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Coralie Oddy

The SDGs - could we become the generation that eliminates extreme poverty?

2015 is a key year in the fight to abolish extreme poverty. In September, the new 

 will be finalised. These goals will underpin the plan for what we do to tackle extreme poverty, so the choices our leaders make – and 

the choices we campaign for them to make – are absolutely crucial

. How we are going to make the new goals a reality was discussed in July, at an intensely important world 

 in Addis Ababa, but in large part this also depends on us - 

we need to send our leaders a strong message that extreme poverty must be tackled, using methods that are proven to work and with the funds to make this a historic success

 Put into action in 2000, the Millennium Development Goals pledged to tackle poverty on a variety of fronts, including nutrition, education and health. These targets have been widely criticised for failing to be meet their deadline (2015), and for being too broad and ill-defined. While these criticisms will hopefully help to shape the SDGs into more measurable and achievable aims, 

much of the criticism obscures wider facts about progress on world poverty

Yes, the Millennium Development Goals failed to fully achieve their objectives. Yes, the goals themselves could have been more realistic, and interventions more effective. 

, extreme poverty was halved thanks to effective interventions. The mortality rate for children under 5 more than halved, while maternal mortality fell by 45%. Across developing nations, enrolment in primary education reached 91%. 

 If we achieved this in the last 25 years, think of what we could achieve in the next 25.

we now know better than ever what works when we try to beat poverty

. And we can keep learning - by approaching aid programs and interventions in an evidence based way.

Before we decide to give a critically ill person a brand new medicine, it has to be rigorously tested. We need to run observations and experiments to make sure the medicine is safe and does more good than other similar medicines. We need to be doing the same for the methods we use for tackling extreme poverty.

This sometimes leads to unexpected results. For example, many people are against the idea of giving money directly to the very poor. They fear that it will encourage dependence, and may believe the money will be wasted on alcohol, drugs or other non-essentials. For this reason, offering the very poor micro-loans to start growing businesses, or specific donations of food and equipment are often viewed as being the best options to reduce poverty.

 that just giving people money – and respecting their own judgements on how best to spend it – is highly effective in improving conditions for the world’s poorest people, even in the long term [2]. You can find out more about how social experiments reveal surprising truths about the best ways to fight poverty in Esther Duflo’s brilliant 

So, we know there is a precedent for significantly reducing extreme poverty when we have goals in place, and more knowledge than ever about how best to fulfil these goals. So far so good. 

What we still need to ensure is that the SDGs stay high on the agenda of world leaders

Everyone can help achieve this by speaking up about why the SDGs are important to them personally.

 Our MPs work for us and have to listen to our concerns – they are also more likely to respond to a personal message than to a signature on a petition or copy and paste email written by a charity. 

You do not have to be an expert on international development or poverty – you just have to use your voice.

, email or call your MP, or better yet, request a meeting with them to ask how they are backing the SDGs and tell them why they are important to you.

 Or you can make an impact via social media by 

showing that some ways to help are far more effective than others, what you are doing to support those causes and how others can too. This is also a really good way of getting people involved and interested in effective altruism.

 has lots of useful ideas and infographics to share the message across social media. For teachers, there are lesson plans and resources to inspire a whole new generation about international development via 

As I said at the start of this piece, 2015 is a key year in the fight to end global poverty once and for all – but only if we help make it so. 

Engaging with the evidence for what works in this fight - and engaging in our own fight to have this recognised and reflected in policy - is what will make this possible.

Mark Barnes

My Journey to Taking the Giving What We Can Pledge

I am a new member of Giving What We Can and I would like to share with you the experiences that led me to taking the Giving What We Can 

I was born at Junction 10 of the M1, and raised in the suburban middle class commuter districts of northern London. I was fortunate with my schooling and ended up going to university to study maths. In my final year at university, I applied for a variety of jobs: the civil service, teaching, consultancy, and banking. It was a random voyage of discovery at a time when career advice was limited.

I had applied for corporate banking at NatWest, but they astutely decided to place me elsewhere. I found myself ensconced in the capital markets division of what would later become RBS. The big bang in the City of London had occurred in 1986 and deregulation was sweeping across the square mile. Old ways of long city lunches and promotion by nepotism were disappearing. The new crowd was young, keen and energetic. They were trained in maths, physics and engineering and armed with mathematical models and new technology.

I was one of those people and I set about modelling and pricing FX option products. I progressed from quantitative analyst to options trader, a year or two later I was setting up and running the desk in New York, within six years I was a senior options trader and after ten I was running the FX Options business.

This was the start of the most rewarding part of my career. RBS and the city offered an immense amount of freedom and responsibility for someone my age. As success came, so did resources. We built new products, new systems and new models at a bewildering pace. Financial success followed. I was a child of Thatcher and the primacy of markets was my morality.

Then the financial crisis struck. Markets were thrown into turmoil and governments had to bail out failing institutions. RBS reported serious losses, and required a massive bailout by the government.

The failure of RBS forced me to question my beliefs. My disillusion with the industry as a whole began to grow. A system built on the ideology of free markets and meritocracy was becoming anything but. Bailout after bailout occurred and still large bonuses were paid, relying on the taxpayers’ dollar and central banks liquidity. I found myself reaping the benefits of a flawed system and asking myself what it was all for. I found myself working for an industry I had lost faith in and earning money that I did not deserve. My position seemed untenable and I resigned in early 2010.

RBS generously offered me a 1-year sabbatical, which I grasped with both hands. I now had a year to try and gain some meaning from the wreckage of much of my belief structure. I asked friends to recommend books that would make me think about life differently. I received a variety of recommendations from Herman Hesse to Hunter S Thompson, from Milton Friedman to Jared Diamond. It is still unclear whether the individual who proposed the 1200 pages of Nigel Lawson's View From Number 11 was really friend or foe. But I read them all.

Within the pages of these books I was trying to find the person I wanted to become. In the process, I found a desire to redistribute some of the undeserved gains I had accrued. But how should I redistribute them? Perhaps I should return those undeserved gains to RBS? But in that case the money may find its way back into the bonus pool to be redistributed again. Perhaps it would do more good if I returned the money to the government: for it was the taxpayer that had bailed out the institution I had been paid by. But then it occurred to me that it might be possible to do more good than that and not only should I do more good, I should do the most good. But how? I was not even sure what doing the most good meant.

Clearly, the most good that could be done by donating would be in the poorest and cheapest places on earth. This meant focusing on helping the lives of those in sub-Saharan Africa. But which organization should I give to? There was a bewildering array of choices and it seemed impossible to choose between them.

Then I read 'The End of Poverty’ by Jeffrey Sachs. He argued that there exists a poverty trap. This poverty trap exists because poor individuals do not have enough basic means by which to escape a continued life of poverty. He suggested that by holistically providing these means, across a number of interventions, it would be possible to lift poor individuals out of that trap and onto a path of self-sustainable development. He proposed testing this theory on a handful of villages throughout sub-Saharan Africa through the Millennium Promise charity, and argued that if successful it could be scaled up across the continent. I found his enthusiasm for the tractability of global poverty exciting, his solution feasible and his focus on economics and scientific innovation appealing. I was enticed by the concept of delivering aid to the world’s poorest individuals with self-sustainable development as a goal. Convinced, I committed to donating to this project for the next 5 years.

Just as banking must reinvent itself in response to the financial crisis, I wanted to reinvent myself in response to my own moral crisis. I wanted to start a new chapter in my life and I needed some foundation upon which to do so. After returning to RBS for a year, I applied and got accepted into LSE to take a course in Philosophy and Public Policy. I found myself convinced by the preference utilitarian arguments defended by Peter Singer and armed with better philosophical arguments and a more coherent moral framework, I set about embedding these arguments within my life decisions.

My Millennium Promise commitment had come to an end in early 2015. It had not worked out quite as I had intended. The results were patchy and the outcomes of the project difficult to measure. Self-sustained development had been unobtainable in the time frame envisaged. It was clear to me that not all aid had the same impact and that there was a vast difference between the results of different types of interventions. My first attempt to be an effective altruist had met with only limited success.

Fortunately, in the intervening 4 years, individuals, with greater vision than I, had set up organisations designed to answer the question of how to give effectively. These institutions (such as GiveWell and Giving What We Can) looked directly at the welfare gains that individuals receive from each $ donated to a given charity. They calculated that the best charities could save lives for as little as £2,500.

The presence of these organisations along with the low cost of being able to make such a large difference made me significantly more confident of the impact of my donations. This increased my desire to give. So earlier this year I took the Giving What We Can pledge to donate 10% of my future earnings to the organisations that most effectively improve the lives of others.

However, my personal situation is slightly different than many members of Giving What We Can. My best earning years may well be behind me. Thus I have pledged to give 10% of my lifetime earnings to these effective charities. And I will endeavour to do better than that. The immense benefits that some of the money I have earned can bring to individuals in poorer countries far outweigh the cost of having less money myself. In fact, the decision to donate 10% of lifetime earnings to the poorest people on the planet has come at no cost at all, for it has made me happier and given my life greater meaning.

While I am still uncertain where the next few years will lead me and what career I will pursue, I feel confident I have begun the next chapter of my life and I am certain that taking and honouring the Giving What We Can pledge will be integral to it.

Owain Johnstone

Words and Deeds

So it turns out that philosophers who study ethics aren't actually all that ethical - this according to a recent 

 by Eric Schwitzgebel that I’d encourage you to read. Schwitzgebel writes about his research into the ethical activities of those who study how we should live for a living. He finds, broadly, that they don't act as morally as we might expect them to.

You might disagree with his metrics for assessing how ethical a person is (does it really matter how often you call your mother?), but I think he's hit on an important point, and one we can all recognise in ourselves.

Very often, the beliefs we claim to hold about how one ought to live one's life don't square all that well with the lives we're actually living. That's certainly true of me. In principle I agree wholeheartedly with the argument that I should do as much as I can to improve the lives of others – and continue doing so up until the point at which acting in that way begins to harm me more than it helps someone else.

But although I agree with that I definitely don't act accordingly.

Think of what that would entail in practice. I could sacrifice pretty much the entirety of my worldly possessions (including one of my kidneys), condemning myself to a life of poverty. Even at that point there might be more I could do. Because the levels of misery elsewhere in the world are so great, any sacrifice I perform is almost always going to benefit someone else more than it will inconvenience me.

That's an extreme example, but we can all think of less demanding principles that we say we believe but don’t put into practice (at least not consistently). Most of us probably believe that it's ethically important to consider the effects of our actions on others whenever possible – but often we don't.

One possible reason we don't is that we're fallible. We might firmly believe our principles, but other things get in the way – like our own selfishness.

Alternatively, it might be that instead of being fallible we're just lying to ourselves about what our principles really are – maybe, deep down, I don't really believe that I have an obligation to help others.

In either case, we're dealing with motives for action that are in some sense implicit or subconscious. We say one thing, but we do another. So, crucially, what we say isn't enough to explain what we do.

Why does this matter for effective altruism? The basic logic of effective altruism is a watered down version of the argument that I gave above – if you can, at comparatively little cost to yourself, save someone else's life (or significantly improve it), then you should. It's a reasoned argument about your ethical obligations.

The problem with that is that many people will agree wholeheartedly but won't change how they act on a day to day basis. I'm somewhat ashamed to be an example of this, too, but I don't think I'm the only one.

the force of the argument is difficult to contest, but that's not enough to persuade people to behave differently.

Now I am slightly caricaturing the effective altruism movement here. It is not just the propagation of a reasoned argument. Giving What We Can, for example, organises a variety of 

 and events, in part to enhance the felt attractiveness of effective giving – such as showing those still undecided what acting on the 10% 

However, the making of arguments is a large part of what the effective altruist community does, and I think we should consider how we might go beyond that. Because I am unconvinced that simply reaching more people with the same rational argument is going to persuade large numbers to become effective altruists. By large numbers I mean millions rather than thousands.

What we can do over and above explicit argument is to 

appeal to the implicit or subconscious decision making that people employ.

 One of the most fundamental ways of doing that is to 

make effective altruism the default or easier choice – the norm rather than the exception.

A world in which everyone carefully considered each of their choices so as to maximise the beneficial impact they can have would be a wonderful one. But we need to acknowledge that that actually makes things harder. Most people have enough on their plate that making things more difficult for them won’t prompt them to change how they act.

So how do we make effective altruist choices easier? This is what organisations like 

 set out to do – in their case by giving people the necessary information to decide between different charities. But their research, while excellent, is still too voluminous and complex for most people to bother with.

We could do a lot more to make those choices more straightforward.

Here's one small example of how we might make it easier and more rewarding for people to donate to effective charities. There are a couple of big online fundraising platforms that large numbers of people use, one of which is 

 to have channelled $3.3 billion to charity since their foundation in 2001. That's a lot.

But there's nothing (or nothing I could find) on their site about charitable effectiveness. What if GiveWell's research and ratings were incorporated, in a user-friendly manner, into the site? Or how about promoting particularly effective charities as targets for donation?

By making it easier for large numbers of people to make effective altruist choices the gains are potentially enormous.

embedding effective altruist ideas into the landscape of day to day activity is in the long term more important than pushing the rational argument for effective altruism

. The reason being quite simply that most people do not have large amounts of time or energy to devote to complex reasoned debate about these issues, despite intuitively agreeing with the basic position.

Winning the argument is easy – what we need to focus on is changing the way people act.

This and much of the subsequent discussion has obvious links to recent work in behavioural economics to do with the manipulation of choice architectures - popularly known as nudging. I won’t discuss this any further here, but if you’re interested then you should take a look at Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein’s 2008 book ‘Nudge’.

Henry Phipps

How Long Will it Take Economic Growth to Eliminate Extreme Poverty?

Many charitable interventions in low-income countries have a significant positive impact, but what such interventions can achieve is frequently constrained by under-development. It is often claimed that economic growth is the only means to completely eradicate poverty. Sometimes this claim is meant to criticise the efficacy of giving to charity. In this report I accept that continued economic growth may be the only means to completely eradicate poverty, but I will argue that we should be sceptical that continued economic growth on our current model will lead to the elimination of extreme poverty over acceptable time-horizons. If we wish to eliminate extreme poverty in less than a century, the poorest people in the world will need to benefit from a much greater share of the growth in global income. One way in which we could achieve this shift in the distribution of income is for those of us living in wealthy countries to dedicate a significant portion of our income to charities that benefit those living in low income countries.

The World Bank defines extreme poverty as living on less than $1.25 a day.[1] A recent study by David Woodward published in the World Economics Review claims that if we assuming pre-crisis levels of growth (1993-2008) continue indefinitely it will take 100 years to bring the world’s population out of extreme poverty and 200 years to bring everyone to the modest income of $5 a day at 2005 purchasing power parity.[2] Global GDP would have to reach 15 times its 2010 levels by 2115 and 173 times its 2010 levels by 2222.

Closing the poverty gap by increasing the income of the 63.2% of the world’s population living beneath $5-a-day to above this line would require an increase of $4.5 trillion to their incomes. Achieving this through our current growth pattern would involve increasing global GDP by more than $11,500 trillion and reaching a GDP per capita of $1.3 million. Attempting to eliminate poverty by this means would thus entail increasing production and consumption by more than 2,000 times the income we are seeking to generate, and still taking two centuries to do this. A process Woodward describes as “at best grotesquely inefficient”.

Woodward’s claim isn’t that global income is too low to alleviate poverty but rather that it is too unequally distributed. For example the poorest 30% the world population received just 1.2% of the additional income generated by global GDP growth between 1999 and 2008, the poorest 60% received 5.0% but the richest 40% accrued 95% of additional income.[3]

Consider a more proportional scenario in which the income of the poorest decile rises at the same rate as global GDP per capita, whilst maintaining growth at the 1993-2008 rate. Everyone will be brought above the $1.25-a-day poverty line by 2068 and above the $5-a-day poverty line by 2076, this path would only necessitate increasing GDP by a factor of 3 and then 9. If we go even further and assume a pro-poor bias in global growth changing the ratio of income growth for the poorest decile to that of global GDP per capita to 1.82 (i.e. incomes of the poorest rise faster than World GDP) the results are even more impressive. Extreme poverty is eliminated by 2042, the entire population is brought over the $5-a-day line by 2076 and the scale of GDP growth required to achieve this is reduced by a factor of more than 28 than on our current projection.[4]

The idea that economic growth on the current model will not eradicate extreme poverty over acceptable time horizons is lent support by other recent literature. A recent study that looked at the relation between increases in GDP per capita and childhood undernutrition between 1970 and 1996 across 36 low and middle-income countries found a very small to non-existent association between increases in GDP per capita and undernutrition.[5] Even those that contested the findings of this study argued only that there was a marginal decrease in undernutrition associated with GDP per capita growth.[6] These findings are echoed in a recent study which looked at the link between GDP per capita growth in Indian states and found no consistent evidence for the relationship between growth and undernutrition.[7] One plausible mechanism for this effect is that many of those groups presently at risk of undernutrition receive such a small share of the rewards of economic growth that they are not able to increase the quality and quantity of the food they consume.

Another recent study claims that on current projections it will take until 2111 for sub-Saharan Africa to reach 100% lower-secondary school completion and at least 100 years for the average scores for students in the developing world to begin to match the average scores of students from developed countries in 2015.[8] Another study indicates that at current rates it will take 96 countries beyond 2040 to achieve the 2015 Millennium Development Goals relating to significant reductions in maternal mortality and providing universal access to reproductive healthcare.[9] This study also claims that it will take 23 sub-saharan African countries beyond 2040 to achieve the 2015 Millennium Goal of reducing child mortality by two thirds.[10]

Given how pessimistic Woodward’s conclusions regarding the current model of economic growth are it is worth asking whether there are any reasons to doubt his reasoning.

Woodward excludes China from his projection of current economic growth and poverty alleviation. If China were included the resulting numbers would be more optimistic.[11] China is obviously an outlier but one might hope that other countries could follow China’s enormous rates of growth and poverty reduction. However, there is good reason to suppose China’s economic rise is exceptional. Chinese growth is broadly attributable to economic reforms begun in the 1970s. Huge gains in productivity were gained by moving away from collectivised agriculture, relaxing price controls, and easing restrictions on the migration of farmers to cities. Other aspects of the economy were gradually reformed to introduce more private industry and greater competitive pressure on state owned industries.[12] [13] The model of huge economic growth through gradual liberalisation of a centrally planned command economy is clearly not directly applicable to most countries today.

Additionally, even on the very optimistic projections of global growth (an average of 4% growth in GDP per capita per annum), the time horizons for poverty elimination are still extremely unsatisfactory, with extreme poverty elimination only projected to occur by 2072.[14]

One might think that as economic growth occurs the share of this growth amongst the population will eventually become more equal. The economist Simon Kuznets hypothesised that as an economy develops market forces lead to an increase in inequality, increased investment opportunities cause the rich to become richer whilst influxes of labour into the cities keep down wages amongst the working class. Eventually processes associated with the development of industrialisation and the welfare state lead to an increase in equality. This hypothesis can be captured by an inverted U-shaped curve in which income per capita is plotted on the horizontal x axis and inequality on the Y axis.[15] However whether this hypothesis is borne out in reality is highly controversial. [16] [17] [18]

One might be concerned that the line of $1.25 a day adjusted for purchasing power parity might not be the best way to measure poverty. However other indicators do not give a more cheerful prognosis. The Multiple Poverty Indicator which measures material deprivation through questions about housing, healthcare and diet places almost 1.7 billion people in “acute poverty” as opposed to the 1 billion people who live in “extreme poverty” according to the $1.25-a-day metric of the World Bank.[19] [20] There is no reason to think continued economic growth along current lines is any more likely to impact this measure of poverty than the $1.25 dollar a day metric. In any case the number of people who need to be lifted from this form of poverty is even greater to begin with.

Finally there are reasons to think that Woodward’s projections might actually be too optimistic. One such reason cited by Woodward himself is that the growth in income for the poorest decile between 1993-2008 probably reflects a number of favourable shifts for the poor in this period such as increased debt cancellation and more focus on poverty reduction rather than structural adjustment, the adoption of the Millennium Development Goals and a doubling of per capita aid receipts between 2001-2008.[21] Extrapolating income growth rates from this period implicitly assumes a continuation of this pro-poor shift at a similar rate for the indefinite future. And there is no reason to think this will necessarily be the case.

Another issue is that when we consider the increasing carbon and environmental constraints facing the global community it is plausible that this enormous level of growth may not even be viable. On current projections we will need to increase the size of the global economy by a factor of 173 times it’s 2010 size. Even if we expect future growth to be much less carbon and resource intensive the sheer size of the economic growth required may be beyond what carbon and resource constraints allow. This is not just a question of not wanting to pursue economic growth at such a cost to global warming and the environment, but also a question of whether such growth is even possible. Global warming and resource depletion will have a highly negative impact on standards of living, particularly harming the poorest in the world. These factors might be absolute constraints on what levels of economic growth and poverty alleviation can be achieved. [22]

An assessment of the literature indicates that we should be sceptical that “business as usual” economic growth will lead to eradication of extreme poverty over anything approaching an acceptable time horizon. Environmental and carbon constraints may even make it the case that eradicating extreme poverty will be impossible on our current trajectory. To eradicate poverty over a time-period of decades rather than centuries, the world’s poorest people need to receive a much greater share of global income. It may be necessary to radically change our entire approach to economic development to achieve this, but exactly what radical changes would be required and whether such changes would be tractable is unclear. Certainly one means to attempt to achieve this is to encourage many more people living in wealthy countries to give a significant portion of their income to charities operating in low-income countries.

Incrementum ad Absurdum: Global Growth, Inequality and Poverty Eradication in a Carbon-Constrained World

Association between economic growth and early childhood undernutrition: evidence from 121 Demographic and Health Surveys from 36 low-income and middle-income countries

Association between economic growth and early childhood nutrition

Is Economic Growth Associated with Reduction in Child Undernutrition in India?

[](Why Wait 100 Years? Bridging the Gap in Global Education. 

http://www.brookings.edu/research/reports2/2015/06/100-years-gap-global-education-winthrop-mcgivney

Progress towards Millennium Development Goals 4 and 5 on maternal and child mortality: an updated systematic analysis

Understanding Chinese Growth: Past, Present and Future

Linking Equity and Growth in Bangladesh pp 1-3

Acute Multidimensional Poverty: A New Index for Developing Countries p.45

Larissa Hesketh-Rowe

7 Tips for More Cost-Effective Giving

Have you taken the Giving What We Can pledge? Maybe you’re trying giving. Or you’ve switched your old donations to more effective ones. Perhaps you’re fundraising for effective charities.

Thanks to Giving What We Can we know donating to a top charity makes a huge difference. What you might be missing to make your giving go even further are just a few tips on the method or timing of your giving.

Here are 7 tips to make your giving that bit more effective.

 on their donations, down from 42% in 2011. 

Gift Aid allows charities to claim an extra 25p for every £1 you give without it costing you anything. In 2012 the collective charitable tax relief schemes were worth £3.85 billion. To allow your charity to claim Gift Aid when you donate you need to declare it by signing a form or ticking a box when you donate. Your donations 

 as long as they’re not more than four times what you have paid in tax in that tax year (6 April to 5 April). Higher rate taxpayers can claim the difference between the rate they pay and basic rate on their donation. Just complete a Self Assessment tax return or ask HMRC to amend your tax code. By 

 on a donation of £100 you could raise an extra £25 for your charity through standard Gift Aid and personally claim back £25 (20%, the difference between the base rate of tax and your higher, 40% tax rate). 



Don’t forget that the tax relief you can claim might depend on which country your charity is registered in. 

, SCI is a registered charity only in the UK. But Deworm the World Initiative is registered as a charity in the US. If you live in the UK you can claim Gift Aid on all the top charities by donating to 

, which will then transfer your donation to your chosen effective charities.

 are made during the holiday season. Understandably many people save their money throughout the year and see what they have left to donate at the end. It may seem more impactful to send over a large sum once a year but you and your charity could likely benefit by you donating monthly. By donating monthly you are getting into the habit of giving. You also allow your charity to plan. Monthly donations tend to be much more predictable than yearly ones, allowing your charity to make better decisions and plan long term projects. They can also 

 on trying to persuade you to donate again as you stop looking like a one-off donor.

Back in 2010 when the crisis broke out in Haiti there was also 

 over the fact that credit card companies were making money off of the donations pouring in. If you’re donating to your charity using a credit card or payment service they may well be taking a percentage of your donation. With the most effective charities even 2% or 3% can add up to a lot of missed opportunities for treatment or prevention. Nerd Wallet gives some 

 into the different fees different payment methods incur. Often a simple standing order, whilst involving slightly more paperwork, is well worth all of your money going to your chosen charity.

Similar to donating to directly to a charity, if you’re fundraising it pays to shop around when setting up your fundraising page. Different fundraising sites such as Justgiving or Virgin Money Giving have different amounts that they charge charities for the service and different percentages they take from each donation. Bear in mind your charity will need to be registered for the service for you to use it and it may not be cost effective for them to join lots of different services. That said, support for newer services with little or no fees such as 

 will only encourage charities to use them. One easy answer on which fundraising site to use is to ask your charity where they are registered and discuss the fees. Money Saving Expert also has a 

 of the costs associated with the most popular fundraising sites.

 how you can raise money for charities by free by installing the 

 bars on your computer. Now, in conjunction with Give As You Live Sainsbury’s have released an Everyday Shopper card. Top it up with the money you plan to spend in store and Sainsbury’s 

 of that amount to a chosen charity –including the Schistosomiasis Control Initiative.

Some companies have charitable giving schemes where you can 

. Because the donation is given before tax the charity automatically gets more, regardless of what level of tax you pay. Speak to your HR department where possible and see if this is something your company offers.

...get a cash back card instead. Whilst the name may be enticing and raising money for charity whilst you spend sounds like a great idea, you can do 

. If your charity credit card gives you 25p every time you spend £100 but your cashback card gives you £5 and you can just donate it, which is the better deal? 

And there you have it. These small actions don’t have any where near the impact that switching to a more 

 do but if you’re already donating to the top charities why not get as much money for them as possible?

When you think that deworming tablets cost as little as 50p every little really does help.

Do you have any tips for raising more money for the best charities you can share? Just post them in the comments box and help others do that little bit more good.

Strengthening Health Systems in Low-income Countries: Is Giving What We Can Missing a Better Strategy For Saving Lives?

A large amount of recent literature on global health makes the suggestion that a major barrier to improved health outcomes in low income countries is the general weakness of their healthcare systems.[1] [2] Some literature suggests that some targeted programs to control certain diseases may even be acting to weaken health care systems in low-income countries through creating superfluous parallel delivery systems and disrupting the day to day activities of the health system. [3] [4]

These observations parallel concerns sometimes expressed to Giving What We Can that the organisation’s recommendation of charities that target specific diseases such as the Against Malaria Foundation and Schistosomiasis Control Initiative shows a lack of attention to the need to strengthen healthcare systems in the developing world.

In this report I will assess the current literature on this subject and relate it to our recommended charities.

The concern with strengthening health systems in low income countries can be seen in a debate in the aid literature over the comparative benefits of “vertical” and “horizontal” interventions. A stereotypical horizontal programme would seek to tackle overall health problems on a wide front and on a long-term basis through the creation of a system of permanent institutions. This is one thing people have in mind when they talk about the need to “strengthen health systems”. By contrast a stereotypical vertical intervention would be a free-standing program focussing on a single goal which it achieves through specific interventions. Smallpox and malaria eradication programmes are examples of vertical interventions. AMF and SCI would best be classified as vertical programmes.

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