I recently spoke with someone who had worked as a technical consultant in
the Haiti relief effort - I can't reveal his identity and had to withhold
notes from the specific group he worked with, but here are the general notes
that he said it would be OK to publish.

   - Not many opinoins on specific orgs, didn't see much to make an
   assessment of that.
   - MSF [Doctors Without Borders] is a bunch of different MSF's - MSF USA,
   MSF France, etc. It's important to distinguish.
   - The quality of medical care was probably fine, but too expensive.
   There's a "whatever it takes" attitude that I find a bit much - sending a
   kid to Boston for surgery when half these people don't have food.
   - *Didn't they cut off the food after like 2 rations for non-financial
   reasons?  *Yeah they were tryign to discourage people from moving into
   Port-au-Prince which was a very bad place to be.  They wanted them out in
   the countryside.  The food rations were fine on calories, but they've had
   issues getting people enough protein.
   - You know who was really good? The U.S. military. They had this "we're
   here to help" attitude. They did all kinds of miscellaneous stuff for us.
   - *What do you think about Direct Relief International (DRI)?  I can't
   tell whether what's needed is more supplies.  *I never saw DRI but some
   of those orgs, the enabling orgs, were pretty good. MMRC sort of ran the
   logistics, if you needed something you'd call them up. They were hugely
   helpful. Their expenses were like $5k/mo and they should have had more.
   Logistics atre a pretty important part of a lot of these things working. You
   need fuel. Moving stuff through customs is unimaginably horrible.  Having
   one group that does a lot of it and gets good at it is really helpful.
   - *What's the holdup on the rubble removal?  *Corruption is so bad. There
   was a big, good private company pissed because nobody knew who owned the
   rubble so they couldn't go forward with removal. To be honest a lot of the
   aid orgs are sick of dealing with the people in Haiti. People said they've
   never been anywhere so nasty - they say things like "we won't eat rice, we
   know our rights, we want chicken." They feel everything is owed to them.
   Haiti is expensive for such a poor country. Prices are more than in the
   U.S., marked up for import dues. No feeling of "let's try to help the aid
   orgs because they're here to help us."
   - *All the reports I read say that there needs to be more local
   participation. I keep thinking everyone agrees on this in concept, there
   must be a reason there isn't so much local participation, and it might be
   that locals aren't always so helpful. *Both sides are sort of right. You
   can't be that effective without local help, and the locals aren't helpful.
   - 7 families own almost everything in haiti.
   - *Do you think we'd be seeing better results with more $? *I don't.
   Amputating is one thing, but cat scans for babies - this is not sustainable.
   Programming to build the economy is the only hope but that's the hardest
   sector of course.
   - It's kind of weird to hear everyone talk about rebuilding. The
   situation was so bad *before* the earthquake. Rebuild what?
   - I've told all my friends: don't give money to Haiti relief. Take the
   money elsewhere. I hear about all these unfulfilled pledges and I think
   "great, maybe they can put that money in a country that wants to work with
   people and make things happen." Mozambique is as poor as Haiti but it's a
   totally different feel, it's not so uncooperative.  I think you should put
   the money in countries where the government wants to do its part and help.

Depressing.

It's a little tricky in the following to separate your (Holden's) views, if any, from the aid workers.  I "think" only the bolded stuff is yours, but you might want to be clearer.

If it is acceptable with the source in question, I would encourage you to publish this stuff on your blog - that is a lot more visible, I'd imagine.


  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Holden Karnofsky 
  To: givewell@yahoogroups.com 
  Sent: Monday, January 24, 2011 8:09 AM
  Subject: [givewell] Notes from discussion re: Haiti


    



  I recently spoke with someone who had worked as a technical consultant in the Haiti relief effort - I can't reveal his identity and had to withhold notes from the specific group he worked with, but here are the general notes that he said it would be OK to publish.

    a.. Not many opinoins on specific orgs, didn't see much to make an assessment of that. 
    b.. MSF [Doctors Without Borders] is a bunch of different MSF's - MSF USA, MSF France, etc. It's important to distinguish.
    c.. The quality of medical care was probably fine, but too expensive. There's a "whatever it takes" attitude that I find a bit much - sending a kid to Boston for surgery when half these people don't have food. 
    d.. Didn't they cut off the food after like 2 rations for non-financial reasons?  Yeah they were tryign to discourage people from moving into Port-au-Prince which was a very bad place to be.  They wanted them out in the countryside.  The food rations were fine on calories, but they've had issues getting people enough protein. 
    e.. You know who was really good? The U.S. military. They had this "we're here to help" attitude. They did all kinds of miscellaneous stuff for us.
    f.. What do you think about Direct Relief International (DRI)?  I can't tell whether what's needed is more supplies.  I never saw DRI but some of those orgs, the enabling orgs, were pretty good. MMRC sort of ran the logistics, if you needed something you'd call them up. They were hugely helpful. Their expenses were like $5k/mo and they should have had more. Logistics atre a pretty important part of a lot of these things working. You need fuel. Moving stuff through customs is unimaginably horrible.  Having one group that does a lot of it and gets good at it is really helpful. 
    g.. What's the holdup on the rubble removal?  Corruption is so bad. There was a big, good private company pissed because nobody knew who owned the rubble so they couldn't go forward with removal. To be honest a lot of the aid orgs are sick of dealing with the people in Haiti. People said they've never been anywhere so nasty - they say things like "we won't eat rice, we know our rights, we want chicken." They feel everything is owed to them. Haiti is expensive for such a poor country. Prices are more than in the U.S., marked up for import dues. No feeling of "let's try to help the aid orgs because they're here to help us."  
    h.. All the reports I read say that there needs to be more local participation. I keep thinking everyone agrees on this in concept, there must be a reason there isn't so much local participation, and it might be that locals aren't always so helpful. Both sides are sort of right. You can't be that effective without local help, and the locals aren't helpful. 
    i.. 7 families own almost everything in haiti.
    j.. Do you think we'd be seeing better results with more $? I don't. Amputating is one thing, but cat scans for babies - this is not sustainable. Programming to build the economy is the only hope but that's the hardest sector of course. 
    k.. It's kind of weird to hear everyone talk about rebuilding. The situation was so bad *before* the earthquake. Rebuild what?
    l.. I've told all my friends: don't give money to Haiti relief. Take the money elsewhere. I hear about all these unfulfilled pledges and I think "great, maybe they can put that money in a country that wants to work with people and make things happen." Mozambique is as poor as Haiti but it's a totally different feel, it's not so uncooperative.  I think you should put the money in countries where the government wants to do its part and help. 







  

Also, the comment about 7 families owning everything is shortly after the comment about ownership confusion on the rubble.

My initial interpretation was that ownership in general is so confused that multiple families have claim to each rubble strewn lot.  I *think* upon further review that you're saying that 7 wealthy families that control much of Haiti.  Might just want to clarify the wording slightly...

  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Holden Karnofsky 
  To: givewell@yahoogroups.com 
  Sent: Monday, January 24, 2011 8:09 AM
  Subject: [givewell] Notes from discussion re: Haiti


    



  I recently spoke with someone who had worked as a technical consultant in the Haiti relief effort - I can't reveal his identity and had to withhold notes from the specific group he worked with, but here are the general notes that he said it would be OK to publish.

    a.. Not many opinoins on specific orgs, didn't see much to make an assessment of that. 
    b.. MSF [Doctors Without Borders] is a bunch of different MSF's - MSF USA, MSF France, etc. It's important to distinguish.
    c.. The quality of medical care was probably fine, but too expensive. There's a "whatever it takes" attitude that I find a bit much - sending a kid to Boston for surgery when half these people don't have food. 
    d.. Didn't they cut off the food after like 2 rations for non-financial reasons?  Yeah they were tryign to discourage people from moving into Port-au-Prince which was a very bad place to be.  They wanted them out in the countryside.  The food rations were fine on calories, but they've had issues getting people enough protein. 
    e.. You know who was really good? The U.S. military. They had this "we're here to help" attitude. They did all kinds of miscellaneous stuff for us.
    f.. What do you think about Direct Relief International (DRI)?  I can't tell whether what's needed is more supplies.  I never saw DRI but some of those orgs, the enabling orgs, were pretty good. MMRC sort of ran the logistics, if you needed something you'd call them up. They were hugely helpful. Their expenses were like $5k/mo and they should have had more. Logistics atre a pretty important part of a lot of these things working. You need fuel. Moving stuff through customs is unimaginably horrible.  Having one group that does a lot of it and gets good at it is really helpful. 
    g.. What's the holdup on the rubble removal?  Corruption is so bad. There was a big, good private company pissed because nobody knew who owned the rubble so they couldn't go forward with removal. To be honest a lot of the aid orgs are sick of dealing with the people in Haiti. People said they've never been anywhere so nasty - they say things like "we won't eat rice, we know our rights, we want chicken." They feel everything is owed to them. Haiti is expensive for such a poor country. Prices are more than in the U.S., marked up for import dues. No feeling of "let's try to help the aid orgs because they're here to help us."  
    h.. All the reports I read say that there needs to be more local participation. I keep thinking everyone agrees on this in concept, there must be a reason there isn't so much local participation, and it might be that locals aren't always so helpful. Both sides are sort of right. You can't be that effective without local help, and the locals aren't helpful. 
    i.. 7 families own almost everything in haiti.
    j.. Do you think we'd be seeing better results with more $? I don't. Amputating is one thing, but cat scans for babies - this is not sustainable. Programming to build the economy is the only hope but that's the hardest sector of course. 
    k.. It's kind of weird to hear everyone talk about rebuilding. The situation was so bad *before* the earthquake. Rebuild what?
    l.. I've told all my friends: don't give money to Haiti relief. Take the money elsewhere. I hear about all these unfulfilled pledges and I think "great, maybe they can put that money in a country that wants to work with people and make things happen." Mozambique is as poor as Haiti but it's a totally different feel, it's not so uncooperative.  I think you should put the money in countries where the government wants to do its part and help. 







  

Yes, bold = what I said; non-bold = what he said. Apologies for the
confusion.

The quality of evidence here is below the standard I'd like to maintain on
our blog. At some point we may try to interview people who have seen relief
efforts up close; if so, we will be somewhat systematic in choosing whom to
speak to, so that our interviews can be considered somewhat representative.
However, this individual sought us out; he seemed credible to me but I don't
have a way of knowing whether he has an axe to grind of some sort. I thought
this info was worth sharing with people who are always hungry for more info,
but not promoting via our blog.

On Mon, Jan 24, 2011 at 11:16 AM, Phil Steinmeyer
<psteinmeyer@...>wrote:

>
>
> Depressing.
>
> It's a little tricky in the following to separate your (Holden's) views, if
> any, from the aid workers.  I "think" only the bolded stuff is yours, but
> you might want to be clearer.
>
> If it is acceptable with the source in question, I would encourage you to
> publish this stuff on your blog - that is a lot more visible, I'd imagine.
>
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> *From:* Holden Karnofsky <holden0@...>
> *To:* givewell@yahoogroups.com
> *Sent:* Monday, January 24, 2011 8:09 AM
> *Subject:* [givewell] Notes from discussion re: Haiti
>
>
>
>
>  I recently spoke with someone who had worked as a technical consultant in
> the Haiti relief effort - I can't reveal his identity and had to withhold
> notes from the specific group he worked with, but here are the general notes
> that he said it would be OK to publish.
>
>     - Not many opinoins on specific orgs, didn't see much to make an
>    assessment of that.
>    - MSF [Doctors Without Borders] is a bunch of different MSF's - MSF
>    USA, MSF France, etc. It's important to distinguish.
>     - The quality of medical care was probably fine, but too expensive.
>    There's a "whatever it takes" attitude that I find a bit much - sending a
>    kid to Boston for surgery when half these people don't have food.
>    - *Didn't they cut off the food after like 2 rations for non-financial
>    reasons?  *Yeah they were tryign to discourage people from moving into
>    Port-au-Prince which was a very bad place to be.  They wanted them out in
>    the countryside.  The food rations were fine on calories, but they've had
>    issues getting people enough protein.
>    - You know who was really good? The U.S. military. They had this "we're
>    here to help" attitude. They did all kinds of miscellaneous stuff for us.
>    - *What do you think about Direct Relief International (DRI)?  I can't
>    tell whether what's needed is more supplies.  *I never saw DRI but some
>    of those orgs, the enabling orgs, were pretty good. MMRC sort of ran the
>    logistics, if you needed something you'd call them up. They were hugely
>    helpful. Their expenses were like $5k/mo and they should have had more.
>    Logistics atre a pretty important part of a lot of these things working. You
>    need fuel. Moving stuff through customs is unimaginably horrible.  Having
>    one group that does a lot of it and gets good at it is really helpful.
>    - *What's the holdup on the rubble removal?  *Corruption is so bad.
>    There was a big, good private company pissed because nobody knew who owned
>    the rubble so they couldn't go forward with removal. To be honest a lot of
>    the aid orgs are sick of dealing with the people in Haiti. People said
>    they've never been anywhere so nasty - they say things like "we won't eat
>    rice, we know our rights, we want chicken." They feel everything is owed to
>    them. Haiti is expensive for such a poor country. Prices are more than in
>    the U.S., marked up for import dues. No feeling of "let's try to help the
>    aid orgs because they're here to help us."
>     - *All the reports I read say that there needs to be more local
>    participation. I keep thinking everyone agrees on this in concept, there
>    must be a reason there isn't so much local participation, and it might be
>    that locals aren't always so helpful. *Both sides are sort of right.
>    You can't be that effective without local help, and the locals aren't
>    helpful.
>    - 7 families own almost everything in haiti.
>    - *Do you think we'd be seeing better results with more $? *I don't.
>    Amputating is one thing, but cat scans for babies - this is not sustainable.
>    Programming to build the economy is the only hope but that's the hardest
>    sector of course.
>    - It's kind of weird to hear everyone talk about rebuilding. The
>    situation was so bad *before* the earthquake. Rebuild what?
>    - I've told all my friends: don't give money to Haiti relief. Take the
>    money elsewhere. I hear about all these unfulfilled pledges and I think
>    "great, maybe they can put that money in a country that wants to work with
>    people and make things happen." Mozambique is as poor as Haiti but it's a
>    totally different feel, it's not so uncooperative.  I think you should put
>    the money in countries where the government wants to do its part and help.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>   
>

Does anyone have thoughts about the best charities for climate change mitigation?

Best,
Ben

ben, in India lots of happening on climate change and that many foundations,
floated by corporates, are even taken up certain issues. However, our main
task here and mst developing nations has been how to ensure 85 percent of
our population gets two-time food.
Anil Mahajan
Navi Mumbai

On Sun, Jan 30, 2011 at 11:45 AM, bclawent <bclawent@...> wrote:

>
>
> Does anyone have thoughts about the best charities for climate change
> mitigation?
>
> Best,
> Ben
>
> 
>

My thought is how in the world would you measure effectiveness, at this point?

There is serious thought, though not widely discussed, that it would  
be more cost-effective to aid poor countries in dealing with the  
effects of global warming than trying to reverse it.  This doesn't  
mean there aren't some relatively cost-effective measures, such as  
reducing US dependence on oil.  But some measures really might not be  
worth it.

And in looking for ways to spend money, I suspect that the kind of  
giving GiveWell has focused on is much more cost-effective than giving  
to mitigate global warming, though the cost-effectiveness may be very  
hard to measure for the  latter.

See Baron (2006) for a discussion:

http://www.springerlink.com/content/063t6197t1m8m055/fulltext.pdf





Quoting anil mahajan <anilanilm@...>:

> ben, in India lots of happening on climate change and that many foundations,
> floated by corporates, are even taken up certain issues. However, our main
> task here and mst developing nations has been how to ensure 85 percent of
> our population gets two-time food.
> Anil Mahajan
> Navi Mumbai
>
> On Sun, Jan 30, 2011 at 11:45 AM, bclawent <bclawent@...> wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> Does anyone have thoughts about the best charities for climate change
>> mitigation?
>>
>> Best,
>> Ben
>>
>>
>>
>

Along the lines of the comment, "There is serious thought, though not widely
discussed, that it would be more cost-effective to aid poor countries in
dealing with the effects of global warming than trying to reverse it"

Some interesting work is being done on the issue of disaster risk
mitigation, especially how it relates to humanitarian relief. See:
http://www.fmreview.org/FMRpdfs/FMR31/38-39.pdf

Also: http://www.capwip.org/Hyogo-framework-for-action-english.pdf

There is also some drill down on Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) as it relates
to gender...see: http://www.iawg.net/2010/Presentations/S1%20Sarah%20C.pdf,
Gates is funding some of this work.

Most of the effort is at the policy/advocacy level and therefore difficult
to track impact/attribution...still NGOs are working hard with country-level
policy-makers to ensure that their formative policy address gender related
issues (e.g. GBV prevention, RH in disaster settings).



Rachael Barrett

This is a brief update on our status with a major goal of ours for 2011:
finding more VillageReach-level charities. (Context at
http://blog.givewell.org/2011/02/04/givewells-annual-self-evaluation-and-plan-a-big-picture-change-in-priorities/
)

Our process is to start by casting as wide a net as possible and looking
very quickly at a charity's website to see if it meets our heuristics. These
heuristics are evolving, but things we look for include (a) unusual
transparency and/or evidence re: effectiveness; (b) unusual models that have
high "upside" (i.e., if they go well, the effects could be extremely
positive); (c) focus on what we consider "low-burden-of-proof" programs,
e.g., proven health interventions. If it does, we select it for a
mini-review based on publicly available information, which takes us 1-5
hours to complete. If it seems promising after the mini-review, we contact
the charity for a phone call to ask all of our questions.

Thus far, we've scanned the websites of approximately 150 charities, marked
approximately 50 of those for a mini review (of which we've completed about
30), and selected 6 (thus far) for more extensive due diligence. We've also
been having in-depth conversations withInnovations for Poverty Action (IPA),
an organization we've been interested in for awhile.

The first six organizations we've contacted have largely been based on our
traditional criteria (i.e., evidence of monitoring and evaluation or focus
on a priority program: http://www.givewell.org/about/process/heuristics).
We've contacted all the organizations below (and have already spoken with
five of them) and hope to have more updates in the coming months.

   - Nyaya Health: Nyaya runs a hospital in rural Nepal. They are extremely
   transparent and there's a great deal of information available on their
   website: http://www.nyayahealth.org/
   - Project Muso: Project Muso primarily pays for poor residents of a
   district in Mali to access local health services. Their website points to
   some encouraging results: http://www.projectmuso.org/
   - Riders for Health: Riders for Health provides maintenance services to
   local health workers vehicles: http://www.riders.org/
   - Trickle Up: Trickle Up provides grants and training to extremely poor
   individuals in the developing world (a la the Village Enterprise
   Foundation): http://www.trickleup.org/
   - Operation Asha: Increases access to Tuberculosis treatment in the slums
   of Delhi, India: http://opasha.org/
   - Sankara Eye Foundation: Provides eye surgeries in India:
   http://www.giftofvision.org/

We're also thinking about ways to implement newer criteria such as "high
upside", along the lines of our discussion of Living Goods at
http://blog.givewell.org/2011/03/04/evaluating-givewell-by-finding-the-best-charity/.
Along with Livings Goods, we're planning to contact Root Capital and
IDE-India. We've also looked carefully at the Population Media Center and
are thinking about what additional information we would need to evaluate
them and decide on whether we would recommend them.

We're continuing to source more charities where we can and mini-review ones
that seems promising.

-Elie

Today, we published notes and pictures from 18 site visits we did India. (A
few organizations declined to have us post notes on our website.) The notes
are linked on our website at
http://www.givewell.org/international/site-visits/india-fall-2010

Right now, we've just published notes. Over the next two weeks, we're going
to publish a set of blog posts that highlight some of the key thinks we saw
and summarize what we learned.

-Elie

A story in the NY Times about how a town's mayor made an appeal on
YouTube and got lots of donations. I think this counts as a "call for
aid". It might be interesting to see how effective it actually was:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/07/world/asia/07plea.html

In the 11-minute recording, the mayor, Katsunobu Sakurai, described
the dire situation facing Minamisoma, whose residents were still
reeling from a devastating earthquake and 60-foot tsunami when they
were ordered to stay indoors because of radiation leaks from Japan’s
crippled nuclear plant, 15 miles away. Those who had not fled now
faced starvation, he said, as they were trapped in their homes or
refugee shelters by the nuclear alert, which also prevented shipments
of food from arriving.

“We are left isolated,” Mr. Sakurai said urgently into the camera, his
brow furrowed and his voice strained with exhaustion. “I beg you, as
the mayor of Minamisoma city, to help us.”

The video, posted on YouTube a day after it was recorded late on the
night of March 24, became an instant sensation, and has since drawn
more than 200,000 viewers. Almost two weeks later, the city hall is
still getting phone calls, most from non-Japanese calling from abroad
with offers to help. The city has also received hundreds of boxes of
food and other supplies from individuals, and truckloads of relief
goods from nonprofit organizations.

“It’s amazing how many of these donors say they saw us on YouTube,”
said Noriyoshi Saito, who works in the City Hall economic section and
is in charge of handling donated goods.

Mr. Sakurai described the online plea as a turning point in
Minamisoma’s struggle against the triple disaster, which for a time
had transformed this city of 75,000 people into a virtual ghost town.
Some 50,000 residents fled in the first two weeks after the
earthquake, though a small number have begun trickling back.

Mr. Sakurai credited the large-scale response to his video with
helping those who remained in the stricken city to carry on.

Dear Brian

Thanks for the information. Its indeed credible. I was watching some of the
vedios recorded immedietely after the tsunami and found things were too bad.
After a few days though most of the roads and communication was brought
back  and have no doubt that that can happen only in Japan where people are
honest, committed and respect their nation and the land they live in.
Building back such huge establishments calls for committments of highest
orders and only Japanese can do that.
Anil Mahajan

On Sun, Apr 17, 2011 at 11:07 AM, Brian Slesinsky <bslesinsky@...>wrote:

> A story in the NY Times about how a town's mayor made an appeal on
> YouTube and got lots of donations. I think this counts as a "call for
> aid". It might be interesting to see how effective it actually was:
>
> http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/07/world/asia/07plea.html
>
> In the 11-minute recording, the mayor, Katsunobu Sakurai, described
> the dire situation facing Minamisoma, whose residents were still
> reeling from a devastating earthquake and 60-foot tsunami when they
> were ordered to stay indoors because of radiation leaks from Japan’s
> crippled nuclear plant, 15 miles away. Those who had not fled now
> faced starvation, he said, as they were trapped in their homes or
> refugee shelters by the nuclear alert, which also prevented shipments
> of food from arriving.
>
> “We are left isolated,” Mr. Sakurai said urgently into the camera, his
> brow furrowed and his voice strained with exhaustion. “I beg you, as
> the mayor of Minamisoma city, to help us.”
>
> The video, posted on YouTube a day after it was recorded late on the
> night of March 24, became an instant sensation, and has since drawn
> more than 200,000 viewers. Almost two weeks later, the city hall is
> still getting phone calls, most from non-Japanese calling from abroad
> with offers to help. The city has also received hundreds of boxes of
> food and other supplies from individuals, and truckloads of relief
> goods from nonprofit organizations.
>
> “It’s amazing how many of these donors say they saw us on YouTube,”
> said Noriyoshi Saito, who works in the City Hall economic section and
> is in charge of handling donated goods.
>
> Mr. Sakurai described the online plea as a turning point in
> Minamisoma’s struggle against the triple disaster, which for a time
> had transformed this city of 75,000 people into a virtual ghost town.
> Some 50,000 residents fled in the first two weeks after the
> earthquake, though a small number have begun trickling back.
>
> Mr. Sakurai credited the large-scale response to his video with
> helping those who remained in the stricken city to carry on.
>
>
> ------------------------------------
>
> This is the research mailing list of GiveWell (www.givewell.net).  Emails
> sent over this list represent the informal thoughts and notes of staff
> members and other participants.  They do NOT represent official positions of
> GiveWell.Yahoo! Groups Links
>
>
>
>

Dear Givewell folk,

[Note: The email was originally sent to info@... but they
replied suggesting that I broadcast this to the GiveWell mailing list
so that both the questions and their answers are on official record]

This is a somewhat miscellaneous email with some
questions/concerns. I'd love to hear your responses:

(1) Japan: You seem to have been spending a lot of effort in recent
weeks on Japan. What's the rationale behind this? It seems to me that
too much of the news media and popular attention is anyway focused on
Japan. I see GiveWell's strength in thinking about medium-to-long-term
solutions rather than disaster relief.

I understand that GiveWell's main effort has been to try to caution
people against giving money to Japan, but what about the effort that
you as an organization have been spending in the process? This is
effort that could be devoted to identifying the next gold medal
charity.

I'm probably missing some information or thinking behind your recent
Japan focus, and would be interested in knowing more. Also, it may be
that the impression I get about the effort you are putting in is
exaggerated because of the number of blog posts. Or that many other
prospective donors are asking you questions about Japan and you must
respond to their needs.

(2) India orgs: You said you were going to do a series of blog posts
about the charities in India that you visited during your stay in
Mumbai. When will these blog posts be forthcoming?

(3) Identifying the next gold medal organization: What
success/progress have you had so far in identifying the next gold
medal organization?

If you will not be able to identify the next gold medal organization,
then to me that is an argument _against_ my donating to
VillageReach. I have given my reasoning below, and I would be
interested if you have thoughts on the matter.

Here's my reasoning: Based on current estimates, assuming that
VillageReach continues to retain its Gold Medal status and GiveWell
maintains or slightly increases its influence and donation amounts,
VillageReach will get all the money necessary for its Mozambique
expansion. It's also unclear whether they will be able to absorb
additional funds to consider wholly new programs -- I get the
impression that they took some time to fully adjust to the funding
influx after December. On the other hand, if VillageReach loses its
Gold Medal status, then donating to them may not make that much
sense. So either way, it seems that unless you think you are on the
verge of identifying new gold medal orgs, donating to VillageReach
makes less sense than it used to.

A little clarification: By and large, I find the silver medal orgs
fairly good, but not worth my money. There are a number of other
philanthropic endeavors that I am interested in, and silver medal orgs
get beaten by some of those other causes. In the absence of gold medal
orgs, I would not use GiveWell's recommendations. However, for those
who find the silver medal orgs fairly good uses of their money as
well, the reasoning I have given above does not apply.

Keep up the good work!

Vipul

I'd like to stick up a bit for GiveWell here.  It is difficult when  
the disaster in Japan is so salient and has tugged at everyone's  
heartstrings, to recommend putting your money elsewhere.  It can sound  
like Givewell doesn't care about people in Japan.

I don't think that is the case.  GiveWell tries to find the charities  
that do the most good for the dollar.  There are many reasons why  
disaster relief, in general, may be far down the list in terms of good  
for the dollar.  One is that attempts to save lives be very, very  
costly per life saved.  Rescue efforts with expensive equipment might  
costs tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars per life actually  
saved.  Also, money rushed in in a crisis may be poorly used due to  
inevitable confusion about how to proceed quickly.

Meanwhile, there are other charities where a life of a child might be  
saved for a hundred dollars or less.  That child will not be part of  
your awareness, because there is no day to day coverage of the  
thousands of people dying every day from AIDS, TB, malaria, and so on.  
  But his/her life matters just as much.

If television made it as possible to vividly imagine the plight of  
people in poor countries dying from preventable diseases as it does to  
vividly imagine the plight of people in Japan, you might feel  
differently.

Ron




Quoting Vipul Naik <vipul@...>:

> Dear Givewell folk,
>
> [Note: The email was originally sent to info@... but they
> replied suggesting that I broadcast this to the GiveWell mailing list
> so that both the questions and their answers are on official record]
>
> This is a somewhat miscellaneous email with some
> questions/concerns. I'd love to hear your responses:
>
> (1) Japan: You seem to have been spending a lot of effort in recent
> weeks on Japan. What's the rationale behind this? It seems to me that
> too much of the news media and popular attention is anyway focused on
> Japan. I see GiveWell's strength in thinking about medium-to-long-term
> solutions rather than disaster relief.
>
> I understand that GiveWell's main effort has been to try to caution
> people against giving money to Japan, but what about the effort that
> you as an organization have been spending in the process? This is
> effort that could be devoted to identifying the next gold medal
> charity.
>
> I'm probably missing some information or thinking behind your recent
> Japan focus, and would be interested in knowing more. Also, it may be
> that the impression I get about the effort you are putting in is
> exaggerated because of the number of blog posts. Or that many other
> prospective donors are asking you questions about Japan and you must
> respond to their needs.
>
> (2) India orgs: You said you were going to do a series of blog posts
> about the charities in India that you visited during your stay in
> Mumbai. When will these blog posts be forthcoming?
>
> (3) Identifying the next gold medal organization: What
> success/progress have you had so far in identifying the next gold
> medal organization?
>
> If you will not be able to identify the next gold medal organization,
> then to me that is an argument _against_ my donating to
> VillageReach. I have given my reasoning below, and I would be
> interested if you have thoughts on the matter.
>
> Here's my reasoning: Based on current estimates, assuming that
> VillageReach continues to retain its Gold Medal status and GiveWell
> maintains or slightly increases its influence and donation amounts,
> VillageReach will get all the money necessary for its Mozambique
> expansion. It's also unclear whether they will be able to absorb
> additional funds to consider wholly new programs -- I get the
> impression that they took some time to fully adjust to the funding
> influx after December. On the other hand, if VillageReach loses its
> Gold Medal status, then donating to them may not make that much
> sense. So either way, it seems that unless you think you are on the
> verge of identifying new gold medal orgs, donating to VillageReach
> makes less sense than it used to.
>
> A little clarification: By and large, I find the silver medal orgs
> fairly good, but not worth my money. There are a number of other
> philanthropic endeavors that I am interested in, and silver medal orgs
> get beaten by some of those other causes. In the absence of gold medal
> orgs, I would not use GiveWell's recommendations. However, for those
> who find the silver medal orgs fairly good uses of their money as
> well, the reasoning I have given above does not apply.
>
> Keep up the good work!
>
> Vipul
>

Dear ron

i agree with you, partially. What u said about the high costs involved in
saving lives is too high, the question is then what happens to people who
are victims of disastors, such as the one which took place in Japan and for
that matter elsewhere in the world. Who will save them. Yes money sent is
poorly used and also chances that some would never reach the victims.
Inspite of these factors and facts, we need to devise strategies to save
lives.

You are fully justified when you talk of HIV/ Malaria and so on. However, my
experience for last twelve years when I am associated with HIV programs is
different. Here also only 20-25 percent of funds coming for helping HIV
infected and affected is actually utilized for the cause and rest goes into
the account (personal) of people incharge of implementation and this is in a
way amounts to cheating and misuse of funds.

I feel we have somewhere failed to seal these gaps even though we all are
aware of there existance and this may be solely due to lack of a system of
identifying honest NGOs to implement programs and secondly most of the NGOs
are choosen because someone knows someone there. These are quite disturbing
facts and very rarely someone shows interest to discuss and find solutions
for those.

Anil
mumbai/India

On Tue, Apr 19, 2011 at 10:14 PM, <rnoble@...> wrote:

>
>
>
>
> I'd like to stick up a bit for GiveWell here. It is difficult when
> the disaster in Japan is so salient and has tugged at everyone's
> heartstrings, to recommend putting your money elsewhere. It can sound
> like Givewell doesn't care about people in Japan.
>
> I don't think that is the case. GiveWell tries to find the charities
> that do the most good for the dollar. There are many reasons why
> disaster relief, in general, may be far down the list in terms of good
> for the dollar. One is that attempts to save lives be very, very
> costly per life saved. Rescue efforts with expensive equipment might
> costs tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars per life actually
> saved. Also, money rushed in in a crisis may be poorly used due to
> inevitable confusion about how to proceed quickly.
>
> Meanwhile, there are other charities where a life of a child might be
> saved for a hundred dollars or less. That child will not be part of
> your awareness, because there is no day to day coverage of the
> thousands of people dying every day from AIDS, TB, malaria, and so on.
> But his/her life matters just as much.
>
> If television made it as possible to vividly imagine the plight of
> people in poor countries dying from preventable diseases as it does to
> vividly imagine the plight of people in Japan, you might feel
> differently.
>
> Ron
>
>
> Quoting Vipul Naik <vipul@...>:
>
> > Dear Givewell folk,
> >
> > [Note: The email was originally sent to info@givewell.org but they
> > replied suggesting that I broadcast this to the GiveWell mailing list
> > so that both the questions and their answers are on official record]
> >
> > This is a somewhat miscellaneous email with some
> > questions/concerns. I'd love to hear your responses:
> >
> > (1) Japan: You seem to have been spending a lot of effort in recent
> > weeks on Japan. What's the rationale behind this? It seems to me that
> > too much of the news media and popular attention is anyway focused on
> > Japan. I see GiveWell's strength in thinking about medium-to-long-term
> > solutions rather than disaster relief.
> >
> > I understand that GiveWell's main effort has been to try to caution
> > people against giving money to Japan, but what about the effort that
> > you as an organization have been spending in the process? This is
> > effort that could be devoted to identifying the next gold medal
> > charity.
> >
> > I'm probably missing some information or thinking behind your recent
> > Japan focus, and would be interested in knowing more. Also, it may be
> > that the impression I get about the effort you are putting in is
> > exaggerated because of the number of blog posts. Or that many other
> > prospective donors are asking you questions about Japan and you must
> > respond to their needs.
> >
> > (2) India orgs: You said you were going to do a series of blog posts
> > about the charities in India that you visited during your stay in
> > Mumbai. When will these blog posts be forthcoming?
> >
> > (3) Identifying the next gold medal organization: What
> > success/progress have you had so far in identifying the next gold
> > medal organization?
> >
> > If you will not be able to identify the next gold medal organization,
> > then to me that is an argument _against_ my donating to
> > VillageReach. I have given my reasoning below, and I would be
> > interested if you have thoughts on the matter.
> >
> > Here's my reasoning: Based on current estimates, assuming that
> > VillageReach continues to retain its Gold Medal status and GiveWell
> > maintains or slightly increases its influence and donation amounts,
> > VillageReach will get all the money necessary for its Mozambique
> > expansion. It's also unclear whether they will be able to absorb
> > additional funds to consider wholly new programs -- I get the
> > impression that they took some time to fully adjust to the funding
> > influx after December. On the other hand, if VillageReach loses its
> > Gold Medal status, then donating to them may not make that much
> > sense. So either way, it seems that unless you think you are on the
> > verge of identifying new gold medal orgs, donating to VillageReach
> > makes less sense than it used to.
> >
> > A little clarification: By and large, I find the silver medal orgs
> > fairly good, but not worth my money. There are a number of other
> > philanthropic endeavors that I am interested in, and silver medal orgs
> > get beaten by some of those other causes. In the absence of gold medal
> > orgs, I would not use GiveWell's recommendations. However, for those
> > who find the silver medal orgs fairly good uses of their money as
> > well, the reasoning I have given above does not apply.
> >
> > Keep up the good work!
> >
> > Vipul
> >
>
>  
>

Dear Anil,

I applaud your compassion, and I want people in Japan to be saved too.  
  I think what GiveWell is saying is, if you are just going to give a  
fixed number of dollars, where should those dollars go?  If you are  
only going to give a fixed amount, you might save more lives by giving  
to something other than disaster relief.

That isn't to say disaster relief isn't worthwhile.  If someone who  
wasn't going to give anything at all to charity decides to give to  
disaster relief, then I think that is probably a very good thing.   
That money, hopefully, is better spent on victims of disaster than it  
is on whatever it would have been spent on otherwise:  A few more  
lattes, a few more dinners at fancy restaurants, etc.  If I'm giving  
nothing, I have no business criticizing someone giving to disaster  
relief for Japan.

And we agree whatever the aim of the charity, it is best if the money  
is used efficiently.  GiveWell is aware of this issue.  That's why  
they've done a lot of research and identified Village Reach as an  
organization that not only aims at medical interventions which can be  
cost-effective, but actually intervenes in a cost-effective manner.



Quoting anil mahajan <anilanilm@...>:

> Dear ron
>
> i agree with you, partially. What u said about the high costs involved in
> saving lives is too high, the question is then what happens to people who
> are victims of disastors, such as the one which took place in Japan and for
> that matter elsewhere in the world. Who will save them. Yes money sent is
> poorly used and also chances that some would never reach the victims.
> Inspite of these factors and facts, we need to devise strategies to save
> lives.
>
> You are fully justified when you talk of HIV/ Malaria and so on. However, my
> experience for last twelve years when I am associated with HIV programs is
> different. Here also only 20-25 percent of funds coming for helping HIV
> infected and affected is actually utilized for the cause and rest goes into
> the account (personal) of people incharge of implementation and this is in a
> way amounts to cheating and misuse of funds.
>
> I feel we have somewhere failed to seal these gaps even though we all are
> aware of there existance and this may be solely due to lack of a system of
> identifying honest NGOs to implement programs and secondly most of the NGOs
> are choosen because someone knows someone there. These are quite disturbing
> facts and very rarely someone shows interest to discuss and find solutions
> for those.
>
> Anil
> mumbai/India
>
> On Tue, Apr 19, 2011 at 10:14 PM, <rnoble@...> wrote:
>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> I'd like to stick up a bit for GiveWell here. It is difficult when
>> the disaster in Japan is so salient and has tugged at everyone's
>> heartstrings, to recommend putting your money elsewhere. It can sound
>> like Givewell doesn't care about people in Japan.
>>
>> I don't think that is the case. GiveWell tries to find the charities
>> that do the most good for the dollar. There are many reasons why
>> disaster relief, in general, may be far down the list in terms of good
>> for the dollar. One is that attempts to save lives be very, very
>> costly per life saved. Rescue efforts with expensive equipment might
>> costs tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars per life actually
>> saved. Also, money rushed in in a crisis may be poorly used due to
>> inevitable confusion about how to proceed quickly.
>>
>> Meanwhile, there are other charities where a life of a child might be
>> saved for a hundred dollars or less. That child will not be part of
>> your awareness, because there is no day to day coverage of the
>> thousands of people dying every day from AIDS, TB, malaria, and so on.
>> But his/her life matters just as much.
>>
>> If television made it as possible to vividly imagine the plight of
>> people in poor countries dying from preventable diseases as it does to
>> vividly imagine the plight of people in Japan, you might feel
>> differently.
>>
>> Ron
>>
>>
>> Quoting Vipul Naik <vipul@...>:
>>
>> > Dear Givewell folk,
>> >
>> > [Note: The email was originally sent to info@... but they
>> > replied suggesting that I broadcast this to the GiveWell mailing list
>> > so that both the questions and their answers are on official record]
>> >
>> > This is a somewhat miscellaneous email with some
>> > questions/concerns. I'd love to hear your responses:
>> >
>> > (1) Japan: You seem to have been spending a lot of effort in recent
>> > weeks on Japan. What's the rationale behind this? It seems to me that
>> > too much of the news media and popular attention is anyway focused on
>> > Japan. I see GiveWell's strength in thinking about medium-to-long-term
>> > solutions rather than disaster relief.
>> >
>> > I understand that GiveWell's main effort has been to try to caution
>> > people against giving money to Japan, but what about the effort that
>> > you as an organization have been spending in the process? This is
>> > effort that could be devoted to identifying the next gold medal
>> > charity.
>> >
>> > I'm probably missing some information or thinking behind your recent
>> > Japan focus, and would be interested in knowing more. Also, it may be
>> > that the impression I get about the effort you are putting in is
>> > exaggerated because of the number of blog posts. Or that many other
>> > prospective donors are asking you questions about Japan and you must
>> > respond to their needs.
>> >
>> > (2) India orgs: You said you were going to do a series of blog posts
>> > about the charities in India that you visited during your stay in
>> > Mumbai. When will these blog posts be forthcoming?
>> >
>> > (3) Identifying the next gold medal organization: What
>> > success/progress have you had so far in identifying the next gold
>> > medal organization?
>> >
>> > If you will not be able to identify the next gold medal organization,
>> > then to me that is an argument _against_ my donating to
>> > VillageReach. I have given my reasoning below, and I would be
>> > interested if you have thoughts on the matter.
>> >
>> > Here's my reasoning: Based on current estimates, assuming that
>> > VillageReach continues to retain its Gold Medal status and GiveWell
>> > maintains or slightly increases its influence and donation amounts,
>> > VillageReach will get all the money necessary for its Mozambique
>> > expansion. It's also unclear whether they will be able to absorb
>> > additional funds to consider wholly new programs -- I get the
>> > impression that they took some time to fully adjust to the funding
>> > influx after December. On the other hand, if VillageReach loses its
>> > Gold Medal status, then donating to them may not make that much
>> > sense. So either way, it seems that unless you think you are on the
>> > verge of identifying new gold medal orgs, donating to VillageReach
>> > makes less sense than it used to.
>> >
>> > A little clarification: By and large, I find the silver medal orgs
>> > fairly good, but not worth my money. There are a number of other
>> > philanthropic endeavors that I am interested in, and silver medal orgs
>> > get beaten by some of those other causes. In the absence of gold medal
>> > orgs, I would not use GiveWell's recommendations. However, for those
>> > who find the silver medal orgs fairly good uses of their money as
>> > well, the reasoning I have given above does not apply.
>> >
>> > Keep up the good work!
>> >
>> > Vipul
>> >
>>
>>
>>
>

Thanks for sending this - very interesting. It does seem to me like this
situation was less about a shortage of money and more about an emotional
appeal that overcame a reluctance to go near this dangerous area. I.e., the
story revolves around volunteers, supplies, knowledge of the situation, and
willingness to help out, not around financial means to do so.

On Sun, Apr 17, 2011 at 1:37 AM, Brian Slesinsky <bslesinsky@...>wrote:

> A story in the NY Times about how a town's mayor made an appeal on
> YouTube and got lots of donations. I think this counts as a "call for
> aid". It might be interesting to see how effective it actually was:
>
> http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/07/world/asia/07plea.html
>
> In the 11-minute recording, the mayor, Katsunobu Sakurai, described
> the dire situation facing Minamisoma, whose residents were still
> reeling from a devastating earthquake and 60-foot tsunami when they
> were ordered to stay indoors because of radiation leaks from Japan’s
> crippled nuclear plant, 15 miles away. Those who had not fled now
> faced starvation, he said, as they were trapped in their homes or
> refugee shelters by the nuclear alert, which also prevented shipments
> of food from arriving.
>
> “We are left isolated,” Mr. Sakurai said urgently into the camera, his
> brow furrowed and his voice strained with exhaustion. “I beg you, as
> the mayor of Minamisoma city, to help us.”
>
> The video, posted on YouTube a day after it was recorded late on the
> night of March 24, became an instant sensation, and has since drawn
> more than 200,000 viewers. Almost two weeks later, the city hall is
> still getting phone calls, most from non-Japanese calling from abroad
> with offers to help. The city has also received hundreds of boxes of
> food and other supplies from individuals, and truckloads of relief
> goods from nonprofit organizations.
>
> “It’s amazing how many of these donors say they saw us on YouTube,”
> said Noriyoshi Saito, who works in the City Hall economic section and
> is in charge of handling donated goods.
>
> Mr. Sakurai described the online plea as a turning point in
> Minamisoma’s struggle against the triple disaster, which for a time
> had transformed this city of 75,000 people into a virtual ghost town.
> Some 50,000 residents fled in the first two weeks after the
> earthquake, though a small number have begun trickling back.
>
> Mr. Sakurai credited the large-scale response to his video with
> helping those who remained in the stricken city to carry on.
>
>
> ------------------------------------
>
> This is the research mailing list of GiveWell (www.givewell.net).  Emails
> sent over this list represent the informal thoughts and notes of staff
> members and other participants.  They do NOT represent official positions of
> GiveWell.Yahoo! Groups Links
>
>
>
>

Dear all,

Thanks to Anil and Ron for their responses. I do want to point out
that my original point regarding Japan was somewhat different. My
question wasn't so much about whether donor money should or should not
go to Japan, but about whether GiveWell was spending too much effort
investigating the Japan disaster relief issues at the expense of other
activities that might go into identifying more gold and silver medal
charities. 

Given that, like Ron Noble and GiveWell, I think that disaster relief
is not the best use of donor money, I'm asking whether it is the best
use of GiveWell's investigative resources.

For instance, in a past post, GiveWell suggests that finding great
charities is a top priority:

http://blog.givewell.org/2011/02/04/givewells-annual-self-evaluation-and-plan-a-big-picture-change-in-priorities/

This says: "(1) We see it as urgent to find more "gold medal"
charities than we have so far, (2) The benefits of covering extra
causes doesn't seem very large"

They elaborate on this further here:

http://blog.givewell.org/2011/02/14/givewells-plan-for-2011-top-level-priorities/

As I pointed out, I may be mistaken about the extent of effort
GiveWell is putting into Japan, because I'm only going by the visible
activity (6 of the last 8 blog posts). Or, it may be in response to
donor questions and concerns. Or (I didn't mention this possibility
earlier, since it sounds cynical) it may be strategically a good move
to attract more people to GiveWell's website. Or (I didn't mention
this last time) it may be an opportunity for GiveWell to review the
area and operations of disaster relief as a whole.

Whatever the case, I would like to hear from GiveWell folk what their
take on this issue is. Also, I'm curious to know what others on the
list think about the issue of GiveWell's investigative resources being
spent on investigating Japan. And more generally whether every time a
disaster of some sort strikes, GiveWell should redirect resources to
investigating the disaster relief effort, particularly if it appears
unlikely that they'll be able to identify excellent charities in the
process.

Vipul

* Quoting rnoble@... who at 2011-04-19 14:31:21+0000 (Tue) wrote
> 
> 
> Dear Anil,
> 
> I applaud your compassion, and I want people in Japan to be saved too.  
>   I think what GiveWell is saying is, if you are just going to give a  
> fixed number of dollars, where should those dollars go?  If you are  
> only going to give a fixed amount, you might save more lives by giving  
> to something other than disaster relief.
> 
> That isn't to say disaster relief isn't worthwhile.  If someone who  
> wasn't going to give anything at all to charity decides to give to  
> disaster relief, then I think that is probably a very good thing.   
> That money, hopefully, is better spent on victims of disaster than it  
> is on whatever it would have been spent on otherwise:  A few more  
> lattes, a few more dinners at fancy restaurants, etc.  If I'm giving  
> nothing, I have no business criticizing someone giving to disaster  
> relief for Japan.
> 
> And we agree whatever the aim of the charity, it is best if the money  
> is used efficiently.  GiveWell is aware of this issue.  That's why  
> they've done a lot of research and identified Village Reach as an  
> organization that not only aims at medical interventions which can be  
> cost-effective, but actually intervenes in a cost-effective manner.
> 
> 
> 
> Quoting anil mahajan <anilanilm@...>:
> 
> > Dear ron
> >
> > i agree with you, partially. What u said about the high costs involved in
> > saving lives is too high, the question is then what happens to people who
> > are victims of disastors, such as the one which took place in Japan and for
> > that matter elsewhere in the world. Who will save them. Yes money sent is
> > poorly used and also chances that some would never reach the victims.
> > Inspite of these factors and facts, we need to devise strategies to save
> > lives.
> >
> > You are fully justified when you talk of HIV/ Malaria and so on. However, my
> > experience for last twelve years when I am associated with HIV programs is
> > different. Here also only 20-25 percent of funds coming for helping HIV
> > infected and affected is actually utilized for the cause and rest goes into
> > the account (personal) of people incharge of implementation and this is in a
> > way amounts to cheating and misuse of funds.
> >
> > I feel we have somewhere failed to seal these gaps even though we all are
> > aware of there existance and this may be solely due to lack of a system of
> > identifying honest NGOs to implement programs and secondly most of the NGOs
> > are choosen because someone knows someone there. These are quite disturbing
> > facts and very rarely someone shows interest to discuss and find solutions
> > for those.
> >
> > Anil
> > mumbai/India
> >
> > On Tue, Apr 19, 2011 at 10:14 PM, <rnoble@...> wrote:
> >
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> I'd like to stick up a bit for GiveWell here. It is difficult when
> >> the disaster in Japan is so salient and has tugged at everyone's
> >> heartstrings, to recommend putting your money elsewhere. It can sound
> >> like Givewell doesn't care about people in Japan.
> >>
> >> I don't think that is the case. GiveWell tries to find the charities
> >> that do the most good for the dollar. There are many reasons why
> >> disaster relief, in general, may be far down the list in terms of good
> >> for the dollar. One is that attempts to save lives be very, very
> >> costly per life saved. Rescue efforts with expensive equipment might
> >> costs tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars per life actually
> >> saved. Also, money rushed in in a crisis may be poorly used due to
> >> inevitable confusion about how to proceed quickly.
> >>
> >> Meanwhile, there are other charities where a life of a child might be
> >> saved for a hundred dollars or less. That child will not be part of
> >> your awareness, because there is no day to day coverage of the
> >> thousands of people dying every day from AIDS, TB, malaria, and so on.
> >> But his/her life matters just as much.
> >>
> >> If television made it as possible to vividly imagine the plight of
> >> people in poor countries dying from preventable diseases as it does to
> >> vividly imagine the plight of people in Japan, you might feel
> >> differently.
> >>
> >> Ron
> >>
> >>
> >> Quoting Vipul Naik <vipul@...>:
> >>
> >> > Dear Givewell folk,
> >> >
> >> > [Note: The email was originally sent to info@... but they
> >> > replied suggesting that I broadcast this to the GiveWell mailing list
> >> > so that both the questions and their answers are on official record]
> >> >
> >> > This is a somewhat miscellaneous email with some
> >> > questions/concerns. I'd love to hear your responses:
> >> >
> >> > (1) Japan: You seem to have been spending a lot of effort in recent
> >> > weeks on Japan. What's the rationale behind this? It seems to me that
> >> > too much of the news media and popular attention is anyway focused on
> >> > Japan. I see GiveWell's strength in thinking about medium-to-long-term
> >> > solutions rather than disaster relief.
> >> >
> >> > I understand that GiveWell's main effort has been to try to caution
> >> > people against giving money to Japan, but what about the effort that
> >> > you as an organization have been spending in the process? This is
> >> > effort that could be devoted to identifying the next gold medal
> >> > charity.
> >> >
> >> > I'm probably missing some information or thinking behind your recent
> >> > Japan focus, and would be interested in knowing more. Also, it may be
> >> > that the impression I get about the effort you are putting in is
> >> > exaggerated because of the number of blog posts. Or that many other
> >> > prospective donors are asking you questions about Japan and you must
> >> > respond to their needs.
> >> >
> >> > (2) India orgs: You said you were going to do a series of blog posts
> >> > about the charities in India that you visited during your stay in
> >> > Mumbai. When will these blog posts be forthcoming?
> >> >
> >> > (3) Identifying the next gold medal organization: What
> >> > success/progress have you had so far in identifying the next gold
> >> > medal organization?
> >> >
> >> > If you will not be able to identify the next gold medal organization,
> >> > then to me that is an argument _against_ my donating to
> >> > VillageReach. I have given my reasoning below, and I would be
> >> > interested if you have thoughts on the matter.
> >> >
> >> > Here's my reasoning: Based on current estimates, assuming that
> >> > VillageReach continues to retain its Gold Medal status and GiveWell
> >> > maintains or slightly increases its influence and donation amounts,
> >> > VillageReach will get all the money necessary for its Mozambique
> >> > expansion. It's also unclear whether they will be able to absorb
> >> > additional funds to consider wholly new programs -- I get the
> >> > impression that they took some time to fully adjust to the funding
> >> > influx after December. On the other hand, if VillageReach loses its
> >> > Gold Medal status, then donating to them may not make that much
> >> > sense. So either way, it seems that unless you think you are on the
> >> > verge of identifying new gold medal orgs, donating to VillageReach
> >> > makes less sense than it used to.
> >> >
> >> > A little clarification: By and large, I find the silver medal orgs
> >> > fairly good, but not worth my money. There are a number of other
> >> > philanthropic endeavors that I am interested in, and silver medal orgs
> >> > get beaten by some of those other causes. In the absence of gold medal
> >> > orgs, I would not use GiveWell's recommendations. However, for those
> >> > who find the silver medal orgs fairly good uses of their money as
> >> > well, the reasoning I have given above does not apply.
> >> >
> >> > Keep up the good work!
> >> >
> >> > Vipul
> >> >
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >
> 
> 
> 

Hi Vipul,

In regards to point 3, identifying the next gold medal org: you've written
that there are other philanthropic endeavors that you'd prefer to support
rather than the silver medal orgs.  I wonder whether any of these have the
potential to become the next gold medal org?

More philosophical question: I (and I believe many of us) rely on GW hugely
in the free information they give us.  The information flow is mostly
one-directional, from their expertise to us.  If we provide back our
information to them, might that help them process more info, recommend more
quickly, and get even more people to be giving wisely?  Rather than waiting
for them to share with us the next gold medal org, what info can the
community share with them to make this happen more quickly?

Caveat: this sharing back with GW would have to be welcomed by Holden & Elie
and set up so they don't end up wasting more time sifting out mediocre ideas
than focusing on analysis of the good.

Brigid

On Tue, Apr 19, 2011 at 8:59 AM, Vipul Naik <vipul@...> wrote:

>
>
> Dear Givewell folk,
>
> [Note: The email was originally sent to info@... but they
> replied suggesting that I broadcast this to the GiveWell mailing list
> so that both the questions and their answers are on official record]
>
> This is a somewhat miscellaneous email with some
> questions/concerns. I'd love to hear your responses:
>
> (1) Japan: You seem to have been spending a lot of effort in recent
> weeks on Japan. What's the rationale behind this? It seems to me that
> too much of the news media and popular attention is anyway focused on
> Japan. I see GiveWell's strength in thinking about medium-to-long-term
> solutions rather than disaster relief.
>
> I understand that GiveWell's main effort has been to try to caution
> people against giving money to Japan, but what about the effort that
> you as an organization have been spending in the process? This is
> effort that could be devoted to identifying the next gold medal
> charity.
>
> I'm probably missing some information or thinking behind your recent
> Japan focus, and would be interested in knowing more. Also, it may be
> that the impression I get about the effort you are putting in is
> exaggerated because of the number of blog posts. Or that many other
> prospective donors are asking you questions about Japan and you must
> respond to their needs.
>
> (2) India orgs: You said you were going to do a series of blog posts
> about the charities in India that you visited during your stay in
> Mumbai. When will these blog posts be forthcoming?
>
> (3) Identifying the next gold medal organization: What
> success/progress have you had so far in identifying the next gold
> medal organization?
>
> If you will not be able to identify the next gold medal organization,
> then to me that is an argument _against_ my donating to
> VillageReach. I have given my reasoning below, and I would be
> interested if you have thoughts on the matter.
>
> Here's my reasoning: Based on current estimates, assuming that
> VillageReach continues to retain its Gold Medal status and GiveWell
> maintains or slightly increases its influence and donation amounts,
> VillageReach will get all the money necessary for its Mozambique
> expansion. It's also unclear whether they will be able to absorb
> additional funds to consider wholly new programs -- I get the
> impression that they took some time to fully adjust to the funding
> influx after December. On the other hand, if VillageReach loses its
> Gold Medal status, then donating to them may not make that much
> sense. So either way, it seems that unless you think you are on the
> verge of identifying new gold medal orgs, donating to VillageReach
> makes less sense than it used to.
>
> A little clarification: By and large, I find the silver medal orgs
> fairly good, but not worth my money. There are a number of other
> philanthropic endeavors that I am interested in, and silver medal orgs
> get beaten by some of those other causes. In the absence of gold medal
> orgs, I would not use GiveWell's recommendations. However, for those
> who find the silver medal orgs fairly good uses of their money as
> well, the reasoning I have given above does not apply.
>
> Keep up the good work!
>
> Vipul
>  
>



-- 
Brigid Slipka
brigid.slipka@...
(323) 702-5017

Vipul (and everyone),

maybe it would be better to hear from other people now, and I think  
Vipul has followed GiveWell's efforts more closely than I have.  Just  
a general observation, though:  There could be a lot of circumstances  
where pointing out what not to do could be just as important as  
pointing out what to do.  I could imagine that the huge coverage Japan  
is receiving could result in many people to give most or all or the  
charity they will give this year to Japan, instead of to other needs.   
If the truth is that disaster relief in general is a lot less  
cost-effective than other things, and perhaps also that most of money  
given won't go to Japan relief at all, it could do a huge amount of  
good to point this out.  Maybe more good than would be done right now  
focusing on finding the best charities.  I'm not saying I know that is  
the case, but I think it is possible.

Ron

Quoting Vipul Naik <vipul@...>:

> Dear all,
>
> Thanks to Anil and Ron for their responses. I do want to point out
> that my original point regarding Japan was somewhat different. My
> question wasn't so much about whether donor money should or should not
> go to Japan, but about whether GiveWell was spending too much effort
> investigating the Japan disaster relief issues at the expense of other
> activities that might go into identifying more gold and silver medal
> charities.
>
> Given that, like Ron Noble and GiveWell, I think that disaster relief
> is not the best use of donor money, I'm asking whether it is the best
> use of GiveWell's investigative resources.
>
> For instance, in a past post, GiveWell suggests that finding great
> charities is a top priority:
>
> http://blog.givewell.org/2011/02/04/givewells-annual-self-evaluation-and-plan-a-big-picture-change-in-priorities/
>
> This says: "(1) We see it as urgent to find more "gold medal"
> charities than we have so far, (2) The benefits of covering extra
> causes doesn't seem very large"
>
> They elaborate on this further here:
>
> http://blog.givewell.org/2011/02/14/givewells-plan-for-2011-top-level-priorities/
>
> As I pointed out, I may be mistaken about the extent of effort
> GiveWell is putting into Japan, because I'm only going by the visible
> activity (6 of the last 8 blog posts). Or, it may be in response to
> donor questions and concerns. Or (I didn't mention this possibility
> earlier, since it sounds cynical) it may be strategically a good move
> to attract more people to GiveWell's website. Or (I didn't mention
> this last time) it may be an opportunity for GiveWell to review the
> area and operations of disaster relief as a whole.
>
> Whatever the case, I would like to hear from GiveWell folk what their
> take on this issue is. Also, I'm curious to know what others on the
> list think about the issue of GiveWell's investigative resources being
> spent on investigating Japan. And more generally whether every time a
> disaster of some sort strikes, GiveWell should redirect resources to
> investigating the disaster relief effort, particularly if it appears
> unlikely that they'll be able to identify excellent charities in the
> process.
>
> Vipul
>
> * Quoting rnoble@... who at 2011-04-19 14:31:21+0000 (Tue) wrote
>>
>>
>> Dear Anil,
>>
>> I applaud your compassion, and I want people in Japan to be saved too.
>>   I think what GiveWell is saying is, if you are just going to give a
>> fixed number of dollars, where should those dollars go?  If you are
>> only going to give a fixed amount, you might save more lives by giving
>> to something other than disaster relief.
>>
>> That isn't to say disaster relief isn't worthwhile.  If someone who
>> wasn't going to give anything at all to charity decides to give to
>> disaster relief, then I think that is probably a very good thing.
>> That money, hopefully, is better spent on victims of disaster than it
>> is on whatever it would have been spent on otherwise:  A few more
>> lattes, a few more dinners at fancy restaurants, etc.  If I'm giving
>> nothing, I have no business criticizing someone giving to disaster
>> relief for Japan.
>>
>> And we agree whatever the aim of the charity, it is best if the money
>> is used efficiently.  GiveWell is aware of this issue.  That's why
>> they've done a lot of research and identified Village Reach as an
>> organization that not only aims at medical interventions which can be
>> cost-effective, but actually intervenes in a cost-effective manner.
>>
>>
>>
>> Quoting anil mahajan <anilanilm@...>:
>>
>> > Dear ron
>> >
>> > i agree with you, partially. What u said about the high costs involved in
>> > saving lives is too high, the question is then what happens to people who
>> > are victims of disastors, such as the one which took place in  
>> Japan and for
>> > that matter elsewhere in the world. Who will save them. Yes money sent is
>> > poorly used and also chances that some would never reach the victims.
>> > Inspite of these factors and facts, we need to devise strategies to save
>> > lives.
>> >
>> > You are fully justified when you talk of HIV/ Malaria and so on.  
>> However, my
>> > experience for last twelve years when I am associated with HIV programs is
>> > different. Here also only 20-25 percent of funds coming for helping HIV
>> > infected and affected is actually utilized for the cause and rest  
>> goes into
>> > the account (personal) of people incharge of implementation and  
>> this is in a
>> > way amounts to cheating and misuse of funds.
>> >
>> > I feel we have somewhere failed to seal these gaps even though we all are
>> > aware of there existance and this may be solely due to lack of a system of
>> > identifying honest NGOs to implement programs and secondly most  
>> of the NGOs
>> > are choosen because someone knows someone there. These are quite  
>> disturbing
>> > facts and very rarely someone shows interest to discuss and find solutions
>> > for those.
>> >
>> > Anil
>> > mumbai/India
>> >
>> > On Tue, Apr 19, 2011 at 10:14 PM, <rnoble@...> wrote:
>> >
>> >>
>> >>
>> >>
>> >>
>> >> I'd like to stick up a bit for GiveWell here. It is difficult when
>> >> the disaster in Japan is so salient and has tugged at everyone's
>> >> heartstrings, to recommend putting your money elsewhere. It can sound
>> >> like Givewell doesn't care about people in Japan.
>> >>
>> >> I don't think that is the case. GiveWell tries to find the charities
>> >> that do the most good for the dollar. There are many reasons why
>> >> disaster relief, in general, may be far down the list in terms of good
>> >> for the dollar. One is that attempts to save lives be very, very
>> >> costly per life saved. Rescue efforts with expensive equipment might
>> >> costs tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars per life actually
>> >> saved. Also, money rushed in in a crisis may be poorly used due to
>> >> inevitable confusion about how to proceed quickly.
>> >>
>> >> Meanwhile, there are other charities where a life of a child might be
>> >> saved for a hundred dollars or less. That child will not be part of
>> >> your awareness, because there is no day to day coverage of the
>> >> thousands of people dying every day from AIDS, TB, malaria, and so on.
>> >> But his/her life matters just as much.
>> >>
>> >> If television made it as possible to vividly imagine the plight of
>> >> people in poor countries dying from preventable diseases as it does to
>> >> vividly imagine the plight of people in Japan, you might feel
>> >> differently.
>> >>
>> >> Ron
>> >>
>> >>
>> >> Quoting Vipul Naik <vipul@...>:
>> >>
>> >> > Dear Givewell folk,
>> >> >
>> >> > [Note: The email was originally sent to info@... but they
>> >> > replied suggesting that I broadcast this to the GiveWell mailing list
>> >> > so that both the questions and their answers are on official record]
>> >> >
>> >> > This is a somewhat miscellaneous email with some
>> >> > questions/concerns. I'd love to hear your responses:
>> >> >
>> >> > (1) Japan: You seem to have been spending a lot of effort in recent
>> >> > weeks on Japan. What's the rationale behind this? It seems to me that
>> >> > too much of the news media and popular attention is anyway focused on
>> >> > Japan. I see GiveWell's strength in thinking about medium-to-long-term
>> >> > solutions rather than disaster relief.
>> >> >
>> >> > I understand that GiveWell's main effort has been to try to caution
>> >> > people against giving money to Japan, but what about the effort that
>> >> > you as an organization have been spending in the process? This is
>> >> > effort that could be devoted to identifying the next gold medal
>> >> > charity.
>> >> >
>> >> > I'm probably missing some information or thinking behind your recent
>> >> > Japan focus, and would be interested in knowing more. Also, it may be
>> >> > that the impression I get about the effort you are putting in is
>> >> > exaggerated because of the number of blog posts. Or that many other
>> >> > prospective donors are asking you questions about Japan and you must
>> >> > respond to their needs.
>> >> >
>> >> > (2) India orgs: You said you were going to do a series of blog posts
>> >> > about the charities in India that you visited during your stay in
>> >> > Mumbai. When will these blog posts be forthcoming?
>> >> >
>> >> > (3) Identifying the next gold medal organization: What
>> >> > success/progress have you had so far in identifying the next gold
>> >> > medal organization?
>> >> >
>> >> > If you will not be able to identify the next gold medal organization,
>> >> > then to me that is an argument _against_ my donating to
>> >> > VillageReach. I have given my reasoning below, and I would be
>> >> > interested if you have thoughts on the matter.
>> >> >
>> >> > Here's my reasoning: Based on current estimates, assuming that
>> >> > VillageReach continues to retain its Gold Medal status and GiveWell
>> >> > maintains or slightly increases its influence and donation amounts,
>> >> > VillageReach will get all the money necessary for its Mozambique
>> >> > expansion. It's also unclear whether they will be able to absorb
>> >> > additional funds to consider wholly new programs -- I get the
>> >> > impression that they took some time to fully adjust to the funding
>> >> > influx after December. On the other hand, if VillageReach loses its
>> >> > Gold Medal status, then donating to them may not make that much
>> >> > sense. So either way, it seems that unless you think you are on the
>> >> > verge of identifying new gold medal orgs, donating to VillageReach
>> >> > makes less sense than it used to.
>> >> >
>> >> > A little clarification: By and large, I find the silver medal orgs
>> >> > fairly good, but not worth my money. There are a number of other
>> >> > philanthropic endeavors that I am interested in, and silver medal orgs
>> >> > get beaten by some of those other causes. In the absence of gold medal
>> >> > orgs, I would not use GiveWell's recommendations. However, for those
>> >> > who find the silver medal orgs fairly good uses of their money as
>> >> > well, the reasoning I have given above does not apply.
>> >> >
>> >> > Keep up the good work!
>> >> >
>> >> > Vipul
>> >> >
>> >>
>> >>
>> >>
>> >
>>
>>
>>
>

For what it's worth, I found GiveWell's investigation of the disaster relief situation in Japan to be highly valuable both on an intellectual and personal level. My girlfriend's family is from Japan, and when she asked me for advice regarding how to help, I pointed her to GiveWell and to Brigid's excellent post on the subject. More generally, I think what's missing from your analysis, Vipul, is the fact that disasters (which provoke huge amounts of giving by donors as well as major ongoing media coverage) provide GiveWell with an opportunity not only to educate the public on their options, but to evangelize a bit on behalf of the "smart giving" philosophy to which GiveWell subscribes. This was the first time I have ever seen media outlets advise restraint and not giving in to the first emotional impulse in their donations in response to a disaster. I believe that is at least in part due to GiveWell's influence on the conversation among media professionals who cover philanthropy over the past few years. GiveWell may never reach a majority or even a large minority of all donors in the marketplace, but if participating helpfully in the conversation about disaster relief can bring GiveWell's work to the attention of more people and thus ultimately direct more money to "Gold Medal" charities, I believe the time invested is worthwhile.

--- In givewell@yahoogroups.com, Vipul Naik <vipul@...> wrote:
>
> Dear all,
> 
> Thanks to Anil and Ron for their responses. I do want to point out
> that my original point regarding Japan was somewhat different. My
> question wasn't so much about whether donor money should or should not
> go to Japan, but about whether GiveWell was spending too much effort
> investigating the Japan disaster relief issues at the expense of other
> activities that might go into identifying more gold and silver medal
> charities. 
> 
> Given that, like Ron Noble and GiveWell, I think that disaster relief
> is not the best use of donor money, I'm asking whether it is the best
> use of GiveWell's investigative resources.
> 
> For instance, in a past post, GiveWell suggests that finding great
> charities is a top priority:
> 
> http://blog.givewell.org/2011/02/04/givewells-annual-self-evaluation-and-plan-a-big-picture-change-in-priorities/
> 
> This says: "(1) We see it as urgent to find more "gold medal"
> charities than we have so far, (2) The benefits of covering extra
> causes doesn't seem very large"
> 
> They elaborate on this further here:
> 
> http://blog.givewell.org/2011/02/14/givewells-plan-for-2011-top-level-priorities/
> 
> As I pointed out, I may be mistaken about the extent of effort
> GiveWell is putting into Japan, because I'm only going by the visible
> activity (6 of the last 8 blog posts). Or, it may be in response to
> donor questions and concerns. Or (I didn't mention this possibility
> earlier, since it sounds cynical) it may be strategically a good move
> to attract more people to GiveWell's website. Or (I didn't mention
> this last time) it may be an opportunity for GiveWell to review the
> area and operations of disaster relief as a whole.
> 
> Whatever the case, I would like to hear from GiveWell folk what their
> take on this issue is. Also, I'm curious to know what others on the
> list think about the issue of GiveWell's investigative resources being
> spent on investigating Japan. And more generally whether every time a
> disaster of some sort strikes, GiveWell should redirect resources to
> investigating the disaster relief effort, particularly if it appears
> unlikely that they'll be able to identify excellent charities in the
> process.
> 
> Vipul
> 
> * Quoting rnoble@... who at 2011-04-19 14:31:21+0000 (Tue) wrote
> > 
> > 
> > Dear Anil,
> > 
> > I applaud your compassion, and I want people in Japan to be saved too.  
> >   I think what GiveWell is saying is, if you are just going to give a  
> > fixed number of dollars, where should those dollars go?  If you are  
> > only going to give a fixed amount, you might save more lives by giving  
> > to something other than disaster relief.
> > 
> > That isn't to say disaster relief isn't worthwhile.  If someone who  
> > wasn't going to give anything at all to charity decides to give to  
> > disaster relief, then I think that is probably a very good thing.   
> > That money, hopefully, is better spent on victims of disaster than it  
> > is on whatever it would have been spent on otherwise:  A few more  
> > lattes, a few more dinners at fancy restaurants, etc.  If I'm giving  
> > nothing, I have no business criticizing someone giving to disaster  
> > relief for Japan.
> > 
> > And we agree whatever the aim of the charity, it is best if the money  
> > is used efficiently.  GiveWell is aware of this issue.  That's why  
> > they've done a lot of research and identified Village Reach as an  
> > organization that not only aims at medical interventions which can be  
> > cost-effective, but actually intervenes in a cost-effective manner.
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > Quoting anil mahajan <anilanilm@...>:
> > 
> > > Dear ron
> > >
> > > i agree with you, partially. What u said about the high costs involved in
> > > saving lives is too high, the question is then what happens to people who
> > > are victims of disastors, such as the one which took place in Japan and for
> > > that matter elsewhere in the world. Who will save them. Yes money sent is
> > > poorly used and also chances that some would never reach the victims.
> > > Inspite of these factors and facts, we need to devise strategies to save
> > > lives.
> > >
> > > You are fully justified when you talk of HIV/ Malaria and so on. However, my
> > > experience for last twelve years when I am associated with HIV programs is
> > > different. Here also only 20-25 percent of funds coming for helping HIV
> > > infected and affected is actually utilized for the cause and rest goes into
> > > the account (personal) of people incharge of implementation and this is in a
> > > way amounts to cheating and misuse of funds.
> > >
> > > I feel we have somewhere failed to seal these gaps even though we all are
> > > aware of there existance and this may be solely due to lack of a system of
> > > identifying honest NGOs to implement programs and secondly most of the NGOs
> > > are choosen because someone knows someone there. These are quite disturbing
> > > facts and very rarely someone shows interest to discuss and find solutions
> > > for those.
> > >
> > > Anil
> > > mumbai/India
> > >
> > > On Tue, Apr 19, 2011 at 10:14 PM, <rnoble@...> wrote:
> > >
> > >>
> > >>
> > >>
> > >>
> > >> I'd like to stick up a bit for GiveWell here. It is difficult when
> > >> the disaster in Japan is so salient and has tugged at everyone's
> > >> heartstrings, to recommend putting your money elsewhere. It can sound
> > >> like Givewell doesn't care about people in Japan.
> > >>
> > >> I don't think that is the case. GiveWell tries to find the charities
> > >> that do the most good for the dollar. There are many reasons why
> > >> disaster relief, in general, may be far down the list in terms of good
> > >> for the dollar. One is that attempts to save lives be very, very
> > >> costly per life saved. Rescue efforts with expensive equipment might
> > >> costs tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars per life actually
> > >> saved. Also, money rushed in in a crisis may be poorly used due to
> > >> inevitable confusion about how to proceed quickly.
> > >>
> > >> Meanwhile, there are other charities where a life of a child might be
> > >> saved for a hundred dollars or less. That child will not be part of
> > >> your awareness, because there is no day to day coverage of the
> > >> thousands of people dying every day from AIDS, TB, malaria, and so on.
> > >> But his/her life matters just as much.
> > >>
> > >> If television made it as possible to vividly imagine the plight of
> > >> people in poor countries dying from preventable diseases as it does to
> > >> vividly imagine the plight of people in Japan, you might feel
> > >> differently.
> > >>
> > >> Ron
> > >>
> > >>
> > >> Quoting Vipul Naik <vipul@...>:
> > >>
> > >> > Dear Givewell folk,
> > >> >
> > >> > [Note: The email was originally sent to info@... but they
> > >> > replied suggesting that I broadcast this to the GiveWell mailing list
> > >> > so that both the questions and their answers are on official record]
> > >> >
> > >> > This is a somewhat miscellaneous email with some
> > >> > questions/concerns. I'd love to hear your responses:
> > >> >
> > >> > (1) Japan: You seem to have been spending a lot of effort in recent
> > >> > weeks on Japan. What's the rationale behind this? It seems to me that
> > >> > too much of the news media and popular attention is anyway focused on
> > >> > Japan. I see GiveWell's strength in thinking about medium-to-long-term
> > >> > solutions rather than disaster relief.
> > >> >
> > >> > I understand that GiveWell's main effort has been to try to caution
> > >> > people against giving money to Japan, but what about the effort that
> > >> > you as an organization have been spending in the process? This is
> > >> > effort that could be devoted to identifying the next gold medal
> > >> > charity.
> > >> >
> > >> > I'm probably missing some information or thinking behind your recent
> > >> > Japan focus, and would be interested in knowing more. Also, it may be
> > >> > that the impression I get about the effort you are putting in is
> > >> > exaggerated because of the number of blog posts. Or that many other
> > >> > prospective donors are asking you questions about Japan and you must
> > >> > respond to their needs.
> > >> >
> > >> > (2) India orgs: You said you were going to do a series of blog posts
> > >> > about the charities in India that you visited during your stay in
> > >> > Mumbai. When will these blog posts be forthcoming?
> > >> >
> > >> > (3) Identifying the next gold medal organization: What
> > >> > success/progress have you had so far in identifying the next gold
> > >> > medal organization?
> > >> >
> > >> > If you will not be able to identify the next gold medal organization,
> > >> > then to me that is an argument _against_ my donating to
> > >> > VillageReach. I have given my reasoning below, and I would be
> > >> > interested if you have thoughts on the matter.
> > >> >
> > >> > Here's my reasoning: Based on current estimates, assuming that
> > >> > VillageReach continues to retain its Gold Medal status and GiveWell
> > >> > maintains or slightly increases its influence and donation amounts,
> > >> > VillageReach will get all the money necessary for its Mozambique
> > >> > expansion. It's also unclear whether they will be able to absorb
> > >> > additional funds to consider wholly new programs -- I get the
> > >> > impression that they took some time to fully adjust to the funding
> > >> > influx after December. On the other hand, if VillageReach loses its
> > >> > Gold Medal status, then donating to them may not make that much
> > >> > sense. So either way, it seems that unless you think you are on the
> > >> > verge of identifying new gold medal orgs, donating to VillageReach
> > >> > makes less sense than it used to.
> > >> >
> > >> > A little clarification: By and large, I find the silver medal orgs
> > >> > fairly good, but not worth my money. There are a number of other
> > >> > philanthropic endeavors that I am interested in, and silver medal orgs
> > >> > get beaten by some of those other causes. In the absence of gold medal
> > >> > orgs, I would not use GiveWell's recommendations. However, for those
> > >> > who find the silver medal orgs fairly good uses of their money as
> > >> > well, the reasoning I have given above does not apply.
> > >> >
> > >> > Keep up the good work!
> > >> >
> > >> > Vipul
> > >> >
> > >>
> > >>
> > >>
> > >
> > 
> > 
> >
>

On 19 April 2011 17:44, <rnoble@...> wrote:

>  There are many reasons why disaster relief, in general, may be far down
> the list in terms of good for the dollar.
>
>
Is this true of disaster relief generally, including disasters in the third
world such as the Indian Ocean tsunami or the Pakistan or Haiti earthquakes?
If so, can anyone point me to the evidence?

Thanks,
Tom

Thanks for the discussion. A few responses to Vipul's original questions:

1. *Re: Japan. *It is true that what's featured on the blog is not the same
as what we're spending the most time on. I've spent around 40-50 hours on
Japan-related research & blogging since the earthquake hit; other staff
haven't spent much time at all on it. The search for gold-medal charities
remains our top research priority.

It's also worth noting, as others have pointed out, that there are side
benefits to blogging about Japan. In fact I would largely classify the time
I've spent on this as "outreach" time more than "research" time, in that the
main goal was to get coverage from media & major blogs, which is good over
the long run for our brand & relationships. I think it has been a  good time
investment in those terms - see
http://www.givewell.org/press#Othernotablecoverage and
http://blog.givewell.org/2011/04/01/update-on-givewells-web-traffic-money-moved-q1-2011/

2. *Re: India. *We have drafted material for the blog on our time in India,
and it's just a matter of putting the finishing touches on it before
publishing. We expect this to be published in the next couple of weeks. Most
of the delay here has come from going back and forth with the charities we
visited regarding our plans to publish notes.

3. *Re: finding more gold-medal charities. *I think your basic reasoning is
sound; that said,

   - We have identified many potentially promising organizations. We aren't
   sure yet how many, if any, we'll end up recommending as strongly as
   VillageReach, but we will definitely have some new and good options for
   donors by the end of the year, so I'd stay tuned rather than simply moving
   forward with other projects.
   - We'd appreciate any information you can share about the projects that
   you consider to be more worthwhile than giving to our silver-medal charities
   (Brigid suggested this as well).

Best,
Holden

On Tue, Apr 19, 2011 at 8:59 AM, Vipul Naik <vipul@...> wrote:

>
>
> Dear Givewell folk,
>
> [Note: The email was originally sent to info@givewell.org but they
> replied suggesting that I broadcast this to the GiveWell mailing list
> so that both the questions and their answers are on official record]
>
> This is a somewhat miscellaneous email with some
> questions/concerns. I'd love to hear your responses:
>
> (1) Japan: You seem to have been spending a lot of effort in recent
> weeks on Japan. What's the rationale behind this? It seems to me that
> too much of the news media and popular attention is anyway focused on
> Japan. I see GiveWell's strength in thinking about medium-to-long-term
> solutions rather than disaster relief.
>
> I understand that GiveWell's main effort has been to try to caution
> people against giving money to Japan, but what about the effort that
> you as an organization have been spending in the process? This is
> effort that could be devoted to identifying the next gold medal
> charity.
>
> I'm probably missing some information or thinking behind your recent
> Japan focus, and would be interested in knowing more. Also, it may be
> that the impression I get about the effort you are putting in is
> exaggerated because of the number of blog posts. Or that many other
> prospective donors are asking you questions about Japan and you must
> respond to their needs.
>
> (2) India orgs: You said you were going to do a series of blog posts
> about the charities in India that you visited during your stay in
> Mumbai. When will these blog posts be forthcoming?
>
> (3) Identifying the next gold medal organization: What
> success/progress have you had so far in identifying the next gold
> medal organization?
>
> If you will not be able to identify the next gold medal organization,
> then to me that is an argument _against_ my donating to
> VillageReach. I have given my reasoning below, and I would be
> interested if you have thoughts on the matter.
>
> Here's my reasoning: Based on current estimates, assuming that
> VillageReach continues to retain its Gold Medal status and GiveWell
> maintains or slightly increases its influence and donation amounts,
> VillageReach will get all the money necessary for its Mozambique
> expansion. It's also unclear whether they will be able to absorb
> additional funds to consider wholly new programs -- I get the
> impression that they took some time to fully adjust to the funding
> influx after December. On the other hand, if VillageReach loses its
> Gold Medal status, then donating to them may not make that much
> sense. So either way, it seems that unless you think you are on the
> verge of identifying new gold medal orgs, donating to VillageReach
> makes less sense than it used to.
>
> A little clarification: By and large, I find the silver medal orgs
> fairly good, but not worth my money. There are a number of other
> philanthropic endeavors that I am interested in, and silver medal orgs
> get beaten by some of those other causes. In the absence of gold medal
> orgs, I would not use GiveWell's recommendations. However, for those
> who find the silver medal orgs fairly good uses of their money as
> well, the reasoning I have given above does not apply.
>
> Keep up the good work!
>
> Vipul
>  
>

Dear GiveWell folk and others on the list,

In a recent email thread, I mentioned that there were some charitable
organizations that I would consider to compete closely with silver
medal charities, and a couple of others (Brigid, Holden) suggested I
share what these are. I'm not trying to convince others on the list to
support any of these causes, and I have not yet made financial
contributions to any of these.

Many of these charities are high upside, long shot type efforts aimed
at some kind of technological or social breakthrough. The drawbacks
are: (i) the feasibility/relevance of such breakthroughs is highly
contested, (ii) the desirability of such breakthroughs is contested
(though not as highly), (iii) even for those who consider them
feasible and desirable, the breakthroughs are unlikely to have short
run effects, so if you have high discount rates for the future, then
these are not the best use of money, (iv) also, for those who see the
goal of charity as primarily focused on helping the poorest people,
these organizations may not be that attractive since the benefits of
the social and technological breakthroughs are likely to first be
captured by richer people, and take a little more time to percolate to
poorer people in the developing world.

So, I don't think that these organizations fit the profile that
GiveWell has so far been evaluating, or would consider
recommending. Also, I don't expect that the majority of GiveWell's
donors would consider reallocating charitable contributions to these
organizations. In my case, I do consider these organizations as
stronger cases than some of GiveWell's silver medal charities.

A starting list is the organizations covered in the Breakthrough
Philanthropy conference covered by Peter Thiel. Link to conference
videos on YouTube:

http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=breakthrough+philanthropy&aq=f

Here is the press release:

http://thielfoundation.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=24&Itemid=23

Here are some of the organizations covered:

* Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence, which works on
  the question of a smarter-than-human, faster-than-human,
  self-improving artificial intelligence: http://singinst.org -- this
  also received some coverage from GiveWell here:
  http://blog.givewell.org/2010/06/29/singularity-summit/

* SENS Foundation, which works on radical life extension:
  http://www.sens.org

* The Seasteading Institute, which works on creating autonomous ocean
  communities and introducing competition into government:
  http://seasteading.org

Other organizations are Singularity University, the X Prize
Foundation, the Foresight Institute, Humanity Plus, and the Santa Fe
Institute (they do research in complexity theory for various kinds of
complex systems).

These organizations, and I think the others covered in Breakthrough
Philanthropy, have annual budgets in the range of somewhere between
500,000 and 5 million dollars. Much of their budget comes from Peter
Thiel (as an individual and through the Thiel Foundation) both through
matching grants and through isolated grants.

Vipul

Vipul Naik's post prompted a bit of research and a bit of thinking from me.

I would broadly categorize attempts to give for maximum positive effectiveness into 5 broad categories (there are probably others, but this is what I came up with):

1) Applying established methods in an effective manner
2) Developing new technologies in manners similar to those that have worked in the past (medical and agricultural in particular)
3) Giving to further or abide by religious/spiritual/philosophical/ethical frameworks
4) Giving to advance a political cause or individual
5) Giving for something rather new with arguable home run potential.

Expanding a bit:
1) This is mostly what Givewell has focused on so far.  Organizations that in some fashion attempt to improve current delivery of or implement new delivery of proven medical, agricultural, education, economic techniques.

It lends itself pretty well to analysis, in that the cost per delivered benefit can generally be calculated with at least some degree of confidence, at least for the better/more transparent charities.

2) Into this category fall things like disease research, research into agricultural improvements (better yields and/or more nutritional value for cassava, for instance) and perhaps certain educational improvements.  We have had breakthroughs in these areas in the past.  It is difficult for an outsider (and maybe even an insider) to come up with semi-reliable figures on the odds of success, cost and time to potentially achieve that success, and magnitude of impact in the case of success.  Nonetheless, past successes give us some confidence that at least SOME charities in these areas may be promising.

This stuff is harder for Givewell to fit into a clean framework, but I think it is at least a somewhat tractable research problem for an organization like Givewell.  Givewell was doing disease research as a research area, and I'm not quite sure what happened to the results of this or where it stands at the moment.

3) Depending on one's particular religious/spiritual/philosophical/ethical framework, charitable opportunities in this area may be felt to be very rewarding.  But I think we can generally agree that this area is outside of Givewell's scope.

4) Supporting certain political parties, candidates, and causes may also be potentially highly rewarding, depending on your own political views.  This area attracts a lot of donations, even if it isn't charity by a standard view.  But again, this area is mostly outside of Givewell's scope.  

(There are some potential areas of interaction between areas 1 and 2 above and 3 and 4, but I think it is generally best for Givewell to try to give 3 and 4 a relatively wide berth, to the extent reasonably possible.)

5) Home runs in relatively novel areas.

I don't rule out the possibility of some home runs being achieved.  While many areas of charity, society and technology have been pretty well explored, at least in the centuries since the dawn of the industrial revolution, if not in the many years before that, the advent of vast, cheap computing power and communications capabilities, plus the internet as an organizing and publishing tool, opens up new doors that will take a long time to explore.

But, I think trying to analyze some of the home run (possibly) charitable possibilities in a Givewell style analysis would be rather difficult.  Establishing the odds of success, where no similar parallel exists, would be very difficult, IMO.  Similarly, agreeing on whether possible breakthroughs would even be net positive is, I think, a bit more difficult in many cases than Vipul might think.

===

Anyways, I think Givewell should stick to areas 1 and 2 but recognize that there are other areas that individuals may feel are strong areas to donate to, but that are not very good candidates for Givewell to research.

Thought this was interesting:

More Than 1 Billion People Are Hungry in the World
But what if the experts are wrong?
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/04/25/more_than_1_billion_people_are_hungry_in_the_world?page=full

"Beyond India, one hidden assumption in our description of the poverty
trap is that the poor eat as much as they can. If there is any chance
that by eating a bit more the poor could start doing meaningful work
and get out of the poverty trap zone, then they should eat as much as
possible. Yet most people living on less than a dollar a day do not
seem to act as if they are starving. If they were, surely they would
put every available penny into buying more calories. But they do not.
In an 18-country data set we assembled on the lives of the poor, food
represents 36 to 79 percent of consumption among the rural extremely
poor, and 53 to 74 percent among their urban counterparts."

[...]

"If the gains are so obvious, why don't the poor eat better? Eating
well doesn't have to be prohibitively expensive. Most mothers could
surely afford iodized salt, which is now standard in many parts of the
world, or one dose of iodine every two years (at 51 cents per dose).
Poor households could easily get a lot more calories and other
nutrients by spending less on expensive grains (like rice and wheat),
sugar, and processed foods, and more on leafy vegetables and coarse
grains. But in Kenya, when the NGO that was running the deworming
program asked parents in some schools to pay a few cents for deworming
their children, almost all refused, thus depriving their children of
hundreds of dollars of extra earnings over their lifetime.

"Why? And why did anemic Indonesian workers not buy iron-fortified
fish sauce on their own? One answer is that they don't believe it will
matter -- their employers may not realize that they are more
productive now. (In fact, in Indonesia, earnings improved only for the
self-employed workers.) But this does not explain why all pregnant
women in India aren't using only iodine-fortified salt, which is now
available in every village. Another possibility is that people may not
realize the value of feeding themselves and their children better --
not everyone has the right information, even in the United States.
Moreover, people tend to be suspicious of outsiders who tell them that
they should change their diet. When rice prices went up sharply in
1966 and 1967, the chief minister of West Bengal suggested that eating
less rice and more vegetables would be both good for people's health
and easier on their budgets. This set off a flurry of outrage, and the
chief minister was greeted by protesters bearing garlands of
vegetables wherever he went.

"It is simply not very easy to learn about the value of many of these
nutrients based on personal experience. Iodine might make your
children smarter, but the difference is not huge, and in most cases
you will not find out either way for many years. Iron, even if it
makes people stronger, does not suddenly turn you into a superhero.
The $40 extra a year the self-employed man earned may not even have
been apparent to him, given the many ups and downs of his weekly
income."

Thanks for the thoughts. A couple of notes:

   - I agree that #1 and (to a lesser degree) #2 are the best areas for
   GiveWell to add value.
   - I do think we have some potential value-added on #5 as well,
   particularly on the question of "room for more funding," i.e., what it is
   that will be accomplished with further (as opposed to existing) donations.
   To Vipul or anyone else considering supporting these organizations, I
   recommend paying a lot of attention to this question.
   - We have thought a fair amount about the organizations that Vipul
   mentions, particularly Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence
   (which I'll be sending a separate email about shortly). We have several
   acquaintances affiliated with this organization, and they are also
   interested in the other ones Vipul mentioned. We have the intuition that
   none of these organizations are as promising for individual donors as the
   sorts of charities we currently focus on, which is why we have prioritized
   the latter, but eventually we do intend to investigate these organizations
   further.


On Thu, Apr 21, 2011 at 1:59 PM, Phil Steinmeyer <psteinmeyer@...>wrote:

>
>
> Vipul Naik's post prompted a bit of research and a bit of thinking from me.
>
> I would broadly categorize attempts to give for maximum positive
> effectiveness into 5 broad categories (there are probably others, but this
> is what I came up with):
>
> 1) Applying established methods in an effective manner
> 2) Developing new technologies in manners similar to those that have worked
> in the past (medical and agricultural in particular)
> 3) Giving to further or abide by religious/spiritual/philosophical/ethical
> frameworks
> 4) Giving to advance a political cause or individual
> 5) Giving for something rather new with arguable home run potential.
>
> Expanding a bit:
> 1) This is mostly what Givewell has focused on so far.  Organizations that
> in some fashion attempt to improve current delivery of or implement new
> delivery of proven medical, agricultural, education, economic techniques.
>
> It lends itself pretty well to analysis, in that the cost per delivered
> benefit can generally be calculated with at least some degree of confidence,
> at least for the better/more transparent charities.
>
> 2) Into this category fall things like disease research, research into
> agricultural improvements (better yields and/or more nutritional value for
> cassava, for instance) and perhaps certain educational improvements.  We
> have had breakthroughs in these areas in the past.  It is difficult for an
> outsider (and maybe even an insider) to come up with semi-reliable figures
> on the odds of success, cost and time to potentially achieve that success,
> and magnitude of impact in the case of success.  Nonetheless, past successes
> give us some confidence that at least SOME charities in these areas may be
> promising.
>
> This stuff is harder for Givewell to fit into a clean framework, but I
> think it is at least a somewhat tractable research problem for an
> organization like Givewell.  Givewell was doing disease research as a
> research area, and I'm not quite sure what happened to the results of this
> or where it stands at the moment.
>
> 3) Depending on one's particular religious/spiritual/philosophical/ethical
> framework, charitable opportunities in this area may be felt to be very
> rewarding.  But I think we can generally agree that this area is outside of
> Givewell's scope.
>
> 4) Supporting certain political parties, candidates, and causes may also be
> potentially highly rewarding, depending on your own political views.  This
> area attracts a lot of donations, even if it isn't charity by a standard
> view.  But again, this area is mostly outside of Givewell's scope.
>
> (There are some potential areas of interaction between areas 1 and 2 above
> and 3 and 4, but I think it is generally best for Givewell to try to give 3
> and 4 a relatively wide berth, to the extent reasonably possible.)
>
> 5) Home runs in relatively novel areas.
>
> I don't rule out the possibility of some home runs being achieved.  While
> many areas of charity, society and technology have been pretty well
> explored, at least in the centuries since the dawn of the industrial
> revolution, if not in the many years before that, the advent of vast, cheap
> computing power and communications capabilities, plus the internet as an
> organizing and publishing tool, opens up new doors that will take a long
> time to explore.
>
> But, I think trying to analyze some of the home run (possibly) charitable
> possibilities in a Givewell style analysis would be rather difficult.
> Establishing the odds of success, where no similar parallel exists, would be
> very difficult, IMO.  Similarly, agreeing on whether possible breakthroughs
> would even be net positive is, I think, a bit more difficult in many cases
> than Vipul might think.
>
> ===
>
> Anyways, I think Givewell should stick to areas 1 and 2 but recognize that
> there are other areas that individuals may feel are strong areas to donate
> to, but that are not very good candidates for Givewell to research.
>
>
>
>  
>

Tom, we feel that disaster relief is likely to be pretty far down on the
list *when the disaster is highly publicized*. We made this argument for the
2010 Haiti earthquake and 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami at
http://blog.givewell.org/2010/01/29/haiti-earthquake-relief-seems-less-cost-effective-than-everyday-international-aid/

<http://blog.givewell.org/2010/01/29/haiti-earthquake-relief-seems-less-cost-effective-than-everyday-international-aid/>For
less publicized disasters, we are much more unsure. It definitely seems
particularly difficult to gauge the quality of the work being done in these
situations, which is why we haven't recommended giving in such situations to
individual donors. But it's possible that there are good giving
opportunities here if we could figure out how to identify them.

On Wed, Apr 20, 2011 at 12:27 PM, Tom Ash <tog.ash@...> wrote:

>
>
> On 19 April 2011 17:44, <rnoble@...> wrote:
>
>>  There are many reasons why disaster relief, in general, may be far down
>> the list in terms of good for the dollar.
>>
>>
> Is this true of disaster relief generally, including disasters in the third
> world such as the Indian Ocean tsunami or the Pakistan or Haiti earthquakes?
> If so, can anyone point me to the evidence?
>
> Thanks,
> Tom
>
>  
>

We've had a fair number of requests to evaluate the Singularity Institute
for Artificial Intelligence, which Vipul mentioned in a recent email. This
organization is pretty far outside the scope of what we normally look at, so
we haven't done a formal review, but I did have a sit-down with
representatives from this group in February, and have gotten their
permission to publish a paraphrased transcript of our conversation. This
document gives a good overview of my view on SIAI.

In a nutshell, I have sympathy for SIAI's goals, but I do not believe that
it currently has the (a) track record / credibility (b) room for more
funding that it would have to in order to interest me in donating to it.
There is one SIAI supporter/endorser I'm interested in speaking to to learn
more (mentioned in the transcript). We're going to keep an eye on the group.

Paraphrased transcript of my conversation with SIAI representatives:
http://www.givewell.org/files/MiscCharities/SIAI/siai%202011%2002%20III.doc

SIAI website: http://www.singinst.org

Just to chime in regarding #4: I still think that there would be some value
in (preliminary) investigation of the issues that Nick Beckstead raises in
comments #6 and #8 GiveWell's 02/04/2011.

http://blog.givewell.org/2011/02/04/givewells-annual-self-evaluation-and-plan-a-big-picture-change-in-priorities/#comment-196627

On Sat, Apr 30, 2011 at 1:35 PM, Holden Karnofsky <holden0@...> wrote:

>
>
> Thanks for the thoughts. A couple of notes:
>
>    - I agree that #1 and (to a lesser degree) #2 are the best areas for
>    GiveWell to add value.
>    - I do think we have some potential value-added on #5 as well,
>    particularly on the question of "room for more funding," i.e., what it is
>    that will be accomplished with further (as opposed to existing) donations.
>    To Vipul or anyone else considering supporting these organizations, I
>    recommend paying a lot of attention to this question.
>    - We have thought a fair amount about the organizations that Vipul
>    mentions, particularly Singularity Institute for Artificial
>    Intelligence (which I'll be sending a separate email about shortly). We have
>    several acquaintances affiliated with this organization, and they are also
>    interested in the other ones Vipul mentioned. We have the intuition that
>    none of these organizations are as promising for individual donors as the
>    sorts of charities we currently focus on, which is why we have prioritized
>    the latter, but eventually we do intend to investigate these organizations
>    further.
>
>
> On Thu, Apr 21, 2011 at 1:59 PM, Phil Steinmeyer <psteinmeyer@...>wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> Vipul Naik's post prompted a bit of research and a bit of thinking from
>> me.
>>
>> I would broadly categorize attempts to give for maximum positive
>> effectiveness into 5 broad categories (there are probably others, but this
>> is what I came up with):
>>
>> 1) Applying established methods in an effective manner
>> 2) Developing new technologies in manners similar to those that have
>> worked in the past (medical and agricultural in particular)
>> 3) Giving to further or abide by religious/spiritual/philosophical/ethical
>> frameworks
>> 4) Giving to advance a political cause or individual
>> 5) Giving for something rather new with arguable home run potential.
>>
>> Expanding a bit:
>> 1) This is mostly what Givewell has focused on so far.  Organizations that
>> in some fashion attempt to improve current delivery of or implement new
>> delivery of proven medical, agricultural, education, economic techniques.
>>
>> It lends itself pretty well to analysis, in that the cost per delivered
>> benefit can generally be calculated with at least some degree of confidence,
>> at least for the better/more transparent charities.
>>
>> 2) Into this category fall things like disease research, research into
>> agricultural improvements (better yields and/or more nutritional value for
>> cassava, for instance) and perhaps certain educational improvements.  We
>> have had breakthroughs in these areas in the past.  It is difficult for an
>> outsider (and maybe even an insider) to come up with semi-reliable figures
>> on the odds of success, cost and time to potentially achieve that success,
>> and magnitude of impact in the case of success.  Nonetheless, past successes
>> give us some confidence that at least SOME charities in these areas may be
>> promising.
>>
>> This stuff is harder for Givewell to fit into a clean framework, but I
>> think it is at least a somewhat tractable research problem for an
>> organization like Givewell.  Givewell was doing disease research as a
>> research area, and I'm not quite sure what happened to the results of this
>> or where it stands at the moment.
>>
>> 3) Depending on one's particular religious/spiritual/philosophical/ethical
>> framework, charitable opportunities in this area may be felt to be very
>> rewarding.  But I think we can generally agree that this area is outside of
>> Givewell's scope.
>>
>> 4) Supporting certain political parties, candidates, and causes may also
>> be potentially highly rewarding, depending on your own political views.
>> This area attracts a lot of donations, even if it isn't charity by a
>> standard view.  But again, this area is mostly outside of Givewell's scope.
>>
>>
>> (There are some potential areas of interaction between areas 1 and 2 above
>> and 3 and 4, but I think it is generally best for Givewell to try to give 3
>> and 4 a relatively wide berth, to the extent reasonably possible.)
>>
>> 5) Home runs in relatively novel areas.
>>
>> I don't rule out the possibility of some home runs being achieved.  While
>> many areas of charity, society and technology have been pretty well
>> explored, at least in the centuries since the dawn of the industrial
>> revolution, if not in the many years before that, the advent of vast, cheap
>> computing power and communications capabilities, plus the internet as an
>> organizing and publishing tool, opens up new doors that will take a long
>> time to explore.
>>
>> But, I think trying to analyze some of the home run (possibly) charitable
>> possibilities in a Givewell style analysis would be rather difficult.
>> Establishing the odds of success, where no similar parallel exists, would be
>> very difficult, IMO.  Similarly, agreeing on whether possible breakthroughs
>> would even be net positive is, I think, a bit more difficult in many cases
>> than Vipul might think.
>>
>> ===
>>
>> Anyways, I think Givewell should stick to areas 1 and 2 but recognize that
>> there are other areas that individuals may feel are strong areas to donate
>> to, but that are not very good candidates for Givewell to research.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>  
>

Dear Holden/GiveWell,

Thanks a lot for this update. In the transcript, the SIAI people
mention two people, Peter Thiel (also mentioned in my earlier email)
and Jaan Tallin. You say that you already know about Peter Thiel. Does
this mean that you at GiveWell have already talked to him, or that you
have read enough of his public writings/speeches that you think you
have a fair idea of his reasons for supporting SIAI?

If you have a record of a conversation that you have had with Peter
Thiel (or somebody from his foundation) on these organizations, would
it be possible for you to make it public?

More generally, have you made public any of your records of
conversations with foundations or other large-scale donors whom you've
approached for information on the charities that they fund?

Thanks, and keep up the good work!

Vipul

* Quoting Holden Karnofsky who at 2011-04-30 14:38:02+0000 (Sat) wrote
> We've had a fair number of requests to evaluate the Singularity Institute
> for Artificial Intelligence, which Vipul mentioned in a recent email. This
> organization is pretty far outside the scope of what we normally look at, so
> we haven't done a formal review, but I did have a sit-down with
> representatives from this group in February, and have gotten their
> permission to publish a paraphrased transcript of our conversation. This
> document gives a good overview of my view on SIAI.
> 
> In a nutshell, I have sympathy for SIAI's goals, but I do not believe that
> it currently has the (a) track record / credibility (b) room for more
> funding that it would have to in order to interest me in donating to it.
> There is one SIAI supporter/endorser I'm interested in speaking to to learn
> more (mentioned in the transcript). We're going to keep an eye on the group.
> 
> Paraphrased transcript of my conversation with SIAI representatives:
> http://www.givewell.org/files/MiscCharities/SIAI/siai%202011%2002%20III.doc
> 
> SIAI website: http://www.singinst.org

Hi Vipul,

While one may be able to gain some insight into the reasons for supporting a
charity from talking to a large donors, I think that there's reason to think
that in a given instance the probability of getting a useful answer is
fairly low. One data point in this direction the Gates Foundation's grant
for Japan release and their answers to GiveWell's
questions<http://blog.givewell.org/2011/04/06/the-gates-foundations-grant-for-japan-relief/>.
I've formed a general impression that in many (most?) cases large donors do
not carefully analyze charities with a view toward optimizing the positive
impact of their donations.

In the case of Peter Thiel I'll note that according the data available on
Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Thiel#Philanthropy
it seems like his donations to the said organizations are in the range of $1
million per year which is in the neighborhood of 1% of his annual earnings.
The fact that the amount that he donated to them was such a low percentage
of such a high income suggests lack of seriousness of purpose. Moreover, the
sorts of assumptions under which marginal donations to SIAI would be of
comparable expected utility to marginal donations to the Seasteading
Institute are very special assumptions which seem unlikely to hold - this
suggests that Thiel may be funding at least one of them without a view
toward maximizing expected utility.

If you're interested in donating to one or more of organizations mentioned
in the Breakthrough Philanthropy you might consider visiting them
personally.  Each of SIAI, SENS and the Seasteading Institute is in the San
Francisco bay area which is a place that one might end up visiting for any
number of reasons. I visited SIAI last December and was received hospitably.

Jonah



On Sat, Apr 30, 2011 at 7:14 PM, Vipul Naik <vipul@...> wrote:

>
>
> Dear Holden/GiveWell,
>
> Thanks a lot for this update. In the transcript, the SIAI people
> mention two people, Peter Thiel (also mentioned in my earlier email)
> and Jaan Tallin. You say that you already know about Peter Thiel. Does
> this mean that you at GiveWell have already talked to him, or that you
> have read enough of his public writings/speeches that you think you
> have a fair idea of his reasons for supporting SIAI?
>
> If you have a record of a conversation that you have had with Peter
> Thiel (or somebody from his foundation) on these organizations, would
> it be possible for you to make it public?
>
> More generally, have you made public any of your records of
> conversations with foundations or other large-scale donors whom you've
> approached for information on the charities that they fund?
>
> Thanks, and keep up the good work!
>
> Vipul
>
> * Quoting Holden Karnofsky who at 2011-04-30 14:38:02+0000 (Sat) wrote
>
> > We've had a fair number of requests to evaluate the Singularity Institute
> > for Artificial Intelligence, which Vipul mentioned in a recent email.
> This
> > organization is pretty far outside the scope of what we normally look at,
> so
> > we haven't done a formal review, but I did have a sit-down with
> > representatives from this group in February, and have gotten their
> > permission to publish a paraphrased transcript of our conversation. This
> > document gives a good overview of my view on SIAI.
> >
> > In a nutshell, I have sympathy for SIAI's goals, but I do not believe
> that
> > it currently has the (a) track record / credibility (b) room for more
> > funding that it would have to in order to interest me in donating to it.
> > There is one SIAI supporter/endorser I'm interested in speaking to to
> learn
> > more (mentioned in the transcript). We're going to keep an eye on the
> group.
> >
> > Paraphrased transcript of my conversation with SIAI representatives:
> >
> http://www.givewell.org/files/MiscCharities/SIAI/siai%202011%2002%20III.doc
> >
> > SIAI website: http://www.singinst.org
>
>  
>

Dear Brian

Good observations. May I say that every poor want to eat better quality food
but the fact is that if they do so today, they are not assured if they earn
even one penny for the next day and eating good food for, let us assume, 180
days in a year does no good to anyone's health.

Better nutrition is a special need of growing children, young women and so
also the old and sick people from poor countries, like, India and Africa. In
many parts people might get access to nutritious food but they lack the
knowledge and or not aware on what they should be eating. In urban areas
people might be eating more than what they can digest but the quality of
food that they push in their stomach is very bad, sometimes the food is
rotten. Then whay they eat so much? We found that they are not sure whether
they will get even that the next day and there are many dogs, cows and other
animals waiting to finish-off the stuff. Now people who are earning $2 and
more/ a day, even they cant afford good food for themselves and or their
children. Milk prices, for example, in most of the cities in India have
touched $1 +/litre and that alone can consume 50 percent of daily earnings
and so milk is now ruled out.

In West Bengal, which acoommodates the most poor in India, also happenes to
be most badly ruled and corrupt state of India. Now someone asked people to
eat vegetables by cutting down the rice quantity must be fooling people.
This is because vegetables in major part of WB costs a fortune and beyond
means of poor. How can one suggest something? The governmnet there is blind,
irresponsible and untouched by plight of poor; does nothing to improve
living and instead its ministers have made fortunes through funds meant for
primary education and health care of poor of Bengal. This is what is
happening in other parts of the world where poor are exploited by mighty
politicians. I have witnessed a large number of children who attend
governmnet sponsored schools only because they get to eat one-time food
which happens to be their 'only'food of that day. This food is any thing but
nutritious. In many schools food is rotten and served with worms. You might
ask why children eat such a food? The answer is their parents are poor and
also 'irresponsible' towards them that when they(children) return home they
hardly get any thing to eat. Hunger makes people to eat three-four times
when they get to eat something and this is a condition when quality hardly
matters.

On railway tracks of Mumbai where a train passes in either direction(s)
almost every 20 seconds, you will see hundreds of children eating the stuff
thrown out by passengers (left over food and or rotten food packets). Some
of the children keep eating for hours.... Its a pity and a shame that the
governmnet of India does nothing concrete to help these children get a
better life.

As far your stateement of de-worming, yes, I agree parents are not serious
about health and hygiene of children. You know, when I asked one such parent
as to why they allow their children to eat food thrown on the ground and
mixed with dust and dirt? are they not worried about their health? The
answer given was though shocking, was true. " sir, we have grown up by
eating such food only. No one ever took us to any health care centre and or
given any medication though we suffer with a number of ailments.. all has
become part of our lives. How can we stop our children from eating this
food? What will they eat? Their stomach must be filled with something so
that they can sleep. We are not worried as to what happens to them as we are
helpless. We neither have money nor access to treatment and medication. So
why worry. And finally, you know sir, god takes care of people like us".

So nutritious food remains a distant reality for millions who are poor. Many
governments, including that of India, would show you many nutrition and
health -care programs for benefit of poor, but believe me Brian, these are
just eye-wash.. only 5-7 percent of poor are benefitted (that to only
partially).. the funds allocated are swallowed by people who infact are
supposed to implement those schemes and yes, even the top most ministers are
involved. Why blame poor?

Anil Mahajan

On Sat, Apr 30, 2011 at 11:54 PM, Brian Slesinsky <bslesinsky@...>wrote:

>
>
> Thought this was interesting:
>
> More Than 1 Billion People Are Hungry in the World
> But what if the experts are wrong?
>
> http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/04/25/more_than_1_billion_people_are_hungry_in_the_world?page=full
>
> "Beyond India, one hidden assumption in our description of the poverty
> trap is that the poor eat as much as they can. If there is any chance
> that by eating a bit more the poor could start doing meaningful work
> and get out of the poverty trap zone, then they should eat as much as
> possible. Yet most people living on less than a dollar a day do not
> seem to act as if they are starving. If they were, surely they would
> put every available penny into buying more calories. But they do not.
> In an 18-country data set we assembled on the lives of the poor, food
> represents 36 to 79 percent of consumption among the rural extremely
> poor, and 53 to 74 percent among their urban counterparts."
>
> [...]
>
> "If the gains are so obvious, why don't the poor eat better? Eating
> well doesn't have to be prohibitively expensive. Most mothers could
> surely afford iodized salt, which is now standard in many parts of the
> world, or one dose of iodine every two years (at 51 cents per dose).
> Poor households could easily get a lot more calories and other
> nutrients by spending less on expensive grains (like rice and wheat),
> sugar, and processed foods, and more on leafy vegetables and coarse
> grains. But in Kenya, when the NGO that was running the deworming
> program asked parents in some schools to pay a few cents for deworming
> their children, almost all refused, thus depriving their children of
> hundreds of dollars of extra earnings over their lifetime.
>
> "Why? And why did anemic Indonesian workers not buy iron-fortified
> fish sauce on their own? One answer is that they don't believe it will
> matter -- their employers may not realize that they are more
> productive now. (In fact, in Indonesia, earnings improved only for the
> self-employed workers.) But this does not explain why all pregnant
> women in India aren't using only iodine-fortified salt, which is now
> available in every village. Another possibility is that people may not
> realize the value of feeding themselves and their children better --
> not everyone has the right information, even in the United States.
> Moreover, people tend to be suspicious of outsiders who tell them that
> they should change their diet. When rice prices went up sharply in
> 1966 and 1967, the chief minister of West Bengal suggested that eating
> less rice and more vegetables would be both good for people's health
> and easier on their budgets. This set off a flurry of outrage, and the
> chief minister was greeted by protesters bearing garlands of
> vegetables wherever he went.
>
> "It is simply not very easy to learn about the value of many of these
> nutrients based on personal experience. Iodine might make your
> children smarter, but the difference is not huge, and in most cases
> you will not find out either way for many years. Iron, even if it
> makes people stronger, does not suddenly turn you into a superhero.
> The $40 extra a year the self-employed man earned may not even have
> been apparent to him, given the many ups and downs of his weekly
> income."
> 
>

Hi Anil,

Thanks for your email. To clarify, everything in my email is a quotation
from the article in Foreign Policy that I linked to, and that article is an
excerpt from a book that I haven't yet read. [1] I found the article
interesting, but I don't have any first-hand knowledge to judge its
accuracy, so I thought I would share it to see what other people know.

The article implies that there are some basic health remedies that are
widely available in some poor areas and not that much more expensive, but
they aren't used as much as they could be. Without blaming anyone, it seems
to me that it has consequences for the types of aid that would be most
useful.

But it contradicts my understanding that food prices have gone up fairly
dramatically recently, and this has been a factor in recent events such as
the revolutions in the Middle East. From a distance, it's very difficult to
tell fact from fiction, and stories from recent history versus what's
happening now. The book from which this excerpt was taken was published only
last week, but it must have taken some time to write, and some of it was
apparently based on randomized studies (not described in the article), which
might have been from some time ago.

It looks like they have a database of randomized studies on their website
[2].

- Brian

[1] http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1586487981/
[2]
http://www.povertyactionlab.org/search/apachesolr_search?filters=type:evaluation

On Sat, Apr 30, 2011 at 8:50 PM, anil mahajan <anilanilm@...> wrote:

>
>
> Dear Brian
>
> Good observations. May I say that every poor want to eat better quality
> food but the fact is that if they do so today, they are not assured if they
> earn even one penny for the next day and eating good food for, let us
> assume, 180 days in a year does no good to anyone's health.
>
> Better nutrition is a special need of growing children, young women and so
> also the old and sick people from poor countries, like, India and Africa. In
> many parts people might get access to nutritious food but they lack the
> knowledge and or not aware on what they should be eating. In urban areas
> people might be eating more than what they can digest but the quality of
> food that they push in their stomach is very bad, sometimes the food is
> rotten. Then whay they eat so much? We found that they are not sure whether
> they will get even that the next day and there are many dogs, cows and other
> animals waiting to finish-off the stuff. Now people who are earning $2 and
> more/ a day, even they cant afford good food for themselves and or their
> children. Milk prices, for example, in most of the cities in India have
> touched $1 +/litre and that alone can consume 50 percent of daily earnings
> and so milk is now ruled out.
>
> In West Bengal, which acoommodates the most poor in India, also happenes to
> be most badly ruled and corrupt state of India. Now someone asked people to
> eat vegetables by cutting down the rice quantity must be fooling people.
> This is because vegetables in major part of WB costs a fortune and beyond
> means of poor. How can one suggest something? The governmnet there is blind,
> irresponsible and untouched by plight of poor; does nothing to improve
> living and instead its ministers have made fortunes through funds meant for
> primary education and health care of poor of Bengal. This is what is
> happening in other parts of the world where poor are exploited by mighty
> politicians. I have witnessed a large number of children who attend
> governmnet sponsored schools only because they get to eat one-time food
> which happens to be their 'only'food of that day. This food is any thing but
> nutritious. In many schools food is rotten and served with worms. You might
> ask why children eat such a food? The answer is their parents are poor and
> also 'irresponsible' towards them that when they(children) return home they
> hardly get any thing to eat. Hunger makes people to eat three-four times
> when they get to eat something and this is a condition when quality hardly
> matters.
>
> On railway tracks of Mumbai where a train passes in either direction(s)
> almost every 20 seconds, you will see hundreds of children eating the stuff
> thrown out by passengers (left over food and or rotten food packets). Some
> of the children keep eating for hours.... Its a pity and a shame that the
> governmnet of India does nothing concrete to help these children get a
> better life.
>
> As far your stateement of de-worming, yes, I agree parents are not serious
> about health and hygiene of children. You know, when I asked one such parent
> as to why they allow their children to eat food thrown on the ground and
> mixed with dust and dirt? are they not worried about their health? The
> answer given was though shocking, was true. " sir, we have grown up by
> eating such food only. No one ever took us to any health care centre and or
> given any medication though we suffer with a number of ailments.. all has
> become part of our lives. How can we stop our children from eating this
> food? What will they eat? Their stomach must be filled with something so
> that they can sleep. We are not worried as to what happens to them as we are
> helpless. We neither have money nor access to treatment and medication. So
> why worry. And finally, you know sir, god takes care of people like us".
>
> So nutritious food remains a distant reality for millions who are poor.
> Many governments, including that of India, would show you many nutrition and
> health -care programs for benefit of poor, but believe me Brian, these are
> just eye-wash.. only 5-7 percent of poor are benefitted (that to only
> partially).. the funds allocated are swallowed by people who infact are
> supposed to implement those schemes and yes, even the top most ministers are
> involved. Why blame poor?
>
> Anil Mahajan
>
> On Sat, Apr 30, 2011 at 11:54 PM, Brian Slesinsky <bslesinsky@...>wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> Thought this was interesting:
>>
>> More Than 1 Billion People Are Hungry in the World
>> But what if the experts are wrong?
>>
>> http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/04/25/more_than_1_billion_people_are_hungry_in_the_world?page=full
>>
>> "Beyond India, one hidden assumption in our description of the poverty
>> trap is that the poor eat as much as they can. If there is any chance
>> that by eating a bit more the poor could start doing meaningful work
>> and get out of the poverty trap zone, then they should eat as much as
>> possible. Yet most people living on less than a dollar a day do not
>> seem to act as if they are starving. If they were, surely they would
>> put every available penny into buying more calories. But they do not.
>> In an 18-country data set we assembled on the lives of the poor, food
>> represents 36 to 79 percent of consumption among the rural extremely
>> poor, and 53 to 74 percent among their urban counterparts."
>>
>> [...]
>>
>> "If the gains are so obvious, why don't the poor eat better? Eating
>> well doesn't have to be prohibitively expensive. Most mothers could
>> surely afford iodized salt, which is now standard in many parts of the
>> world, or one dose of iodine every two years (at 51 cents per dose).
>> Poor households could easily get a lot more calories and other
>> nutrients by spending less on expensive grains (like rice and wheat),
>> sugar, and processed foods, and more on leafy vegetables and coarse
>> grains. But in Kenya, when the NGO that was running the deworming
>> program asked parents in some schools to pay a few cents for deworming
>> their children, almost all refused, thus depriving their children of
>> hundreds of dollars of extra earnings over their lifetime.
>>
>> "Why? And why did anemic Indonesian workers not buy iron-fortified
>> fish sauce on their own? One answer is that they don't believe it will
>> matter -- their employers may not realize that they are more
>> productive now. (In fact, in Indonesia, earnings improved only for the
>> self-employed workers.) But this does not explain why all pregnant
>> women in India aren't using only iodine-fortified salt, which is now
>> available in every village. Another possibility is that people may not
>> realize the value of feeding themselves and their children better --
>> not everyone has the right information, even in the United States.
>> Moreover, people tend to be suspicious of outsiders who tell them that
>> they should change their diet. When rice prices went up sharply in
>> 1966 and 1967, the chief minister of West Bengal suggested that eating
>> less rice and more vegetables would be both good for people's health
>> and easier on their budgets. This set off a flurry of outrage, and the
>> chief minister was greeted by protesters bearing garlands of
>> vegetables wherever he went.
>>
>> "It is simply not very easy to learn about the value of many of these
>> nutrients based on personal experience. Iodine might make your
>> children smarter, but the difference is not huge, and in most cases
>> you will not find out either way for many years. Iron, even if it
>> makes people stronger, does not suddenly turn you into a superhero.
>> The $40 extra a year the self-employed man earned may not even have
>> been apparent to him, given the many ups and downs of his weekly
>> income."
>>
>
>
>
> 

On Sun, May 1, 2011 at 1:25 PM, Brian Slesinsky <brian@...> wrote:
>
> But it contradicts my understanding that food prices have gone up fairly
> dramatically recently...
>

Actually, on re-reading the article, they do talk about this. I'd be
interested in your thoughts ont he full article.

- Brian

Thanks for sharing the article and for the thoughts. I'm currently reading
the article author's recent book (Poor Economics) and will be sharing
thoughts on it.

We're generally positive on the interventions listed in this excerpt, but
haven't found charities that we can be confident in focusing on them.

On Sun, May 1, 2011 at 4:34 PM, Brian Slesinsky <bslesinsky@...m>wrote:

>
>
>
> On Sun, May 1, 2011 at 1:25 PM, Brian Slesinsky <brian@slesinsky.org>wrote:
>>
>> But it contradicts my understanding that food prices have gone up fairly
>> dramatically recently...
>>
>
> Actually, on re-reading the article, they do talk about this. I'd be
> interested in your thoughts ont he full article.
>
> - Brian
>
>  
>

A few responses:

   - I've never spoken to Peter Thiel. I've not seen any public statement
   that clarifies his thinking on the issues I see as key.
   - I am not so sure that his giving a relatively small % of income
   indicates a lack of seriousness of purpose. The fact that he doesn't give
   more may come from issues related to (a) room for more funding; (b) checking
   one's own beliefs by asking that a project raise some money from elsewhere
   (his donation to SIAI is already a very large proportion of its total
   revenue).
   - To be clear, I don't believe in putting too much weight on any one
   person's opinion, especially when the reasoning behind that opinion is
   unclear. My interest in SIAI's endorsements has to do with a couple of
   possibilities: (a) a single endorser, such as Jaan Tallinn (more likely than
   Peter Thiel), might convince me of the merits of SIAI if they wrote
   something relevant or if we spoke; (b) the existence of a broad consensus of
   people who seem well-placed to understand certain technical issues could
   sway me even if I couldn't follow their arguments. I've seen neither of
   these so far.
   - We have had some conversations with funders and non-funders of
   VillageReach; we have requested, and been denied, permission to publish
   notes from these conversations. We did discuss some general impressions from
   these conversations at
   http://blog.givewell.org/2010/11/17/after-extraordinary-and-unorthodox-comes-the-valley-of-death/
.
   We have been talking about spending more time talking to funders,
   non-funders and potential funders of particularly promising charities, and
   if we do this we will continue to make efforts to make as much content as
   possible public.

Best,
Holden

On Sun, May 1, 2011 at 4:22 AM, Jonah Sinick <jsinick2@...> wrote:

>
>
> Hi Vipul,
>
> While one may be able to gain some insight into the reasons for supporting
> a charity from talking to a large donors, I think that there's reason to
> think that in a given instance the probability of getting a useful answer is
> fairly low. One data point in this direction the Gates Foundation's grant
> for Japan release and their answers to GiveWell's questions<http://blog.givewell.org/2011/04/06/the-gates-foundations-grant-for-japan-relief/>.
> I've formed a general impression that in many (most?) cases large donors do
> not carefully analyze charities with a view toward optimizing the positive
> impact of their donations.
>
> In the case of Peter Thiel I'll note that according the data available on
> Wikipedia
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Thiel#Philanthropy
> it seems like his donations to the said organizations are in the range of
> $1 million per year which is in the neighborhood of 1% of his annual
> earnings. The fact that the amount that he donated to them was such a low
> percentage of such a high income suggests lack of seriousness of purpose.
> Moreover, the sorts of assumptions under which marginal donations to SIAI
> would be of comparable expected utility to marginal donations to the
> Seasteading Institute are very special assumptions which seem unlikely to
> hold - this suggests that Thiel may be funding at least one of them without
> a view toward maximizing expected utility.
>
> If you're interested in donating to one or more of organizations mentioned
> in the Breakthrough Philanthropy you might consider visiting them
> personally.  Each of SIAI, SENS and the Seasteading Institute is in the San
> Francisco bay area which is a place that one might end up visiting for any
> number of reasons. I visited SIAI last December and was received hospitably.
>
> Jonah
>
>
>
>
> On Sat, Apr 30, 2011 at 7:14 PM, Vipul Naik <vipul@math.uchicago.edu>wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> Dear Holden/GiveWell,
>>
>> Thanks a lot for this update. In the transcript, the SIAI people
>> mention two people, Peter Thiel (also mentioned in my earlier email)
>> and Jaan Tallin. You say that you already know about Peter Thiel. Does
>> this mean that you at GiveWell have already talked to him, or that you
>> have read enough of his public writings/speeches that you think you
>> have a fair idea of his reasons for supporting SIAI?
>>
>> If you have a record of a conversation that you have had with Peter
>> Thiel (or somebody from his foundation) on these organizations, would
>> it be possible for you to make it public?
>>
>> More generally, have you made public any of your records of
>> conversations with foundations or other large-scale donors whom you've
>> approached for information on the charities that they fund?
>>
>> Thanks, and keep up the good work!
>>
>> Vipul
>>
>> * Quoting Holden Karnofsky who at 2011-04-30 14:38:02+0000 (Sat) wrote
>>
>> > We've had a fair number of requests to evaluate the Singularity
>> Institute
>> > for Artificial Intelligence, which Vipul mentioned in a recent email.
>> This
>> > organization is pretty far outside the scope of what we normally look
>> at, so
>> > we haven't done a formal review, but I did have a sit-down with
>> > representatives from this group in February, and have gotten their
>> > permission to publish a paraphrased transcript of our conversation. This
>> > document gives a good overview of my view on SIAI.
>> >
>> > In a nutshell, I have sympathy for SIAI's goals, but I do not believe
>> that
>> > it currently has the (a) track record / credibility (b) room for more
>> > funding that it would have to in order to interest me in donating to it.
>> > There is one SIAI supporter/endorser I'm interested in speaking to to
>> learn
>> > more (mentioned in the transcript). We're going to keep an eye on the
>> group.
>> >
>> > Paraphrased transcript of my conversation with SIAI representatives:
>> >
>> http://www.givewell.org/files/MiscCharities/SIAI/siai%202011%2002%20III.doc
>> >
>> > SIAI website: http://www.singinst.org
>>
>>
>  
>

On a different note, there was just a post on Less Wrong here
> http://lesswrong.com/lw/5il/siai_an_examination/ giving a very detailed
> analysis of SIAI's finances and activities over the past five years. Again,
> this doesn't address the issues which Holden (and myself in fact) see as
> key.
>

(But which may nevertheless be of interest to other donors)


>
> Jonah
>
>>
>> On Sun, May 1, 2011 at 4:22 AM, Jonah Sinick <jsinick2@...>wrote:
>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Hi Vipul,
>>>
>>> While one may be able to gain some insight into the reasons for
>>> supporting a charity from talking to a large donors, I think that there's
>>> reason to think that in a given instance the probability of getting a useful
>>> answer is fairly low. One data point in this direction the Gates
>>> Foundation's grant for Japan release and their answers to GiveWell's
>>> questions<http://blog.givewell.org/2011/04/06/the-gates-foundations-grant-for-japan-relief/>.
>>> I've formed a general impression that in many (most?) cases large donors do
>>> not carefully analyze charities with a view toward optimizing the positive
>>> impact of their donations.
>>>
>>> In the case of Peter Thiel I'll note that according the data available on
>>> Wikipedia
>>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Thiel#Philanthropy
>>> it seems like his donations to the said organizations are in the range of
>>> $1 million per year which is in the neighborhood of 1% of his annual
>>> earnings. The fact that the amount that he donated to them was such a low
>>> percentage of such a high income suggests lack of seriousness of purpose.
>>> Moreover, the sorts of assumptions under which marginal donations to SIAI
>>> would be of comparable expected utility to marginal donations to the
>>> Seasteading Institute are very special assumptions which seem unlikely to
>>> hold - this suggests that Thiel may be funding at least one of them without
>>> a view toward maximizing expected utility.
>>>
>>> If you're interested in donating to one or more of organizations
>>> mentioned in the Breakthrough Philanthropy you might consider visiting them
>>> personally.  Each of SIAI, SENS and the Seasteading Institute is in the San
>>> Francisco bay area which is a place that one might end up visiting for any
>>> number of reasons. I visited SIAI last December and was received hospitably.
>>>
>>> Jonah
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Sat, Apr 30, 2011 at 7:14 PM, Vipul Naik <vipul@...>wrote:
>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Dear Holden/GiveWell,
>>>>
>>>> Thanks a lot for this update. In the transcript, the SIAI people
>>>> mention two people, Peter Thiel (also mentioned in my earlier email)
>>>> and Jaan Tallin. You say that you already know about Peter Thiel. Does
>>>> this mean that you at GiveWell have already talked to him, or that you
>>>> have read enough of his public writings/speeches that you think you
>>>> have a fair idea of his reasons for supporting SIAI?
>>>>
>>>> If you have a record of a conversation that you have had with Peter
>>>> Thiel (or somebody from his foundation) on these organizations, would
>>>> it be possible for you to make it public?
>>>>
>>>> More generally, have you made public any of your records of
>>>> conversations with foundations or other large-scale donors whom you've
>>>> approached for information on the charities that they fund?
>>>>
>>>> Thanks, and keep up the good work!
>>>>
>>>> Vipul
>>>>
>>>> * Quoting Holden Karnofsky who at 2011-04-30 14:38:02+0000 (Sat) wrote
>>>>
>>>> > We've had a fair number of requests to evaluate the Singularity
>>>> Institute
>>>> > for Artificial Intelligence, which Vipul mentioned in a recent email.
>>>> This
>>>> > organization is pretty far outside the scope of what we normally look
>>>> at, so
>>>> > we haven't done a formal review, but I did have a sit-down with
>>>> > representatives from this group in February, and have gotten their
>>>> > permission to publish a paraphrased transcript of our conversation.
>>>> This
>>>> > document gives a good overview of my view on SIAI.
>>>> >
>>>> > In a nutshell, I have sympathy for SIAI's goals, but I do not believe
>>>> that
>>>> > it currently has the (a) track record / credibility (b) room for more
>>>> > funding that it would have to in order to interest me in donating to
>>>> it.
>>>> > There is one SIAI supporter/endorser I'm interested in speaking to to
>>>> learn
>>>> > more (mentioned in the transcript). We're going to keep an eye on the
>>>> group.
>>>> >
>>>> > Paraphrased transcript of my conversation with SIAI representatives:
>>>> >
>>>> http://www.givewell.org/files/MiscCharities/SIAI/siai%202011%2002%20III.doc
>>>> >
>>>> > SIAI website: http://www.singinst.org
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>  
>>
>
>

Holden,

Thanks for raising these good points:

>
>    - I am not so sure that his giving a relatively small % of income
>    indicates a lack of seriousness of purpose. The fact that he doesn't give
>    more may come from issues related to (a) room for more funding; (b) checking
>    one's own beliefs by asking that a project raise some money from elsewhere
>    (his donation to SIAI is already a very large proportion of its total
>    revenue).
>
> My thinking in my last email to the mailing list was muddled. All I would
add is that a billionaire donating 1% of his or her income isn't a strong
signal of seriousness of purpose - at such revenue levels one has a huge
amount of disposable income and one may not be so careful as to how one
spends a very small fraction of it.

On a different note, there was just a post on Less Wrong here
http://lesswrong.com/lw/5il/siai_an_examination/ giving a very detailed
analysis of SIAI's finances and activities over the past five years. Again,
this doesn't address the issues which Holden (and myself in fact) see as
key.

Jonah

>
>
>
> On Sun, May 1, 2011 at 4:22 AM, Jonah Sinick <jsinick2@...>wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> Hi Vipul,
>>
>> While one may be able to gain some insight into the reasons for supporting
>> a charity from talking to a large donors, I think that there's reason to
>> think that in a given instance the probability of getting a useful answer is
>> fairly low. One data point in this direction the Gates Foundation's grant
>> for Japan release and their answers to GiveWell's questions<http://blog.givewell.org/2011/04/06/the-gates-foundations-grant-for-japan-relief/>.
>> I've formed a general impression that in many (most?) cases large donors do
>> not carefully analyze charities with a view toward optimizing the positive
>> impact of their donations.
>>
>> In the case of Peter Thiel I'll note that according the data available on
>> Wikipedia
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Thiel#Philanthropy
>> it seems like his donations to the said organizations are in the range of
>> $1 million per year which is in the neighborhood of 1% of his annual
>> earnings. The fact that the amount that he donated to them was such a low
>> percentage of such a high income suggests lack of seriousness of purpose.
>> Moreover, the sorts of assumptions under which marginal donations to SIAI
>> would be of comparable expected utility to marginal donations to the
>> Seasteading Institute are very special assumptions which seem unlikely to
>> hold - this suggests that Thiel may be funding at least one of them without
>> a view toward maximizing expected utility.
>>
>> If you're interested in donating to one or more of organizations mentioned
>> in the Breakthrough Philanthropy you might consider visiting them
>> personally.  Each of SIAI, SENS and the Seasteading Institute is in the San
>> Francisco bay area which is a place that one might end up visiting for any
>> number of reasons. I visited SIAI last December and was received hospitably.
>>
>> Jonah
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On Sat, Apr 30, 2011 at 7:14 PM, Vipul Naik <vipul@...>wrote:
>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Dear Holden/GiveWell,
>>>
>>> Thanks a lot for this update. In the transcript, the SIAI people
>>> mention two people, Peter Thiel (also mentioned in my earlier email)
>>> and Jaan Tallin. You say that you already know about Peter Thiel. Does
>>> this mean that you at GiveWell have already talked to him, or that you
>>> have read enough of his public writings/speeches that you think you
>>> have a fair idea of his reasons for supporting SIAI?
>>>
>>> If you have a record of a conversation that you have had with Peter
>>> Thiel (or somebody from his foundation) on these organizations, would
>>> it be possible for you to make it public?
>>>
>>> More generally, have you made public any of your records of
>>> conversations with foundations or other large-scale donors whom you've
>>> approached for information on the charities that they fund?
>>>
>>> Thanks, and keep up the good work!
>>>
>>> Vipul
>>>
>>> * Quoting Holden Karnofsky who at 2011-04-30 14:38:02+0000 (Sat) wrote
>>>
>>> > We've had a fair number of requests to evaluate the Singularity
>>> Institute
>>> > for Artificial Intelligence, which Vipul mentioned in a recent email.
>>> This
>>> > organization is pretty far outside the scope of what we normally look
>>> at, so
>>> > we haven't done a formal review, but I did have a sit-down with
>>> > representatives from this group in February, and have gotten their
>>> > permission to publish a paraphrased transcript of our conversation.
>>> This
>>> > document gives a good overview of my view on SIAI.
>>> >
>>> > In a nutshell, I have sympathy for SIAI's goals, but I do not believe
>>> that
>>> > it currently has the (a) track record / credibility (b) room for more
>>> > funding that it would have to in order to interest me in donating to
>>> it.
>>> > There is one SIAI supporter/endorser I'm interested in speaking to to
>>> learn
>>> > more (mentioned in the transcript). We're going to keep an eye on the
>>> group.
>>> >
>>> > Paraphrased transcript of my conversation with SIAI representatives:
>>> >
>>> http://www.givewell.org/files/MiscCharities/SIAI/siai%202011%2002%20III.doc
>>> >
>>> > SIAI website: http://www.singinst.org
>>>
>>>
>>
>  
>

I've posted an email exchange I had with a critical reader who questioned
our use of test scores as a major metric in our report on U.S. education. I
thought he made a legitimate criticism that we were not as explicit as we
could have been about what metrics we emphasized and why, but since this
cause is currently de-emphasized, we don't have plans to rectify the
situation in the near future.

The exchange is at http://www.givewell.org/node/1702

Our top priority for 2011 is identifying charities with additional room for
more funding (
http://blog.givewell.org/2011/02/14/givewells-plan-for-2011-top-level-priorities/)
since
our current top-rated charity, VillageReach, has limited room for more
funding.

This is the list of charities we have/plan to consider in 2011, along with
each organization's status:
http://www.givewell.org/international/technical/process-overview/2011-charities

By and large, the "contacted" ones are those charities we deem most
promising, but there have been times where we have contacted an organization
because someone made a direct referral and we felt talking to the charity
was a good use of our time. We will publish our reasoning for why we
prioritized the ones we did and contacted certain organizations before
others by the end of the year when we publish updated recommendations.

We have also already published reviews for two organizations we considered
in 2011: the Schistosomiasis Control Initiative (
http://www.givewell.org/international/charities/schistosomiasis-control-initiative)
and Freedom from Hunger (
http://www.givewell.org/international/charities/freedom-from-hunger).
(Please note that the Schistosomiasis Control Initiative recently sent us
additional information and we are continuing to review them.)

Best,
Elie

Interesting if true.

- Brian

Does Disease Cause Autocracy?
New studies say that lowering the rate of infection helps lead to
political liberalization.

"Greater wealth strongly correlates with property rights, the rule of
law, more education, the liberation of women, a free press, and more
social tolerance. The enduring puzzle for political scientists is how
do the social processes that produce freedom and wealth get started in
the first place?

[...]

"A group of researchers led by Harvard University economist Jeffrey
Sachs recently noted that a billion people live on less than a dollar
per day [PDF] and “are roughly as poor today as their ancestors were
thousands of years ago.” Why? The researchers suggest that high
disease burdens create persistent poverty traps from which poor people
cannot extricate themselves. High disease incidence lowers their
economic productivity so that they can’t afford to create the
resources needed to improve sanitation and medical care, which in turn
leaves them vulnerable to more disease. And so it goes.

"University of New Mexico anthropologists Randy Thornhill and Corey
Fincher pushed the disease thesis further with their “parasite
hypothesis of democratization,” arguing that disease not only keeps
people poor, but it also makes them illiberal. The two researchers
test this hypothesis “using publicly available data measuring
democratization, collectivism–individualism, gender egalitarianism,
property rights, sexual restrictiveness, and parasite prevalence
across many countries of the world.” The idea is that the lower the
disease burden, the more likely a society is to be liberal."

http://reason.com/archives/2011/05/31/does-disease-cause-autocracy

There is nothing new in this. Look at how it goes:

Poor people, especially developing countries of the world, are forced to
live in unclean and unhygienic conditions. There are millions who cannot
take bath or even wash hands and legs, every day simply because they have no
access to water. Then another millions who have access to some water, this
water found to be polluted and not worthy of human consumprion. Now if you
are cooking food with that kind of water first and then eating food without
washing hands, one is bound to fall sick.
Lack of sanitation is another serious problem for billions of poor people in
countries like, India, Bangaladesh, Pakistan and Afrika. Surroundings of
habitations are therefore, stink and are filthy. This is what is leading to
people falling sick and sick quite often.
Now, lack of energy-food, filthy surroundings and polluted water for
consumption takes tall on health further.
As these people earn around 3 dollors/ day, they try and avoid seeing a
doctor and or taking medicines as doctors fees and cost of medicines are
both beyond their financial reach. People live with disease/illness until
its beyond there tolerance and or when they are about to die. This is the
time they approach a doctor.. its too late for a doctor to help the patient
and so he gets killed to a disease which is normally easily curable.
In poor families when they approach for treatment, they end up by spending
wages equivalent to one and or more months earnings and so are forced to
approach money lenders for loans to meet basic expenses.. they go on
paying-back (interest alone) for generations and as such they remain poor..
sad but true story!
Anil Mahajan

On Sun, Jul 3, 2011 at 9:07 AM, Brian Slesinsky <bslesinsky@...>wrote:

> Interesting if true.
>
> - Brian
>
> Does Disease Cause Autocracy?
> New studies say that lowering the rate of infection helps lead to
> political liberalization.
>
> "Greater wealth strongly correlates with property rights, the rule of
> law, more education, the liberation of women, a free press, and more
> social tolerance. The enduring puzzle for political scientists is how
> do the social processes that produce freedom and wealth get started in
> the first place?
>
> [...]
>
> "A group of researchers led by Harvard University economist Jeffrey
> Sachs recently noted that a billion people live on less than a dollar
> per day [PDF] and “are roughly as poor today as their ancestors were
> thousands of years ago.” Why? The researchers suggest that high
> disease burdens create persistent poverty traps from which poor people
> cannot extricate themselves. High disease incidence lowers their
> economic productivity so that they can’t afford to create the
> resources needed to improve sanitation and medical care, which in turn
> leaves them vulnerable to more disease. And so it goes.
>
> "University of New Mexico anthropologists Randy Thornhill and Corey
> Fincher pushed the disease thesis further with their “parasite
> hypothesis of democratization,” arguing that disease not only keeps
> people poor, but it also makes them illiberal. The two researchers
> test this hypothesis “using publicly available data measuring
> democratization, collectivism–individualism, gender egalitarianism,
> property rights, sexual restrictiveness, and parasite prevalence
> across many countries of the world.” The idea is that the lower the
> disease burden, the more likely a society is to be liberal."
>
> http://reason.com/archives/2011/05/31/does-disease-cause-autocracy
>
>
> ------------------------------------
>
> This is the research mailing list of GiveWell (www.givewell.net).  Emails
> sent over this list represent the informal thoughts and notes of staff
> members and other participants.  They do NOT represent official positions of
> GiveWell.Yahoo! Groups Links
>
>
>
>

Alexander Berger, who starts as a GiveWell employee on Monday, has been
working on an analysis of the question, "Do higher Charity Navigator ratings
cause charities to raise more money, and if so, by how much?" This is a
topic of some interest to us, in that it reflects something about the demand
for charity research and for Charity Navigator's style of research in
particular (which is very different from ours).

I asked Alexander to send us his plan for analyzing the data before he
actually received the data, in keeping with our belief that pre-registered
studies are more credible (argued at
http://blog.givewell.org/2011/05/19/suggestions-for-the-social-sciences/)

As you can see below, he did admittedly have access to the data before he
sent us his analysis plan (though he says he did not actually modify the
analysis plan after receiving the data), and I am late in forwarding this
email, so this is a far from perfect "preregistration," but since he says he
has still not done the analysis, I figured it was better to forward his plan
now than not at all, thus creating a public record of it.

One more issue - Alexander signed an NDA with Charity Navigator regarding
the non-public data they sent him, so while he will be publishing his
findings using public data, Charity Navigator will have veto power over any
findings using non-public data.

We will forward a link to his findings once he has completed his analysis.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Alexander Berger <alexander.is@...>
Date: Mon, Jun 27, 2011 at 6:25 PM
Subject: Re: Form submission from: Where did you learn about us?
To: Elie Hassenfeld <elie@...>
Cc: Holden Karnofsky <holden@...>


Few things:
[REMOVED BY HOLDEN]
2. Draft proposal attached. I was two thirds of the way done before I woke
up this morning to find that [CHARITY NAVIGATOR REPRESENTATIVE - NAME
REMOVED BY HOLDEN] had sent me the data, which I wasn't expecting until
tomorrow or Wednesday. Haven't opened the excel file with the data yet, and
would like to edit the draft proposal before you send it out (if only for
spelling, grammar, clarity). Probably going to open the file before you get
back to me (I'm really curious if I got everything I asked for), but I'll
put off any analysis until I'm comfortable with the proposal I sent you. In
that vein, comments on how what I wrote related to what you were expecting
would be appreciated; I didn't include equations but specified the main
plans for analysis verbally.
3. I made sure that she knows I'm going to work for you starting July 11th
and have an email in to her explicitly clarifying that my reading of the NDA
doesn't prevent me from publishing something about the public data.

Addition to my previous email: here are comments that Elie and I sent in
response to Alexander with suggestions for further analysis.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Elie Hassenfeld <elie@...>
Date: Wed, Jun 29, 2011 at 7:23 AM
Subject: Re: Form submission from: Where did you learn about us?
To: Holden Karnofsky <Holden@...>
Cc: Alexander Berger <alexander.is@...>


Re: "It would be good to include a scatter of score vs. outcomes (with
dotted lines at the score cutoffs, as is often done with RD designs), a
scatter of ratings change vs. subsequent outcome, etc." -> I'd also do a
scatter at first-time rating vs subsequent outcome (i.e., change in
donations).


On Tue, Jun 28, 2011 at 10:15 PM, Holden Karnofsky <Holden@...>wrote:

> Hi Alexander,
>
> Thanks for this. Your proposal looks pretty good; my one suggestion would
> be to add some plans for qualitative/visual analysis. It would be good to
> include a scatter of score vs. outcomes (with dotted lines at the score
> cutoffs, as is often done with RD designs), a scatter of ratings change vs.
> subsequent outcome, etc.
>
> I think it would also be useful to try running the analysis separately on
> charities "bucketed" by size and see how different things look for large vs.
> small charities.
>
> Your thoughts?
>
> Best,
> Holden
>
>

Hello all,

I did end up speaking to Jaan Tallinn (Dario Amodei joined me on the phone
call), and we continued a sporadic exchange over email for the next couple
of months. With his permission, I've consolidated both the notes from the
phone conversation and the text of the emails into the attached document. It
is a long conversation and the formatting is a bit inconsistent, but I
thought I'd share it anyway* *in case people are interested.

I may provide a summary of the content at a later date, but my key
high-level takeaways are that

   - I appreciated Jaan's thoughtfulness and willingness to engage in depth.
   It was an interesting exchange.
   - I continue to disagree with the way that SIAI is thinking about the
   "Friendliness" problem.
   - It seems to me that all the ways in which Jaan and I disagree on this
   topic have more to do with philosophy (how to quantify uncertainty; how to
   deal with conjunctions; how to act in consideration of low probabilities)
   and with social science-type intuitions (how would people likely use a
   particular sort of AI) than with computer science or programming (what
   properties has software usually had historically; which of these properties
   become incoherent/hard to imagine when applied to AGI)

This conversation is not as important to my view of SIAI as the conversation
with its representatives, which I sent out previously and which I considered
sufficient to reach a stance on SIAI for GiveWell's purposes; but since we
did have the discussion and people might be interested, I'm sending it out.

Best,
Holden

On Tue, May 3, 2011 at 3:30 PM, Jonah Sinick <jsinick2@illinois.edu> wrote:

> **
>
>
>
>
> On a different note, there was just a post on Less Wrong here
>> http://lesswrong.com/lw/5il/siai_an_examination/ giving a very detailed
>> analysis of SIAI's finances and activities over the past five years. Again,
>> this doesn't address the issues which Holden (and myself in fact) see as
>> key.
>>
>
> (But which may nevertheless be of interest to other donors)
>
>
>>
>> Jonah
>>
>>>
>>> On Sun, May 1, 2011 at 4:22 AM, Jonah Sinick <jsinick2@...>wrote:
>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Hi Vipul,
>>>>
>>>> While one may be able to gain some insight into the reasons for
>>>> supporting a charity from talking to a large donors, I think that there's
>>>> reason to think that in a given instance the probability of getting a useful
>>>> answer is fairly low. One data point in this direction the Gates
>>>> Foundation's grant for Japan release and their answers to GiveWell's
>>>> questions<http://blog.givewell.org/2011/04/06/the-gates-foundations-grant-for-japan-relief/>.
>>>> I've formed a general impression that in many (most?) cases large donors do
>>>> not carefully analyze charities with a view toward optimizing the positive
>>>> impact of their donations.
>>>>
>>>> In the case of Peter Thiel I'll note that according the data available
>>>> on Wikipedia
>>>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Thiel#Philanthropy
>>>> it seems like his donations to the said organizations are in the range
>>>> of $1 million per year which is in the neighborhood of 1% of his annual
>>>> earnings. The fact that the amount that he donated to them was such a low
>>>> percentage of such a high income suggests lack of seriousness of purpose.
>>>> Moreover, the sorts of assumptions under which marginal donations to SIAI
>>>> would be of comparable expected utility to marginal donations to the
>>>> Seasteading Institute are very special assumptions which seem unlikely to
>>>> hold - this suggests that Thiel may be funding at least one of them without
>>>> a view toward maximizing expected utility.
>>>>
>>>> If you're interested in donating to one or more of organizations
>>>> mentioned in the Breakthrough Philanthropy you might consider visiting them
>>>> personally.  Each of SIAI, SENS and the Seasteading Institute is in the San
>>>> Francisco bay area which is a place that one might end up visiting for any
>>>> number of reasons. I visited SIAI last December and was received hospitably.
>>>>
>>>> Jonah
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On Sat, Apr 30, 2011 at 7:14 PM, Vipul Naik <vipul@...>wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> Dear Holden/GiveWell,
>>>>>
>>>>> Thanks a lot for this update. In the transcript, the SIAI people
>>>>> mention two people, Peter Thiel (also mentioned in my earlier email)
>>>>> and Jaan Tallin. You say that you already know about Peter Thiel. Does
>>>>> this mean that you at GiveWell have already talked to him, or that you
>>>>> have read enough of his public writings/speeches that you think you
>>>>> have a fair idea of his reasons for supporting SIAI?
>>>>>
>>>>> If you have a record of a conversation that you have had with Peter
>>>>> Thiel (or somebody from his foundation) on these organizations, would
>>>>> it be possible for you to make it public?
>>>>>
>>>>> More generally, have you made public any of your records of
>>>>> conversations with foundations or other large-scale donors whom you've
>>>>> approached for information on the charities that they fund?
>>>>>
>>>>> Thanks, and keep up the good work!
>>>>>
>>>>> Vipul
>>>>>
>>>>> * Quoting Holden Karnofsky who at 2011-04-30 14:38:02+0000 (Sat) wrote
>>>>>
>>>>> > We've had a fair number of requests to evaluate the Singularity
>>>>> Institute
>>>>> > for Artificial Intelligence, which Vipul mentioned in a recent email.
>>>>> This
>>>>> > organization is pretty far outside the scope of what we normally look
>>>>> at, so
>>>>> > we haven't done a formal review, but I did have a sit-down with
>>>>> > representatives from this group in February, and have gotten their
>>>>> > permission to publish a paraphrased transcript of our conversation.
>>>>> This
>>>>> > document gives a good overview of my view on SIAI.
>>>>> >
>>>>> > In a nutshell, I have sympathy for SIAI's goals, but I do not believe
>>>>> that
>>>>> > it currently has the (a) track record / credibility (b) room for more
>>>>> > funding that it would have to in order to interest me in donating to
>>>>> it.
>>>>> > There is one SIAI supporter/endorser I'm interested in speaking to to
>>>>> learn
>>>>> > more (mentioned in the transcript). We're going to keep an eye on the
>>>>> group.
>>>>> >
>>>>> > Paraphrased transcript of my conversation with SIAI representatives:
>>>>> >
>>>>> http://www.givewell.org/files/MiscCharities/SIAI/siai%202011%2002%20III.doc
>>>>> >
>>>>> > SIAI website: http://www.singinst.org
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>
>
>  
>

Hi,

I'm doing research on disaster relief for Giving What We Can, and am
just looking into the current East African famine. I've read with
interest most, though I'm sure not all, of the GiveWell pages and
posts on natural disasters generally and this famine specifically (
http://blog.givewell.org/2011/07/25/somalia-east-africa-famine-relief-donations/
). But I'd like to find out how many people individuals charities can
feed for how long for a set amount of money, and how long is
sufficient to 'save' people (or more helpfully restore their life
expectancy to a specific number). Can anyone give me any help on this
- pointers, answers, dead ends, places to look or people to ask?

Many thanks,
Tom Ash

I thought I'd copy this back to the GiveWell list as I'm still looking
for answers to or pointers on the question below. (Anil replied saying
he thought the $1 a day figure seemed reasonable and that many people
caught in severe famine survive by having just one meal every third
day.)

Any help much appreciated,
Tom

On 1 August 2011 17:43, Tom Ash <tog.ash@...> wrote:
> Thanks Anil - you're right of course, and we'd certainly like to find
> out what organisations 'save maximum people' (if that's the right
> metric of success... ideally we'd translate this into QALYs, and there
> are other measures you could use). Nonetheless it should still be
> possible to find figures - even very rough ones - on what set amounts
> of money can achieve, such as how many people individuals charities
> can feed for how long for how long per dollar or pound or how long is
> sufficient to 'save' people (or more helpfully restore their life
> expectancy to a specific number). Likewise I was hoping someone on
> this list knows of places where people can give to these causes with
> their money actually increasing the amount spent on them - even though
> that raises the problems of fungibility, etc. that GiveWell covers so
> well. I've found some organisations making claims that $1 can feed
> someone for 1 day (Edesia), or 5 in one case (International Crisis
> Aid), but I'm not sure how reliable this is.
>
> Many thanks,
> Tom
>
> On 1 August 2011 13:35, anil mahajan <anilanilm@...> wrote:
>> Dear Tom
>> One cannot have a fixed budget and or time period when one is dealing with
>> femine that to in a country like E. Africa. One has to put in all possible
>> efforts to provide minimum basic relief, such as, food, medicines and
>> clothes and shelter. Every such program is aimed at saving lives of all but
>> in reality that's just not possible.   One can always have a budget
>> 'target'  and also 'time-frame' but it all depends on the magnitude of the
>> disaster and one needs to be open to 'review' the situation, time to time.
>> In brief, no one can say as to how much money and also time is needed if the
>> situation is real grave. So just go ahead and see how best you and your team
>> can save maximum people.
>> Anil Mahajan
>

Dear GiveWell mailing list,

As an experiment in yet another layer of public scrutiny, GiveWell has
created a new ombudsperson/public critic role, intended to be filled
by a person outside of their organization and board. The ombudsperson
is supposed to serve as a public conscience by pointing out various
problems and offering external assessment or criticism. This is in
addition to all the efforts GiveWell already undertakes to solicit
structured feedbacks.

GiveWell has invited me to be the first person to try out this role,
though their ultimate vision is to have multiple people fill this role
(if you're interested too, contact GiveWell). As the ombudsperson, I
will try to collect feedback from users of GiveWell's research and
post my findings and summaries at the following location on the
GiveWell website (which currently doesn't have any data):

http://www.givewell.org/about/ombudsman-records

All my work will be done _independent_ of GiveWell. I will not have
access to any of GiveWell's confidential records. Conversely, they
will not have influence over any of my work, though they will have the
option to respond in writing to any comments or criticisms I make.

As part of my role, I wish to collect some data regarding how GiveWell
donors and others on this mailing list use GiveWell's charity
evaluations and what they think about GiveWell's processes for
updating these evaluations. I've cobbled together a preliminary survey
here:

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/givewell-charity-evaluation-updates

The survey will take about 10-15 minutes of your time (likely less
than that). You have the option of providing your name and email
address at the end, but all survey responses will be publicly
available, so do not enter your name or email address unless you are
willing to have the information publicly accessible.

You can use the following link to access the survey results collected
so far:

http://www.surveymonkey.com/sr.aspx?sm=JAarftUzO49JWyi5D6j5Ol9fMLHyT2RU8PAbJpeJvlo_3d

If you have general comments about the survey or longer philosophical
remarks, I'd love to hear back on this mailing list.

Vipul Naik

Hi Tom,

I just the other day read an Economist article about the famine that you may
find interesting: http://www.economist.com/node/21524864, particularly the
last paragraph:

Quite apart from the death toll and the misery, this is criminally wasteful.
When famine threatened Niger in 2005, the cost of help was put at $7 a head.
No one did much; the famine struck; the cost of help ended up at $23 each.
Economic incentives and early-warning systems say donors should act early.
But the political incentives advise delay—until it is too late.

Not sure where they got their stats from, but perhaps if you do some digging
you could find out.

Kate

On Tue, Aug 2, 2011 at 2:15 AM, Tom Ash <tog.ash@...> wrote:

> **
>
>
> I thought I'd copy this back to the GiveWell list as I'm still looking
> for answers to or pointers on the question below. (Anil replied saying
> he thought the $1 a day figure seemed reasonable and that many people
> caught in severe famine survive by having just one meal every third
> day.)
>
> Any help much appreciated,
> Tom
>
> On 1 August 2011 17:43, Tom Ash <tog.ash@...> wrote:
> > Thanks Anil - you're right of course, and we'd certainly like to find
> > out what organisations 'save maximum people' (if that's the right
> > metric of success... ideally we'd translate this into QALYs, and there
> > are other measures you could use). Nonetheless it should still be
> > possible to find figures - even very rough ones - on what set amounts
> > of money can achieve, such as how many people individuals charities
> > can feed for how long for how long per dollar or pound or how long is
>
> > sufficient to 'save' people (or more helpfully restore their life
> > expectancy to a specific number). Likewise I was hoping someone on
> > this list knows of places where people can give to these causes with
> > their money actually increasing the amount spent on them - even though
> > that raises the problems of fungibility, etc. that GiveWell covers so
> > well. I've found some organisations making claims that $1 can feed
> > someone for 1 day (Edesia), or 5 in one case (International Crisis
> > Aid), but I'm not sure how reliable this is.
> >
> > Many thanks,
> > Tom
> >
> > On 1 August 2011 13:35, anil mahajan <anilanilm@...> wrote:
> >> Dear Tom
> >> One cannot have a fixed budget and or time period when one is dealing
> with
> >> femine that to in a country like E. Africa. One has to put in all
> possible
> >> efforts to provide minimum basic relief, such as, food, medicines and
> >> clothes and shelter. Every such program is aimed at saving lives of all
> but
> >> in reality that's just not possible.   One can always have a budget
> >> 'target'  and also 'time-frame' but it all depends on the magnitude of
> the
> >> disaster and one needs to be open to 'review' the situation, time to
> time.
> >> In brief, no one can say as to how much money and also time is needed if
> the
> >> situation is real grave. So just go ahead and see how best you and your
> team
> >> can save maximum people.
> >> Anil Mahajan
> >
>
>  
>



-- 
Kate Lang
646-491-2443
My Blog: http://philanthrokate.com

Hi Tom,

Thanks for reaching out. In GiveWell's experience, the type of information
you're looking for isn't available.

We focused our report on disaster relief in Haiti (
http://www.givewell.org/international/disaster-relief/haiti-earthquake) on
transparency and accountability because we were unable to find credible
information about the quality of services delivered or information that we
felt would lead to credible estimates of $X per Y impact. (More information
about our approach at
http://blog.givewell.org/2011/01/07/assessing-disaster-relief-organizations/
.)

We've found a similar situation in our work researching the famine in East
Africa. We've spoken with close to 10 aid organizations thus far, and none
have provided us with numbers which enable us to confidently say, "Giving $X
to this organization will save Y lives or feed Z people." We continue to
work on this project and will be publishing updated recommendations when we
have more information. Our expectation is that we will, again, recommend an
organization for transparency in its activities (which we believe we can
assess) rather than for the cost-effectiveness of its activities (which we
don't believe we can reasonably assess).

Also note that a critical question to assess in disaster relief are issues
of fungibility. Because of fungibility, there is a real possibility that a
contribution to a given disaster relief charity effectively funds their
activities *in the next disaster*, which may have a totally different level
of cost-effectiveness than their activities in the present situation. We've
written about this issue before at
http://www.givewell.org/international/technical/criteria/scalability#Whyearmarkingyourdonationisnttheeasyanswer
 and
http://blog.givewell.org/2009/12/16/room-for-more-funding-continued-why-donation-restricting-isnt-the-easy-answer/
.

There's also a more general question about the cost-effectiveness of famine
relief *as a cause *relative to other forms of interventions (such as
vaccinations or deworming). We have not been able to find credible
information assessing the general cost-effectiveness of famine relief, and
don't know how it compares, for instance, with VillageReach. If we found a
credible source, we would interpret it in light of the particular charities
working on the ground in East Africa and continue to pay attention to issues
like fungibility and transparency.

Thanks,
Alexander


-- 
Alexander Berger
Research Analyst
www.GiveWell.org <http://www.givewell.org/>

From: Tom Ash <tog.ash@...>
> Date: Sun, Jul 31, 2011 at 12:36 PM
> Subject: [givewell] East African famine
> To: givewell@yahoogroups.com
>
>
> **
>
>
> Hi,
>
> I'm doing research on disaster relief for Giving What We Can, and am
> just looking into the current East African famine. I've read with
> interest most, though I'm sure not all, of the GiveWell pages and
> posts on natural disasters generally and this famine specifically (
>
> http://blog.givewell.org/2011/07/25/somalia-east-africa-famine-relief-donations/
> ). But I'd like to find out how many people individuals charities can
> feed for how long for a set amount of money, and how long is
> sufficient to 'save' people (or more helpfully restore their life
> expectancy to a specific number). Can anyone give me any help on this
> - pointers, answers, dead ends, places to look or people to ask?
>
> Many thanks,
> Tom Ash
>  
>
>

We have posted an update on our top-rated charity, VillageReach, at http://www.givewell.org/international/top-charities/villagereach/updates.

Please let us know if you have any questions or comments.

Hi Natalie,

There seem to be three items in the update which point toward lower than
expected cost-effectiveness of VillageReach's activities:

1. "VillageReach told us that progress [in Nissia] has been slower than in
Cabo Delgado" (for reasons which need not be temporary).

2. "The baseline survey from Maputo found extremely high vaccination rates
(significantly above the levels VillageReach used when it estimated the
impact of the program)."

3. "The poor quality of early data from Niassa has made us question whether
we have sufficient detail on how well VillageReach was able to collect data
in the past."

By way of contrast, none of the items in the update seem to point toward
higher than expected cost-effectiveness of VillageReach's activities.
(Correct me if I'm wrong about this.)

This raises the question of whether VillageReach remains a decisively better
investment than GiveWell's other recommended charities (in particular
Against Malaria Foundation). I know that you'll be creating updated
evaluations before long; but any preliminary thoughts would be appreciated.

Best wishes,

Jonah

On Thu, Aug 4, 2011 at 9:06 AM, nstone3 <natalie@...> wrote:

> **
>
>
> We have posted an update on our top-rated charity, VillageReach, at
> http://www.givewell.org/international/top-charities/villagereach/updates.
>
> Please let us know if you have any questions or comments.
>
>  
>

Hi Jonah,

As you note, we will be updating our evaluations of our recommended charities in the coming months (we are working on this now), and our ratings and rankings may change. In particular, we are looking more in-depth at Against Malaria Foundation and it, as well as a few other organizations, are contenders for our highest ratings and rankings.

I agree with your summary of the VillageReach update. This update has brought up a number of concerns for us and has lowered somewhat our confidence in VillageReach's future cost-effectiveness, as well as brought up questions about our understanding of it's past impact. That said, we are just beginning to understand the issues that we have brought up in this update and are working toward understanding them better - we have plans to speak to both (a) people currently working with (but not for) VillageReach in Mozambique, and (b) researchers involved in the evaluation of VillageReach's pilot project.

My personal intuition (and not GiveWell's official view) is that I do not believe that VillageReach is a "decisively better investment" than AMF, though if I was required to make a donation today, I would make it to VillageReach. Note that I would not say the same for all of the silver-rated charities; AMF stands out for me in this group and there is a possibility that it could be a top-level organization in the future.

Best,
Natalie

--- In givewell@yahoogroups.com, Jonah Sinick <jsinick2@...> wrote:
>
> Hi Natalie,
> 
> There seem to be three items in the update which point toward lower than
> expected cost-effectiveness of VillageReach's activities:
> 
> 1. "VillageReach told us that progress [in Nissia] has been slower than in
> Cabo Delgado" (for reasons which need not be temporary).
> 
> 2. "The baseline survey from Maputo found extremely high vaccination rates
> (significantly above the levels VillageReach used when it estimated the
> impact of the program)."
> 
> 3. "The poor quality of early data from Niassa has made us question whether
> we have sufficient detail on how well VillageReach was able to collect data
> in the past."
> 
> By way of contrast, none of the items in the update seem to point toward
> higher than expected cost-effectiveness of VillageReach's activities.
> (Correct me if I'm wrong about this.)
> 
> This raises the question of whether VillageReach remains a decisively better
> investment than GiveWell's other recommended charities (in particular
> Against Malaria Foundation). I know that you'll be creating updated
> evaluations before long; but any preliminary thoughts would be appreciated.
> 
> Best wishes,
> 
> Jonah
> 
> On Thu, Aug 4, 2011 at 9:06 AM, nstone3 <natalie@...> wrote:
> 
> > **
> >
> >
> > We have posted an update on our top-rated charity, VillageReach, at
> > http://www.givewell.org/international/top-charities/villagereach/updates.
> >
> > Please let us know if you have any questions or comments.
> >
> >  
> >
>

On August 18th, we convened a meeting of approximately 30 supporters to
discuss our research. The goal of the event was to have an open-ended
discussion about our recommendations and reasoning, which could be a better
opportunity to engage with and critique our work than just reading the
website.

We've posted the audio from the meeting along with the attachment we sent
out to participants beforehand. The attachment includes an update on the
organizations we're considering or have considered for a top rating this
year.

We've redacted some organization-specific information both in the audio and
in the attachment because we don't yet have permission to make it public.

Note also that we've continued our research since we held the meeting, so
the information below is up-to-date as of August 18th.

   - Attachment:
   http://www.givewell.org/files/ClearFund/Research%20meeting%202011%2008%2018/Handout%20for%20GiveWell%20Meeting%202011%2008%2018%20-%20public%<http://www.givewell.org/files/ClearFund/Research%20meeting%202011%2008%2018/Handout%20for%20GiveWell%20Meeting%202011%2008%2018%20-%20public%20version.pdf>
   20version.pdf<http://www.givewell.org/files/ClearFund/Research%20meeting%202011%2008%2018/Handout%20for%20GiveWell%20Meeting%202011%2008%2018%20-%20public%20version.pdf>
   - Audio:
   http://www.givewell.org/files/ClearFund/Research%20meeting%202011%2008%2018/Research%20event%20Aug%202011%20final.mp3

Best,
Elie

Dear Elie,

Thank you for sharing the recording of the meeting. Unfortunately,
there are some parts of the recording where I'm having trouble
deciphering what was said due to the static accompanying some of the
recorded speakers. Although I can understand what was said with some
effort, I'm wondering if it may be possible to:

(i) use some noise cancellation software to prepare a version with
less static noise throughout

and/or

(ii) prepare a transcript using some transcript-creating software with
human editing.

If anybody else on this mailing list has a noise cancellation software
or transcript creation software that they can use to process the audio
recording, that would also be great.

Thanks,

Vipul

* Quoting Elie Hassenfeld who at 2011-08-31 12:06:40+0000 (Wed) wrote
> On August 18th, we convened a meeting of approximately 30 supporters to
> discuss our research. The goal of the event was to have an open-ended
> discussion about our recommendations and reasoning, which could be a better
> opportunity to engage with and critique our work than just reading the
> website.
> 
> We've posted the audio from the meeting along with the attachment we sent
> out to participants beforehand. The attachment includes an update on the
> organizations we're considering or have considered for a top rating this
> year.
> 
> We've redacted some organization-specific information both in the audio and
> in the attachment because we don't yet have permission to make it public.
> 
> Note also that we've continued our research since we held the meeting, so
> the information below is up-to-date as of August 18th.
> 
>    - Attachment:
>    http://www.givewell.org/files/ClearFund/Research%20meeting%202011%2008%2018/Handout%20for%20GiveWell%20Meeting%202011%2008%2018%20-%20public%<http://www.givewell.org/files/ClearFund/Research%20meeting%202011%2008%2018/Handout%20for%20GiveWell%20Meeting%202011%2008%2018%20-%20public%20version.pdf>
>    20version.pdf<http://www.givewell.org/files/ClearFund/Research%20meeting%202011%2008%2018/Handout%20for%20GiveWell%20Meeting%202011%2008%2018%20-%20public%20version.pdf>
>    - Audio:
>    http://www.givewell.org/files/ClearFund/Research%20meeting%202011%2008%2018/Research%20event%20Aug%202011%20final.mp3
> 
> Best,
> Elie

Also, I'm wondering if, in the future, it may be useful for GiveWell
to have a virtual online meeting. This can allow a much larger
potential audience to participate, and cuts down on the travel costs
involved, so it could be done more frequently and with less need for
extensive planning. I've found that this website has a good
infrastructure for virtual meetings of this kind:

http://www.vokle.com

For instance, this meeting:

http://www.vokle.com/series/8581-the-seasteading-institute-town-hall

Vipul

* Quoting Vipul Naik who at 2011-09-01 14:35:48+0000 (Thu) wrote
> Dear Elie,
> 
> Thank you for sharing the recording of the meeting. Unfortunately,
> there are some parts of the recording where I'm having trouble
> deciphering what was said due to the static accompanying some of the
> recorded speakers. Although I can understand what was said with some
> effort, I'm wondering if it may be possible to:
> 
> (i) use some noise cancellation software to prepare a version with
> less static noise throughout
> 
> and/or
> 
> (ii) prepare a transcript using some transcript-creating software with
> human editing.
> 
> If anybody else on this mailing list has a noise cancellation software
> or transcript creation software that they can use to process the audio
> recording, that would also be great.
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> Vipul
> 
> * Quoting Elie Hassenfeld who at 2011-08-31 12:06:40+0000 (Wed) wrote
> > On August 18th, we convened a meeting of approximately 30 supporters to
> > discuss our research. The goal of the event was to have an open-ended
> > discussion about our recommendations and reasoning, which could be a better
> > opportunity to engage with and critique our work than just reading the
> > website.
> > 
> > We've posted the audio from the meeting along with the attachment we sent
> > out to participants beforehand. The attachment includes an update on the
> > organizations we're considering or have considered for a top rating this
> > year.
> > 
> > We've redacted some organization-specific information both in the audio and
> > in the attachment because we don't yet have permission to make it public.
> > 
> > Note also that we've continued our research since we held the meeting, so
> > the information below is up-to-date as of August 18th.
> > 
> >    - Attachment:
> >    http://www.givewell.org/files/ClearFund/Research%20meeting%202011%2008%2018/Handout%20for%20GiveWell%20Meeting%202011%2008%2018%20-%20public%<http://www.givewell.org/files/ClearFund/Research%20meeting%202011%2008%2018/Handout%20for%20GiveWell%20Meeting%202011%2008%2018%20-%20public%20version.pdf>
> >    20version.pdf<http://www.givewell.org/files/ClearFund/Research%20meeting%202011%2008%2018/Handout%20for%20GiveWell%20Meeting%202011%2008%2018%20-%20public%20version.pdf>
> >    - Audio:
> >    http://www.givewell.org/files/ClearFund/Research%20meeting%202011%2008%2018/Research%20event%20Aug%202011%20final.mp3
> > 
> > Best,
> > Elie

Dear Vipul,

We'd be happy for others to take a stab at cleaning up the audio, but we
didn't have much luck with the free tools we tried. We have traditionally
used Audacity, a piece of freeware, for editing audio of board meetings, and
also used that for the research meeting. We tried using the noise-reduction
filter, but did not find improved results.

We decided to try to get a transcript of the audio of the board meeting
from www.scribie.com, an audio transcription outsourcing company. If anyone
has experience with them or another transcription company, we'd love to hear
it. We'll send along the transcript when we get it back from them.

As for Vokle, I think we might be open to that in the future. This meeting
was the first of its kind for us, so we were testing the waters a little
bit. As we figure out a template for an in-person research meeting, I think
we would be open to trying an online meeting like that. One of our big
questions at that point would be how tough it is to set up and how many
people we would expect to attend.

Best,
Alexander

On Thu, Sep 1, 2011 at 3:41 PM, Vipul Naik <vipul@math.uchicago.edu> wrote:

> **
>
>
> Also, I'm wondering if, in the future, it may be useful for GiveWell
> to have a virtual online meeting. This can allow a much larger
> potential audience to participate, and cuts down on the travel costs
> involved, so it could be done more frequently and with less need for
> extensive planning. I've found that this website has a good
> infrastructure for virtual meetings of this kind:
>
> http://www.vokle.com
>
> For instance, this meeting:
>
> http://www.vokle.com/series/8581-the-seasteading-institute-town-hall
>
> Vipul
>
> * Quoting Vipul Naik who at 2011-09-01 14:35:48+0000 (Thu) wrote
>
> > Dear Elie,
> >
> > Thank you for sharing the recording of the meeting. Unfortunately,
> > there are some parts of the recording where I'm having trouble
> > deciphering what was said due to the static accompanying some of the
> > recorded speakers. Although I can understand what was said with some
> > effort, I'm wondering if it may be possible to:
> >
> > (i) use some noise cancellation software to prepare a version with
> > less static noise throughout
> >
> > and/or
> >
> > (ii) prepare a transcript using some transcript-creating software with
> > human editing.
> >
> > If anybody else on this mailing list has a noise cancellation software
> > or transcript creation software that they can use to process the audio
> > recording, that would also be great.
> >
> > Thanks,
> >
> > Vipul
> >
> > * Quoting Elie Hassenfeld who at 2011-08-31 12:06:40+0000 (Wed) wrote
> > > On August 18th, we convened a meeting of approximately 30 supporters to
> > > discuss our research. The goal of the event was to have an open-ended
> > > discussion about our recommendations and reasoning, which could be a
> better
> > > opportunity to engage with and critique our work than just reading the
> > > website.
> > >
> > > We've posted the audio from the meeting along with the attachment we
> sent
> > > out to participants beforehand. The attachment includes an update on
> the
> > > organizations we're considering or have considered for a top rating
> this
> > > year.
> > >
> > > We've redacted some organization-specific information both in the audio
> and
> > > in the attachment because we don't yet have permission to make it
> public.
> > >
> > > Note also that we've continued our research since we held the meeting,
> so
> > > the information below is up-to-date as of August 18th.
> > >
> > > - Attachment:
> > >
> http://www.givewell.org/files/ClearFund/Research%20meeting%202011%2008%2018/Handout%20for%20GiveWell%20Meeting%202011%2008%2018%20-%20public%
> <
> http://www.givewell.org/files/ClearFund/Research%20meeting%202011%2008%2018/Handout%20for%20GiveWell%20Meeting%202011%2008%2018%20-%20public%20version.pdf
> >
> > > 20version.pdf<
> http://www.givewell.org/files/ClearFund/Research%20meeting%202011%2008%2018/Handout%20for%20GiveWell%20Meeting%202011%2008%2018%20-%20public%20version.pdf
> >
> > > - Audio:
> > >
> http://www.givewell.org/files/ClearFund/Research%20meeting%202011%2008%2018/Research%20event%20Aug%202011%20final.mp3
> > >
> > > Best,
> > > Elie
>
>  
>

We received the questions below from Vipul Naik, who is currently acting
as our ombudsman <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/givewell/message/290> ,
about our recommendation of VillageReach. We respond in-line below in
bold.
---------------------------

(1) As of now, what is the funding gap level at which you will stop
recommending VillageReach as your top rated charity? The funding gap in
your August-end update is stated as $965,000. If the funding gap falls
to something like $100,000 or below, will you stop recommending
VillageReach as your top charity? As I see it, there are the following
issues: (a) even without your "top" recommendation, VillageReach may be
able to raise the required small funding gap, (b) a small funding gap
means continued accountability to the donors who need to fill in that
gap.

Our estimate of VillageReach's funding gap has not significantly changed
since our last update. We intend to our list of top-rated charities in
mid-November. We believe it is highly unlikely that VillageReach will
fill its funding gap fully by that time (or reduce it significantly, as
a large proportion of donations generally come in in December). If it
did so and ran out of room for more funding, we would cease to recommend
VillageReach as our #1-ranked charity.
Our research is ongoing and we do not yet know which organizations will
be on the updated list and in what order, but we expect that
VillageReach will be replaced by an organization with more pressing
funding needs when we update our list of top-rated charities. Therefore,
we expect that VillageReach will continue to have a moderately-sized
funding gap for the Mozambique project as a whole, though not for its
operations in 2012-2013.

Regardless of the size of VillageReach's funding gap and where it ranks
on our site, we will continue to post quarterly updates on its progress
and hold it accountable for the information it has promised to share,
including reports, every 6 months, from each province it is working in,
with data on vaccine stock-outs among other performance information.

Note that our estimation of VillageReach's funding gap incorporates
future expected revenues from foundations and individuals (of an
estimated $850,000 per year), which VillageReach believes it will raise
without a GiveWell recommendation.

(2) With your _current_ level of knowledge, what charity will take the
place of VillageReach as the top rated charity? For instance, if
VillageReach closed (or nearly closed) its entire funding gap today,
what charity would you recommend as the top rated charity?

We'd prefer not to say at this time.
    * Our target for publishing new recommendations is Thanksgiving,
which is when we expect our money moved to rise substantially. It's not
feasible for us to update recommendations in real-time.
    * As we work toward this deadline, we're investigating several
contenders, but haven't concluded our investigations of any. Thus, we
have instincts about which charities are likely to end up top-rated, but
any of these could easily end up non-recommended by the time our
investigation concludes.
    * We have drafts of reviews, and charity materials, that are
factoring into our decisions and that charities haven't yet cleared us
to publish (consistent with our policies at
http://givewell.org/for-charities <http://givewell.org/for-charities> )
(3) Related to (1): If VillageReach closes or almost closes its funding
gap, will you continue to do evaluations/updates on VillageReach's
progress in Mozambique, to better get a retrospective idea on how well
it is turning out? If so, will they have an incentive to cooperate with
you?

Yes (see above). VillageReach has pre-committed to sharing regular
reports with us, and we would publicly announce any failures to comply
with these commitments. In addition to having a strong track record of
transparency and accountability that we believe indicates that
VillageReach will honor these commitments, we expect that VillageReach
will want to raise money in the future for both the Mozambique project
and future projects and that it will be sensitive to maintaining a
strong reputation.

(4) Assuming that you stop recommending VillageReach as your top rated
charity but continue to recommend it as a charity with a small funding
gap that is worthwhile to donate to, what volume of donations do you
expect will continue to go to them? Assuming that you stop recommending
them altogether, do you expect them to close their funding gap?

At current projections, VillageReach will continue to have a moderate
funding gap (of a few hundred thousand dollars) for longer-term
operations in Mozambique (2014 and beyond). In the past, charities that
were highly ranked on our site, but not #1, have raised fairly small
amounts as a result of our recommendation
(http://www.givewell.org/about/impact
<http://www.givewell.org/about/impact> ), though the magnitude of these
donations will likely increase if our overall influence continues to
increase.

It is important to us that VillageReach eventually raises the funds it
needs to implement its Mozambique project. We will continue to monitor
both VillageReach's progress and its need for more funding and may chose
to recommend it highly again in the future if we believe it once again
has a pressing need for funds to close its gap.
----------------------------
Natalie StoneResearch Analyst

Hi Vipul,

The audio was too poor for www.scribie.com to transcribe, but we ended up
getting it transcribed by Speechpad, another similar service. The transcript
is extremely rough, and we haven't edited it at all, but for those who don't
want to listen to the whole 2 hour audio, it may be helpful. Just as an
example, Josh Rosenberg introducing himself is transcribed as "Dr. William
Greg"; Stephanie Wykstra is transcribed as "Debbie Whitska."

If anyone is interested in cleaning the transcript to match the audio more
closely, please let us know.

Best,
Alexander

On Wed, Sep 7, 2011 at 4:12 PM, Alexander Berger <alexander.is@...>wrote:

> Dear Vipul,
>
> We'd be happy for others to take a stab at cleaning up the audio, but we
> didn't have much luck with the free tools we tried. We have traditionally
> used Audacity, a piece of freeware, for editing audio of board meetings, and
> also used that for the research meeting. We tried using the noise-reduction
> filter, but did not find improved results.
>
> We decided to try to get a transcript of the audio of the board meeting
> from www.scribie.com, an audio transcription outsourcing company. If
> anyone has experience with them or another transcription company, we'd love
> to hear it. We'll send along the transcript when we get it back from them.
>
> As for Vokle, I think we might be open to that in the future. This meeting
> was the first of its kind for us, so we were testing the waters a little
> bit. As we figure out a template for an in-person research meeting, I think
> we would be open to trying an online meeting like that. One of our big
> questions at that point would be how tough it is to set up and how many
> people we would expect to attend.
>
> Best,
> Alexander
>
> On Thu, Sep 1, 2011 at 3:41 PM, Vipul Naik <vipul@...>wrote:
>
>> **
>>
>>
>> Also, I'm wondering if, in the future, it may be useful for GiveWell
>> to have a virtual online meeting. This can allow a much larger
>> potential audience to participate, and cuts down on the travel costs
>> involved, so it could be done more frequently and with less need for
>> extensive planning. I've found that this website has a good
>> infrastructure for virtual meetings of this kind:
>>
>> http://www.vokle.com
>>
>> For instance, this meeting:
>>
>> http://www.vokle.com/series/8581-the-seasteading-institute-town-hall
>>
>> Vipul
>>
>> * Quoting Vipul Naik who at 2011-09-01 14:35:48+0000 (Thu) wrote
>>
>> > Dear Elie,
>> >
>> > Thank you for sharing the recording of the meeting. Unfortunately,
>> > there are some parts of the recording where I'm having trouble
>> > deciphering what was said due to the static accompanying some of the
>> > recorded speakers. Although I can understand what was said with some
>> > effort, I'm wondering if it may be possible to:
>> >
>> > (i) use some noise cancellation software to prepare a version with
>> > less static noise throughout
>> >
>> > and/or
>> >
>> > (ii) prepare a transcript using some transcript-creating software with
>> > human editing.
>> >
>> > If anybody else on this mailing list has a noise cancellation software
>> > or transcript creation software that they can use to process the audio
>> > recording, that would also be great.
>> >
>> > Thanks,
>> >
>> > Vipul
>> >
>> > * Quoting Elie Hassenfeld who at 2011-08-31 12:06:40+0000 (Wed) wrote
>> > > On August 18th, we convened a meeting of approximately 30 supporters
>> to
>> > > discuss our research. The goal of the event was to have an open-ended
>> > > discussion about our recommendations and reasoning, which could be a
>> better
>> > > opportunity to engage with and critique our work than just reading the
>> > > website.
>> > >
>> > > We've posted the audio from the meeting along with the attachment we
>> sent
>> > > out to participants beforehand. The attachment includes an update on
>> the
>> > > organizations we're considering or have considered for a top rating
>> this
>> > > year.
>> > >
>> > > We've redacted some organization-specific information both in the
>> audio and
>> > > in the attachment because we don't yet have permission to make it
>> public.
>> > >
>> > > Note also that we've continued our research since we held the meeting,
>> so
>> > > the information below is up-to-date as of August 18th.
>> > >
>> > > - Attachment:
>> > >
>> http://www.givewell.org/files/ClearFund/Research%20meeting%202011%2008%2018/Handout%20for%20GiveWell%20Meeting%202011%2008%2018%20-%20public%
>> <
>> http://www.givewell.org/files/ClearFund/Research%20meeting%202011%2008%2018/Handout%20for%20GiveWell%20Meeting%202011%2008%2018%20-%20public%20version.pdf
>> >
>> > > 20version.pdf<
>> http://www.givewell.org/files/ClearFund/Research%20meeting%202011%2008%2018/Handout%20for%20GiveWell%20Meeting%202011%2008%2018%20-%20public%20version.pdf
>> >
>> > > - Audio:
>> > >
>> http://www.givewell.org/files/ClearFund/Research%20meeting%202011%2008%2018/Research%20event%20Aug%202011%20final.mp3
>> > >
>> > > Best,
>> > > Elie
>>
>>  
>>
>
>

Hi Alexander,

I will try to work on making improvements for the transcript and send
you an updated version in a couple of days.

Thanks for getting a transcript done.

Vipul

* Quoting Alexander Berger who at 2011-09-21 19:51:31+0000 (Wed) wrote
> Hi Vipul,
> 
> The audio was too poor for www.scribie.com to transcribe, but we ended up
> getting it transcribed by Speechpad, another similar service. The transcript
> is extremely rough, and we haven't edited it at all, but for those who don't
> want to listen to the whole 2 hour audio, it may be helpful. Just as an
> example, Josh Rosenberg introducing himself is transcribed as "Dr. William
> Greg"; Stephanie Wykstra is transcribed as "Debbie Whitska."
> 
> If anyone is interested in cleaning the transcript to match the audio more
> closely, please let us know.
> 
> Best,
> Alexander
> 
> On Wed, Sep 7, 2011 at 4:12 PM, Alexander Berger <alexander.is@...>wrote:
> 
> > Dear Vipul,
> >
> > We'd be happy for others to take a stab at cleaning up the audio, but we
> > didn't have much luck with the free tools we tried. We have traditionally
> > used Audacity, a piece of freeware, for editing audio of board meetings, and
> > also used that for the research meeting. We tried using the noise-reduction
> > filter, but did not find improved results.
> >
> > We decided to try to get a transcript of the audio of the board meeting
> > from www.scribie.com, an audio transcription outsourcing company. If
> > anyone has experience with them or another transcription company, we'd love
> > to hear it. We'll send along the transcript when we get it back from them.
> >
> > As for Vokle, I think we might be open to that in the future. This meeting
> > was the first of its kind for us, so we were testing the waters a little
> > bit. As we figure out a template for an in-person research meeting, I think
> > we would be open to trying an online meeting like that. One of our big
> > questions at that point would be how tough it is to set up and how many
> > people we would expect to attend.
> >
> > Best,
> > Alexander
> >
> > On Thu, Sep 1, 2011 at 3:41 PM, Vipul Naik <vipul@...>wrote:
> >
> >> **
> >>
> >>
> >> Also, I'm wondering if, in the future, it may be useful for GiveWell
> >> to have a virtual online meeting. This can allow a much larger
> >> potential audience to participate, and cuts down on the travel costs
> >> involved, so it could be done more frequently and with less need for
> >> extensive planning. I've found that this website has a good
> >> infrastructure for virtual meetings of this kind:
> >>
> >> http://www.vokle.com
> >>
> >> For instance, this meeting:
> >>
> >> http://www.vokle.com/series/8581-the-seasteading-institute-town-hall
> >>
> >> Vipul
> >>
> >> * Quoting Vipul Naik who at 2011-09-01 14:35:48+0000 (Thu) wrote
> >>
> >> > Dear Elie,
> >> >
> >> > Thank you for sharing the recording of the meeting. Unfortunately,
> >> > there are some parts of the recording where I'm having trouble
> >> > deciphering what was said due to the static accompanying some of the
> >> > recorded speakers. Although I can understand what was said with some
> >> > effort, I'm wondering if it may be possible to:
> >> >
> >> > (i) use some noise cancellation software to prepare a version with
> >> > less static noise throughout
> >> >
> >> > and/or
> >> >
> >> > (ii) prepare a transcript using some transcript-creating software with
> >> > human editing.
> >> >
> >> > If anybody else on this mailing list has a noise cancellation software
> >> > or transcript creation software that they can use to process the audio
> >> > recording, that would also be great.
> >> >
> >> > Thanks,
> >> >
> >> > Vipul
> >> >
> >> > * Quoting Elie Hassenfeld who at 2011-08-31 12:06:40+0000 (Wed) wrote
> >> > > On August 18th, we convened a meeting of approximately 30 supporters
> >> to
> >> > > discuss our research. The goal of the event was to have an open-ended
> >> > > discussion about our recommendations and reasoning, which could be a
> >> better
> >> > > opportunity to engage with and critique our work than just reading the
> >> > > website.
> >> > >
> >> > > We've posted the audio from the meeting along with the attachment we
> >> sent
> >> > > out to participants beforehand. The attachment includes an update on
> >> the
> >> > > organizations we're considering or have considered for a top rating
> >> this
> >> > > year.
> >> > >
> >> > > We've redacted some organization-specific information both in the
> >> audio and
> >> > > in the attachment because we don't yet have permission to make it
> >> public.
> >> > >
> >> > > Note also that we've continued our research since we held the meeting,
> >> so
> >> > > the information below is up-to-date as of August 18th.
> >> > >
> >> > > - Attachment:
> >> > >
> >> http://www.givewell.org/files/ClearFund/Research%20meeting%202011%2008%2018/Handout%20for%20GiveWell%20Meeting%202011%2008%2018%20-%20public%
> >> <
> >> http://www.givewell.org/files/ClearFund/Research%20meeting%202011%2008%2018/Handout%20for%20GiveWell%20Meeting%202011%2008%2018%20-%20public%20version.pdf
> >> >
> >> > > 20version.pdf<
> >> http://www.givewell.org/files/ClearFund/Research%20meeting%202011%2008%2018/Handout%20for%20GiveWell%20Meeting%202011%2008%2018%20-%20public%20version.pdf
> >> >
> >> > > - Audio:
> >> > >
> >> http://www.givewell.org/files/ClearFund/Research%20meeting%202011%2008%2018/Research%20event%20Aug%202011%20final.mp3
> >> > >
> >> > > Best,
> >> > > Elie
> >>
> >>  
> >>
> >
> >

Hi everyone,

Vipul was kind enough to clean up the first 80 minutes of the transcript.
His version, with changes accepted, is attached. Thanks Vipul!

Best,
Alexander

We received the questions below from Andreas Mogensen of Giving What We Can
about our current recommendation of microfinance charities. Our reply
follows his email below.

--

Dear GiveWell,



My name is Andreas Mogensen; I am working with Giving What We Can,
researching the cost-effectiveness of microfinance charities. As you know,
we at Giving What We Can have enormous respect for the work done by
GiveWell, and I have found material from your website and blog to be very
helpful to my research. However, I do have some questions about your views
and recommendations regarding microfinance charities. I was hoping that you
might be able to help me with these queries.


My principle concern is this. Amongst your top-rated international
charities, two are microcredit providers: Small Enterprise Foundation
(ranked 4th) and Chamroeun (ranked 6th). Given the state of academic
research on the cost-effectiveness of microcredit, this struck me as
surprising. Summarizing this research, Duvendack et al. (2011) write that
“it is widely acknowledged that no well-known study robustly shows any
strong impacts of microfinance” (2) and conclude that “there is no good
evidence to support the claim that microfinance has a beneficial effect on
the well-being of poor people or empowers women.” (75) Therefore, it is
surprising to me that you would recommend two microfinance charities amongst
your top six.


I am particularly surprised that both Small Enterprise Foundation and
Chamroeun would be rated as being of ‘Moderate’ cost-effectiveness; given no
clear evidence of positive impacts, I would have assumed that the
cost-effectiveness of any microcredit provider was more or less unproven. My
inclination has been to recommend against regarding any microfinance
charities as amongst the most cost-effective, due to the paucity of proven
benefits. But since GiveWell ranks two such organizations very highly, I am
worried that my research has overlooked something very important. I am
therefore curious as to how GiveWell evaluates the cost-effectiveness of
giving to Small Enterprise Foundation or Chamroeun. More exactly, I am
interested in how GiveWell understands the benefits provided by these
organizations, in evaluating their cost-effectiveness. Is it, for example,
in terms of increased income resulting from access to microcredit? (If so,
how is this determined?)


Thank you in advance for taking the time to read and (hopefully!) respond to
my questions.



Kind regards,

Andreas Mogensen

Reference:

Duvendack M, Palmer-Jones R, Copestake JG, Hooper L, Loke Y, Rao N (2011)
What is the evidence of the impact of microfinance on the well-being of poor
people? London: EPPI-Centre, Social Science Research Unit, Institute of
Education, University of London.

--

Dear Andreas,

Thanks for your email.

When we updated our list of top charities (last fall), we aimed to create a
"menu" of top charities in a variety of causes. Accordingly, it was
important to us to rate the charities that we found promising in causes we
had investigated--economic empowerment, for instance--even if we did not
find them to be the *most promising overall*. In our February series of blog
posts<http://blog.givewell.org/2011/02/04/givewells-annual-self-evaluation-and-plan-a-big-picture-change-in-priorities/>
laying
out our 2010 annual review and plans for 2011, we announced that we no
longer aim to create such a "menu," and are instead focusing on finding more
outstanding giving opportunities, whether or not they are in different
causes. Part of the reason for that shift, mentioned in the blog post I
linked to, is that the vast majority of funding given based on our
recommendations last year went to our top-rated international health
charities. We expect to have a new rating scheme of some sort in place
before the beginning of December.

If our current rating system has led you to believe that donations to our
fourth- or sixth-rated international charities (which work on economic
empowerment) are comparable to our first- or third-rated international
charities (which work on global health), I apologize. That is not our
intent.

More substantively, however, as I hope our reviews of SEF and Chamroeun make
clear, we recommend them because we believe that financial services that
poor people opt to purchase have a fairly low burden of proof, not because
we believe that there is convincing evidence showing that microloans
ameliorate poverty (we don't believe there is such evidence). I think the
best place to find our view on how microfinance can help is
this<http://givewell.org/international/economic-empowerment/microfinance/detail#Howmicrofinancehelpspeople>
review
of microfinance evidence. Although the evidence is outdated, the discussion
of how microfinance helps people (essentially consumption smoothing) remains
relevant. Our view about this is driven more by the fact that relatively
poor (but rarely the poorest) people continue to take out loans at high
interest rates, rather than by academic studies.

Re: the Duvendack review, I'd encourage you to read David Roodman's
response<http://blogs.cgdev.org/open_book/2011/08/i-failed-to-seriously-consider-the-limitations-of-microfinance-as-a-poverty-reduction-approach.php>
and
the comment thread if you haven't yet.

Best,
Alexander

-- 
Alexander Berger
Research Analyst
www.GiveWell.org <http://www.givewell.org/>

The email below contains a few questions from Jacob Pekarek and GiveWell's
answers. Thanks to Jacob for giving us permission to post!

Best,
Alexander

On Wed, Nov 2, 2011 at 6:19 PM, Jacob Pekarek <jpekarek@...> wrote:

> Dear Givewell,
>
>
>
> I would be interested to learn more about your analysis of errors in the
> DCP2 report on deworming, examine your position on fistulas and NTD's, and
> inquire about Givewell's philosophy of preventing suffering. I am a student
> at Trinity University, and am interested in Givewell's evaluations for the
> purposes of my own giving, and for the end of researching the most
> effective NGO's working in the third world. I am familiar with the
> philosophies and work of Givewell-- as to my questions on fistulas, I have
> read an earlier Givewell email exchange between Elie, and Jeremy, a teacher
> interested in donating to charities working towards the removal of
> obstetric fistula. I shall expand on these questions below.
>
>
>
> First, I am generally having trouble understanding how I should interpret
> the "Givewell Cost Effectiveness Analysis" on the DCP2 deworming report.
> Specifically, the values of "prop b" within the "ascariasis" and "a.3" tabs
> are different-- I realize that this may be a result of a correction, but I
> would like to ask where I can reference the data which necessitates this
> change. I am still struggling to explain to myself how this flowchart
> disproves the DCP2 cost effectiveness efforts for deworming interventions.
> Nevertheless, my questions on Givewell's philosophy are of more importance
> than my questioning of how to make sense of the DCP2 data and errors.
>

The "prop B" cells change as a result of a correction. The rationale is
explained in our blog
post<http://blog.givewell.org/2011/09/29/errors-in-dcp2-cost-effectiveness-estimate-for-deworming/>
:

The figure in the “A/B” column refers number of people *at risk* for a
given symptom, not the number of people *suffering from* that symptom.
These are equivalent for Type A and Type C symptoms, but not for Type B
symptoms including CIDTA. *Intestinal Nematode
Infections*<http://www.givewell.org/files/DWDA%202009/Interventions/Deworming/Bundy%20Chan%20Medley%20Jamison%20de%20Silva%20Saviola%20Intestinal%20Nematode%20Infections.pdf>
(PDF),
the working paper that contains Table 9, says that “in any annual cohort of
heavily infected children some 5% suffer [Type B symptoms, which are the
only symptoms that have life-long effects]” (p. 26). Using the figures as
the official calculation did would therefore lead to a 20x overstatement in
the prevalence of CIDTA.

This mistake applies not just to cognitive impairment due to ascariasis,
but also to cognitive impairment due to trichuriasis and hookworms,
similarly leading to a 20x overstatement of the prevalence of cognitive
impairment due to those infections as well.


The basic idea is that the 'ascariasis' (and 'trichuriasis' and 'hookworm')
tab(s) assume that the same number of people have symptom B as have symptom
A, but that's the result of a misreading of the source table.


To your more general point that this flowchart doesn't disprove the DCP2
calculation, you're definitely right. The spreadsheet shows the corrections
to the calculation, but does not explain or justify them. The blog
post<http://blog.givewell.org/2011/09/29/errors-in-dcp2-cost-effectiveness-estimate-for-deworming/>
is
the place to go for that.


>
> Secondly, the presence of errors within the report on deworming leads me
> to question if the analysis of simpler, health based interventions could
> yield more meaningful results than the analysis of harder to measure
> interventions such as vaccinations, or deworming schemes. In other words,
> should one's prior be adjusted to reflect not only one's knowledge of
> organizations which specialize in a given intervention, but the tendency of
> analyses of these organizations (or interventions) to be flawed?
>
>
>  My question is this: "Does the ease of evaluating the impact of
> interventions with clear results mean that these evaluations should be
> given greater consideration over evaluations of interventions with less
> clear results?" Specifically, do interventions to provide surgeries which
> remove obstetric fistulas deserve more consideration, relative to deworming
> interventions, or interventions which provide vaccination against NTD's? I,
> for one, think that guessing the past prevalence of a soil- transmitted
> helminth in any region, once mass school based deworming programs have been
> administered, would be a challenge; successful fistula surgeries seem
> easier to track than successfully dewormed patients, in my opinion.
>
>
>

I think that the basic answer to your question is yes, with caveats. I
don't think we should totally discount morbidities or interventions that
are difficult to measure, but quality of evaluation is a definite
consideration in favor of some causes. I don't think, though, that this is
an especially good reason to prefer fistula operations to vaccines. Because
most of the diseases that vaccines fight kill people (especially children),
they are remarkably well-quantified and understood relative to many other
interventions. Although the effects of vaccines are more dispersed than a
fistula surgery, I don't think that they have less "clear results." As
Holden has written<http://blog.givewell.org/2011/08/18/why-we-cant-take-expected-value-estimates-literally-even-when-theyre-unbiased/>,
confidence in your evidence is definitely something that should affect your
considered view of the cost-effectiveness of a charity.


>  Granted, there are many uncertainties and unseen costs which may apply
> to both interventions dealing with fistulas, and those dealing with
> vaccinations or deworming. The adjustments for the weight which different
> impairments carry (in terms of DALY's) are even a matter of contention.
> Still, I wonder if the (lack of?) ability of those whose fistulas are
> removed to re-involve themselves in village life is considered in the DALY
> handicap for fistula patients.
>
>
>
 Lastly, I have one question on Givewell's philosophy of the prevention of
> suffering. Is the preferred outcome of the prevention of suffering to
> uplift those who are suffering in a way that enhances their social
> mobility, or to ease the suffering of those who suffer the most? (This is
> assuming that either option would result in a roughly equal net reduction
> of suffering).
>
>
>

I don't think we have a definite view. We try to avoid answering
philosophical questions until we reach a point where we need to in order to
make charitable decisions, and we haven't yet on this question. That said,
I think this blog
post<http://blog.givewell.org/2011/04/29/internal-debate-on-the-goals-of-giving-to-charity/>
might
be of interest.


>  Thank you for taking the time to read this extensive email, and my
> thanks also for the work you have done in researching and scrutinizing the
> charities which do the most to prevent suffering in the third world.
>
>
>
> Best regards,
>  Jacob Pekarek
>



-- 
Alexander Berger
Research Analyst
www.GiveWell.org

We held a conference call with donors and board members on November 21 to
discuss the new research we planned to release a week later.

The transcript from that call is available at
http:www.givewell.org/files/calls/November
21, 2011.doc and it is also attached to this email.

Please note:

   - This conversation represented our views at the time; our report was
   not finalized at that point, and we have changed some of our views since.
   - We have redacted the transcript in several places to remove
   information that either could easily be misinterpreted or we can't post
   online.
   - The transcript is "rough." We have not taken the time to clean it and
   therefore there are some sections where the transcription service may have
   missed words or transcribed the wrong words. We have reviewed the
   transcript and these instances appear minor to us.

It's our impression that most people would prefer to review a written
transcript instead of listening to the audio. It's also the case that
redacting the audio file (to redact sections we don't want to post
publicly) would take more work than editing the transcript. That said, if
anyone is particularly interested in listening to the audio, please let us
know so we can determine whether it makes sense to clean and post the audio
as well.

We're holding another call tonight at 7pm EST. If you'd like to join, you
can submit the form at http://www.givewell.org/conference-call-dec-8-2011 and
we'll send you call-in details.

Thanks,
Elie

On Thu, Dec 8, 2011 at 12:58 PM, Elie Hassenfeld <elie@...> wrote:

> It's our impression that most people would prefer to review a written
> transcript instead of listening to the audio. It's also the case that
> redacting the audio file (to redact sections we don't want to post
> publicly) would take more work than editing the transcript. That said, if
> anyone is particularly interested in listening to the audio, please let us
> know so we can determine whether it makes sense to clean and post the audio
> as well.



FWIW, transcripts are also much easier for deaf or hard of hearing (like
myself). Anyway, I found this part interesting:

> 1:10:09 EH: And the final thing I'll say on the topic and let Holden
touch on this, is to just... Basically, we're a community and the research
we don't have any really like proactive plans to do anything. And we've
given press releases in the past, we haven't seen much of that. We do
continue to manage our AdWords account, which is Google AdWords, which is
advertising in Google Search which we found to be one of the most direct
ways to find people that are searching for the type of research that we're
doing. Holden, did you want to add anything to the marketing PR?

Is there any consolidated discussion of this? I searched and I see Adwords
mentioned in various places on the site (budgets etc.), but nothing
significant.

-- 
gwern
http://www.gwern.net

Hi Gwern,

There's no consolidated discussion of marketing/PR. We're planning to do
our normal annual review and plan in January which will go into our plans
for 2012 for research and marketing, and we're thinking of holding a
"GiveWell strategy" conference call to discuss issues like our plans for
marketing.

That's something we'll schedule in January.

Best,
Elie

On Thu, Dec 8, 2011 at 5:20 PM, Gwern Branwen <gwern0@...> wrote:

> **
>
>
> On Thu, Dec 8, 2011 at 12:58 PM, Elie Hassenfeld <elie@...>wrote:
>
>> It's our impression that most people would prefer to review a written
>> transcript instead of listening to the audio. It's also the case that
>> redacting the audio file (to redact sections we don't want to post
>> publicly) would take more work than editing the transcript. That said, if
>> anyone is particularly interested in listening to the audio, please let us
>> know so we can determine whether it makes sense to clean and post the audio
>> as well.
>
>
>
> FWIW, transcripts are also much easier for deaf or hard of hearing (like
> myself). Anyway, I found this part interesting:
>
> > 1:10:09 EH: And the final thing I'll say on the topic and let Holden
> touch on this, is to just... Basically, we're a community and the research
> we don't have any really like proactive plans to do anything. And we've
> given press releases in the past, we haven't seen much of that. We do
> continue to manage our AdWords account, which is Google AdWords, which is
> advertising in Google Search which we found to be one of the most direct
> ways to find people that are searching for the type of research that we're
> doing. Holden, did you want to add anything to the marketing PR?
>
> Is there any consolidated discussion of this? I searched and I see Adwords
> mentioned in various places on the site (budgets etc.), but nothing
> significant.
>
> --
> gwern
> http://www.gwern.net
>
>  
>

These are available at http://givewell.org/conference-call/history

The main change in this call from the previous one is that we ultimately
ranked AMF #1 and SCI #2. This blog post gives more explanation:
http://blog.givewell.org/2011/12/08/deciding-between-two-outstanding-charities/

Best,
Elie

I'm seeing an uptick in interest in anti-slavery charities after
Google's recent donations. Perhaps this would be a fruitful area of
research for GiveWell?

- Brian

The page on IJM (mentioned in the article) says,

We investigated International Justice Mission but found they were
ineligible for our review because of one of the following reasons:


   - *Scope* - the charity's program was outside the scope of areas we
      planned to cover (e.g., slavery, refugees, orphans and other abandoned
      children) or focused on research or advocacy as opposed to
direct provision
      of services.

http://givewell.org/International/charities/International-Justice-Mission


Is there any discussion (perhaps a blog post) of why these issues were not
targeted?  I can guess that they are assumed to be much less cost-effective
than other efforts (e.g. international health-related ones), but I don't
remember coming across that reasoning explicitly stated somewhere.

-Eric

On Sat, Dec 31, 2011 at 12:38 PM, Brian Slesinsky <bslesinsky@...>wrote:

> **
>
>
> I'm seeing an uptick in interest in anti-slavery charities after
> Google's recent donations. Perhaps this would be a fruitful area of
> research for GiveWell?
>
> - Brian
>  
>