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gregconen comments on The Craigslist Revolution: a real-world application of torture vs. dust specks OR How I learned to stop worrying and create one billion dollars out of nothing - Less Wrong
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I think it ought to be something unimaginative but reliable, like clean water or vaccines to third world countries. I can't find it at the moment but there's a highly reputable charity that provides clean drinking water to African communities. IIRC they estimated that every $400 or so saved the life of a child. A billion dollars into such a charity - saving 2.5 million children - isn't a difficult PR sell.
The problem is not finding an effective, productive, and reputable charity. There are plenty out there (even if a majority are not). It's finding a charity than can effectively and productively use an extra billion dollars. Many charities don't have the oversight and planning infrastructure to use a windfall of that size.
There is an obvious solution to this: fund multiple charities.
Philanthropy by Americans alone is about $300 billion per year. The guesstimated annual cashflow here is less than one-thousandth of that.
Most of that is given to churches, hospitals, rich-country education, etc. Much, much less is given to overseas public health aid, and less of that to efficient programs.
Mimicking the Gates Foundation grants to GAVI could absorb a lot, but would risk missing a lot of the potential to use this to promote more efficient giving.