Skype by emailing 

Join the Giving What We Can community group on Facebook

 to stay up to date on developments in research and from the community.

Class of the pledge campaign 2016/2017: a community support experiment

One thing we also trialling to help support and connect our members is setting up cohorts for our new members by join date. This means giving you an online space where you can talk to people who joined at the same time as you, swap tips on things like giving and budgeting and share experiences of being a new member. We’ll also post information to help new members with getting started. Things like where to donate, how often and how to budget.

We’re trying this out with everyone who joined during the pledge drive (Tuesday 29th November - Tuesday 10th January) so if you joined Giving What We Can in this time and haven’t received your invite 

If this group finds it useful we’ll consider creating Facebook groups for cohorts of future new members so there is always somewhere to go for introductory resources when you join.

A huge thank you again to everyone who has been involved in our pledge campaign and to those of you who have newly joined because you want to use your donations to improve the world as much as possible. We are regularly humbled by this community and look forward to hitting the next milestones (3,000 members isn’t far away!) together.

Erwan Atcheson

It's Good to Talk

A five-minute conversation has the potential to prevent 40 lives being lost. That's about how long it takes to explain the basic precepts of the 

"I give 10% of my income to charities like 

; they use that money in cost-effective ways to prevent (e.g.) malaria in children; if I do that for every year of my working life, then on an average wage I can expect to avert 40 deaths."

That takes about 30 seconds to say out loud. Explaining the meaning of 

 can take another minute; explaining how charities are 

 you'll avert 40 deaths, one more minute.

Another minute should be spent explaining that rather than ‘averting 40 deaths’ you'd expect, on a 

 or US wage, to donate enough to buy 55,200 bednets, contributing to the protection of about 99,340 people and averting the deaths of about 70 children over the course of your working life and that there is considerable uncertainty in each figure, but the bottom line is that this is the best-evidenced, most-likely-to-be-highly-effective-and-do-the-most-good intervention your money can buy that we know of.

 does a wonderful job of explaining how to accurately tell someone exactly how their donation will do the good it does. In this article I am going to abbreviate the truth by saying I expect to avert about 40 deaths in my lifetime.

Ok, now we've up to four and half minutes, which allows time for questions. After this your friend may well take the pledge: 22% of pledge-takers do so after encountering the idea from their friends.

Even with the above qualifications and explications, it is an extraordinary fact: simply opening your mouth and talking could 

Here's the rub: talking about the pledge, or about Giving What We Can generally, can be difficult. There seem to be two main barriers. First, we're inhibited, and in fact there are lots of good reasons to be. I think the reasons to become 

 are a lot more compelling, but first we're going to have to look square at those reasons for being inhibited and deal with them. After that I'll breach the second barrier: even if we're keen to talk, it can be difficult to know what to say.

I'll share with you now what may be some reasons for being inhibited. Be warned that this will be somewhat subjective, as I have gone within, as it were, to locate these thoughts; but I'm not 

 weird (at least on a universal scale) so possibly you will find that something resonates.

One source of inhibition may be a concern not to use your friends as means to an end. It is one of the basic conditions of friendship that we don't use our friends to achieve things that aren't necessarily in their interest. People who do so are called users and are universally reviled. Talking about GWWC could be discerned as "using" your friend since it isn't necessarily in their best interest to learn they can do more good giving their money away than by keeping it. The impression is that people in some remote place will benefit at your friend's expense, with their new bednets or deworming tablets; you in turn will feel good, again at your friend's expense; so that makes you, in the short term, a user, because you are burdening your friend to achieve some other goal.

This aspect of burdening your friend is another source of inhibition, I think. There is good evidence that, long term, giving 10% of your income to charity 

Blog

Looking back at the career of Professor Alan Fenwick

Introducing Effective Altruism Funds

Welcoming over 318 new members to the Giving What We Can community

It's Good to Talk

How we talk about what donations will achieve

Spreading the word this July: Engaging friends with a Charity Giving Game

What’s so special about GiveDirectly’s basic income pilot?

Using aid to finance the refugee crisis: a worrying trend

Is Charity About Helping the Poorest?

Median GDP per capita: how much does the typical person earn in different countries? A look at Global Inequality