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Zachary Leather

Do something incredible this New Year

A group of students has got together to take the Giving What We Can pledge this New Year's. If you would like to take the opportunity to join, or just to support the campaign and Giving What We Can, check out and share 

! You can become a Giving What We Can member 

. And please watch and share the amazing video our Cambridge chapter made about why you should take the pledge.

Almost everyone dreams of doing something good for the world. However, it is a sad fact that for us westerners, living in a dreamy bubble so far away away from the pain and suffering we wish to eliminate, it is incredibly difficult to motivate ourselves to act on our altruistic desires. Unless you happen to be fantastically conscientious and aware, you will need to remind yourself daily that the suffering we sometimes see through little screens does actually exist for some people in a terribly real sense.

I’m one of those who needs some sort of motivation to give altruistically, some sort of reminder that ensures that giving becomes normal rather than exceptional. 

 reminds us not only of what we believe is right, but to do what we believe is right.

 I hope that for me it can penetrate the money-grabbing distractions that surround us every day as part of the bubble that is western life.

This is what makes the pledge so perfect for me (and, I hope, for us all).** Giving is something that we should all be doing.** In fact, even though giving is considered exceptional (and optional) by the vast majority of our society, I think it is a moral obligation on the same level of paying tax.

The pledge tells us to forget the idea that not helping some of the most desperate people on the planet is a morally viable option, and forces us to see it as an obligation - exactly what it is for the (relatively) rich. And all of us in the western world are rich compared to most people in the world: 

someone earning the average UK salary (£26,500) is in the richest 3% of the world’s people, and could save a life every year by taking the pledge.

The other major principle upon which the pledge is founded is the idea that some charities are much better than others. Even if we give all the time, we give significant proportions of our income and we do so as a matter of course, it’s difficult to know that we’re actually making a difference. Since becoming acquainted with effective altruism, I have been more and more concerned about the effects of what I do – and in particular about the effects of my donations. There are too many charities out there, too many causes, to figure out for myself what the best way of donating is.

Giving What We Can provides the guidance I need to maximise the effect of my altruistic efforts, and encourages members to donate in a reflective way and taking into account the best available evidence. 

By giving to the very best charities, we can be sure that our donations are making a real difference. And making giving less stressful, less uncertain, is surely a huge step towards making it a normal part of life.

This may seem like too large a commitment for an 18-year-old who has had nothing more than a cashier job. But this is precisely the right time for me to take the Giving What We Can pledge. I can step into the work world knowing that 10% of what I earn is going to charity, as certainly as I know that some will be taken by the tax man. 

It’s another step to making giving a habitual and moral obligation.

When I really think that I may be, in this moment, making the decision to give (over my lifetime) an enormous amount to help people so desperately in need they can’t be sure of their next meal or of their health, I do not feel scared but hopeful. I know that I am taking a step that will help many people who were not lucky enough to be born in a country like the UK, and help correct the deep injustices that make some so much poorer than others. Taking the pledge is, I hope, about making altruism my new normal. It’s not about sacrifice. It is my declaration that I will do my bit, I will not let my selfishness get in the way. 

Scott Weathers

What can the Reach Act do for Global Health?

For a primer on the Reach Every Mother and Child Act, see 

 on our blog. Here, Scott explains the Maternal and Child Survival Coordinator position and argues that it has the most potential for impact at USAID.

Everybody knows our representatives don’t accomplish much. But they’ve actually reached a few pretty big milestones recently: just last month, four major pieces of global health and development legislation passed through the House Foreign Affairs Committee. The 

 (or Reach Act), not included in those four, is another piece of particularly high-impact legislation that is quickly garnering bipartisan support.

The most important reform in the Reach Act is probably the Maternal and Child Survival Coordinator position (Coordinator, for short). The Coordinator position is designed to give authority to an existing employee within 

 to coordinate spending across agencies, set budget priorities, and take other actions that would maximize the effectiveness of US spending on global health.

Ariel Pablos-Mendez, the current Coordinator, has begun implementing an evidence-based strategy to end preventable newborn, child, and maternal deaths called 

 prioritizes the most effective interventions and has already dramatically increased the impact of U.S. global health investments. In order to fully implement the strategy, however, the Coordinator position would need to be institutionalized past the current USAID administration and even into future U.S. presidencies.

The idea for the Coordinator position follows the advice of the Blue Ribbon Panel, commissioned by USAID’s previous Administrator Raj Shah, 

 with Rear Admiral Timothy Ziemer acting as U.S. Global Malaria Coordinator, which is where the idea for a Coordinator position at USAID came from. Although PMI is far from the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) in terms of media attention and overall funding, PMI’s effectiveness 

A good amount of PMI’s success has come from Ziemer’s leadership, but 

the broader lesson for global health is that well-defined initiatives can be achieved when a single person is given the ability to coordinate and focus decision-making, especially across agencies

 is the framework for how USAID can help end preventable newborn and maternal deaths by 2035, but enacting this vision requires a leadership structure like PMI’s.

Some of the benefits of this kind of leadership structure are hard to quantify in terms of impact - think smoother reporting requirements, better coordination, etc. Other benefits, however, are quite tangible: with a coordinator in place, USAID would have a much easier time prioritizing the high-impact interventions in 

. Although we can’t exactly predict the degree to which future coordinators would fund specific interventions, we do know that spending priorities will move up the cost-effectiveness ladder considerably.

One last detail to follow on the Reach Act - arguably the most important - is how the Senate and House will negotiate differences in how they think the coordinator position should function. Lauren Post at the Center for Global Development has an 

 explaining the current differences, namely that the House version would give the coordinator more authority to coordinate across agencies - exactly what U.S. funding for global health needs.

Konstantin Sietzy

Mental Health interventions may be more cost-effective than we think

Neither Giving What We Can nor GiveWell currently feature a single mental health-focused organisation in their recommendations, despite mental disorders accounting for over one-fifth of all days lived with disability worldwide.

 suggests that mental health interventions in low and middle income countries (LMIC) may be more cost-effective than previously assumed. As currently favoured interventions reach diminishing marginal returns, mental health may rapidly become an interesting field for effective donations, although some significant concerns remain about tractability.

The global mental health burden of disease

Mental, neurological and substance use disorders (MNS) account for an estimated 7.4% of the global disease burden[1]. This realisation is at the foundation of a 

 penned by Victoria de Menil on behalf of the Centre for Global Development. De Menil’s report lays out the scale of the mental health problem, estimated to affect 700 million people globally[2], and makes three specific policy recommendations:

creating incentives through results-based funding,

MNS disorders are one of the top five contributors to the global burden of disease [1], and are responsible for 37% of the total disease burden from 

[3]. Moreover, they carry a high death toll through suicides and contributing to premature mortality in various ways.

Importantly, the problem posed by mental disorders is actually getting worse: disease burden as measured in 

 increased by 38% between 1990 and 2010[1], and is expected to continue on this trajectory as populations age and demographics shift (since MNS disorders, especially neurological conditions such as Parkinson’s, disproportionately affect adults).

Finally, mental disorders are cause for some of the most serious human rights abuses committed in LMIC, both within families and communities (sexual abuse, forced restraint) and by governments (forced sterilization or incarceration).

Mental health disorders are also directly related to poverty. Stress and emotional anxiety experienced in relation with poverty may trigger mental disorders (the 

 hypothesis). Conversely, crippling healthcare costs and frequent unemployment associated with mental health problems may serve to drive individuals into poverty or keep them there (the ‘social drift’ hypothesis).

Despite a substantial literature on effective interventions, mental health is starkly neglected by LMIC governments. According to de Menil, “one third of LMIC do not have a designated budget for mental health… and among those that do, the average expenditure on mental health in low-income countries is 0.5% of the total health budget.” She contrasts the 

 in Nigeria – 90% across all diagnosable mental disorders – with an average of 32% for schizophrenia to 56-57% for depression and anxiety disorders in European countries.

Remarkably, the international donor community fares no better: only 0.7% of development spending is directed at mental health [4] (despite a disease burden of over ten times this scale relative to the global total). A significant obstacle here is the lack of reliable data on MNS disorder prevalence in many LMIC.

De Menil is adamant that the problem lies in implementation – especially at the institutional level – not in generating effective interventions: Cost-effective, proven and scalable interventions, she claims, are readily available, focusing on three examples (universal health coverage, results-based funding, cash transfers).

Importantly, de Menil’s main source of data for her cost-effectiveness estimates, the 

Disease Control Priorities in Developing Countries (DCP2) report (2006)

, is almost ten years old, calling for significant caution on any inferences made from these figures. (Disclaimer: GiveWell has further offered 

To investigate cost-effectiveness, the DCP2 authors modelled the aggregate effects of a bundle of the most effective treatment options across four disorder archetypes (schizophrenia and related non-affective psychoses, bipolar affective disorder, major depressive disorder, panic disorder).

Their analysis suggests that mental health interventions work out at $1,000-$2,000/DALY averted in Sub-Saharan Africa and $2,300-$4,500/DALY averted in Latin America and the Caribbean. (For comparison, GiveWell currently estimates 

the effectiveness of distributing anti-malarial bed nets

Since these figures represent average values across a bundle of interventions, targeting only the most effective disease incidences could prove significantly more cost-effective. De Menil mentions “a wide range [of effectiveness] across disorders and populations; brief interventions for harmful alcohol use and treatment of epilepsy with first-line anti-epileptic medicines fall towards the lower (more favorable) end, while community-based treatment of schizophrenia with first-generation medication and psychosocial care falls towards the upper end.”

), released in October 2015, reaches even more optimistic conclusions. Surveying studies on cost-effectiveness published between 2007-2012, they find broadly the same estimates while complementing the lower end of the scale with alcohol-demand reduction measures, projected at approximately $200-$1,200/DALY averted[5]. One can therefore treat $1,000-$2,000/DALY averted as a conservative estimate of the cost-effectiveness of the best mental health interventions.

 – key obstacle to effective treatment of mental health disorders. In a number of LMIC “there has been a discourse that mental health problems don’t exist.” [6] Families resort to forcible restraint out of helplessness how to deal with affected relatives. Fear of contagion of mental illness results in patients being denied physical touch or ostracised by their communities[7].

Additionally, ignorance of the neuropsychiatric causes of mental health disorders may drive communities to rely on ineffective practices such as “faith-healing rituals” or “nontherapeutic herbal supplements” (de Menil). Interventions aimed at combatting stigma are likely much harder to implement than direct-treatment interventions – pursuing change on a systemic scale may prove 

A second obstacle may affect the scalability of mental health interventions. In surveying successful examples of mental health policy reforms in four countries (India, China, Ethiopia, South Africa), de Menil repeatedly points out national and regional idiosyncrasies that may complicate transferring proven interventions from one context to another. In particular, different communities place varying degrees of emphasis on home vs. institutional care, “paraprofessionals” (traditional healers, village authorities) vs. specialist workers, recovery vs. symptom management, and openness to learning from external partners.

Which organisations currently operate in this area?

The mental health charity space is not crowded. The 

 lists only eight NGOs active in this field. Of those, only three are not limited to a specific country or region.

 appears to be the sole large charity active in reducing the global mental health disease burden. It provides “medication and psychosocial support in partnership with local governments and Ministries of Health … [, builds] the capacity of existing health professionals and services … [and] participants by encouraging them to be members of self-help groups … [and] create[s] livelihood opportunities for people with mental illness and epilepsy.”

Initial cost-effectiveness estimates of BasicNeeds’ Mental Health and Development programs support the hypothesis postulated above that targeting individual disease may prove even more effective than the DCP2 figures: 

 place the incremental cost over two years per DALY averted at $727. (For full disclosure it should be added that de Menil was employed by BasicNeeds between 2007-2010.) BasicNeeds claims to have helped “over 646,000 people in 12 countries.”

Is mental health a promising area for Effective Altruism?

Mental health interventions are important considering their neglectedness and the scale of the disease burden. The political nature of stigma-related obstacles to change provide some problems for tractability, but local interventions circumventing these problems are conceivable; de Menil’s policy recommendations may provide promising starting points for developing more effective interventions.

It seems that mental health interventions may not be among the most effective right now, but given their comparative cost-effectiveness, may rank high in succession when the best current programs approach 

give to one of the charities currently working on improving mental health in LMIC

. The most plausible candidate appears to be BasicNeeds, although limited available data means there is significant uncertainty about the effectiveness of their programs. Before doing this, you might want to read about Giving What We Can’s 

pursue or fund further research into what are the most effective interventions in the mental health sphere

. A lack of data (e.g. on treatment gaps or the effectiveness of existing interventions) and of highly effective policy recommendations reflect major room for further study of this area. Mental health disease burden alleviation currently seems neglected, and as some other effective charities approach funding saturation, there will be demand for new opportunities to direct funding.

consider setting up an effective mental health charity yourself

. The scale of the problem is significant in LMIC, and the same considerations about neglectedness listed above apply here. The upcoming DCP3 report is likely a good starting point for which disorders allow for the most effective interventions. Advice on setting up your own effective charity can be found 

Whiteford, Degenhardt et al. (2013), as cited in Victoria de Menil. 2015. 

"Missed Opportunities in Global Health: Identifying New Strategies to Improve Mental Health in LMICs."

 CGD Policy Paper 068. Washington DC: Center for Global Development.

Patel and Saxena (2014), as cited in de Menil

Bloom, Cafiero et al. (2011), as cited in de Menil

Gilbert, Patel et al. (2015), as cited in de Menil.

“Addressing the Burden of Mental, Neurological, and Substance Use Disorders: Key Messages from Disease Control Priorities, 3rd Edition.”

Summerfield (2013), as cited in de Menil.

Human Rights Watch (2012), as cited in de Menil.

Michelle Hutchinson

Giving What We Can is a community of effective givers – an international society that helps people commit to giving more, and giving more effectively. Our members donate at least 10% of their career incomes to the charities they believe will help others the most. Now we need your help to keep our momentum into 2016.

Giving What We Can needs your support this Christmas

Giving What We Can is a community of effective givers – an international society that helps people commit to giving more, and giving more effectively. Our members donate at least 10% of their career incomes to the charities they believe will help others the most.

Over the last year, our community has doubled in size. Our members have now collectively 

donated more than $10 million, and pledged over half a billion dollars

! We have been testing out a range of ways to attract and retain new members, and seem to have found some to be really successful. Amongst these are 

We would like to capitalise on a successful 2015 by scaling up some of the most promising avenues for attracting and retaining new members. To do so, we need to increase our team size. We've been lucky enough to have had really excellent applicants in our recent recruitment round. In order to carry out our plans — detailed in 

 — we need to reach our fundraising goal.

We think that the most relevant considerations for choosing whether to donate to us are our strong track record, and our plans for growth. But we also regularly calculate our effectiveness, to ensure that we are providing a substantial leverage ratio for our top charities. Our 

 for this indicates that for every $1 spent by Giving We Can, around $103 (counterfactually adjusted and time-discounted) will be moved to top charities.

, of which we already have £193,000 pledged. We therefore need to raise a further £282,000. You can find a full breakdown of our budget, along with details on our plans and our cost-effectiveness estimates on our 

 — you’ll also find a link with instructions for how you can donate.

If you decide to support us, I’d like to extend a huge thanks on behalf of the 

 — your generosity means that we can continue to help make the world a better place as effectively as possible.

Allan Saldanha

Quadruple your donation to SCI!

I have always been keen on matched fundraising. Not only does it increase the amount of money raised, but it also involves collaborating with other people and makes people feel better about the money they donate. This is why I set up a fundraising page for SCI, quadrupling donations this Christmas.

I always used to look for donation matching appeals to increase the impact of my donation. However, after reading about effective altruism, I learnt how some charities are many times more effective than others - to a degree that can dwarf the impact of donation matching to less effective charities. I 

 Giving What We Can in 2014 and have since tried to use donation matching to fundraise for the most effective charities.

It’s obviously important to try to publicise effective altruism and the most effective charities to as wide an audience as possible. Matched fundraising has allowed me to reach out to my friends, family and colleagues – hopefully leading them to donate more to effective charities and eventually to more people joining Giving What We Can.

My own personal experience was that I only became a Giving What We Can member after a matching appeal.

I first heard of Giving What We Can from an article about Toby Ord in 2010. I was very impressed with the idea of donating 10% of your income to effective charities, but it seemed like too big a commitment at the time and I forgot all about it.

In 2013, while looking for matched fundraising on the internet, I came across 

- a matched fundraising campaign for the 

 (AMF). This led me to read about AMF, and I was astonished to learn that 

a life was saved for every £2,000 donated to AMF

. I was delighted to make a matched donation to such an effective charity, and was then contacted by Rob Gledhill from Giving What We Can. After discussions with Rob and some deliberation, I decided I would make the pledge once I got back to work. I started a new job in May 2014 and took the pledge then.

Last Christmas I took advantage of generous donation matching offered by 

 to offer quadruple matching for donations to AMF. I offered to match all donations up to £5,000. After Charity Science's matching, this would be multiplied to £20,000. In the event, we had generous donations of £6,700 before I decided to close my chequebook (!), and Charity Science's matching as well as gift aid multiplied our fundraising to a total of £32,632- see 

 Based on Givewell’s estimates, our fundraiser saved 15 lives!

Blog

Do something incredible this New Year

What can the Reach Act do for Global Health?

Mental Health interventions may be more cost-effective than we think

Giving What We Can needs your support this Christmas

Quadruple your donation to SCI!

Happy #GivingTuesday!

Switching the story: how to change the narrative on development

Highlights from 2014 - 2015

Where should we donate to do the most good? - Essay Competition 3rd Prize

Where should we donate to do the most good? - Essay Competition Runner up