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slutbunwaller comments on Open thread, Oct. 13 - Oct. 19, 2014 - Less Wrong
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I posted this last week but was too late to get any responses, so I'm reposting:
I want to change which charities I donate to, and am looking for transparent, accountable, secular (or at least non-evangelical) Canadian charities that promote democracy, social reform, infrastructure building, rationality, humanism, education, scientific progress, similar principles. Any suggestions for charities worth investigating, or at least a group/organization/website that can help me find what I'm looking for? In the past I haven't properly researched this sort of thing so I'm short on resources.
So far I've taken a closer look at Oxfam and Doctors Without Borders
(I might remind one of you that disagreement isn't grounds for downvoting all my posts)
Amnesty, UNICEF, Bill and Linda Gates Foundation, as far as mainstream charities go. I believe they all have specific Canadian divisions if you are worried about tax reasons.
Some others you might check out are Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, Canada Without Poverty, Equiterre, Canadian Council For International Cooperation, Tides Canada, CoDevelopment. I had a longer list but misplaced it.
I also strongly suggest you research each charity on your own instead of depending on whether or not a ranking website tells you it is good.
Givewell already analyzes the effectiveness of various charities, so I'd start there.
I don't agree with their emphasis on direct cash transfers. It reminds me of the Canadian Revenue Agency's statement that "preventing poverty is not charity, only relieving it." Givewell has always struck me as being more concerned about balancing one's karma than actually causing lasting improvement anywhere. That's just my perception, though.
It's really hard to measure lasting improvements, which does bias the choice of interventions Givewell considers, but they endorse direct transfers because it has been shown to be more effective at lasting improvements than other things they've considered.
Lasting improvements for whom? Measured how?
Not addressing the underlying issues means there is no stem to the "supply" (so to speak) of people requiring charitable help.
They measured the outcomes of cash transfers by asking them tons of questions about their happiness and their increase in assets a year later. Happiness questions include things like "how often in the last week have you felt hopeless?"; "How often in the last week have you felt happy?"; "How would you rate your satisfaction with life as whole?". It increased their happiness (which I think as a utilitarian is the most important outcome) as well as increased their assets a year later.
Deworming has also been found to impact income many years later. And increasing income is just another way of saying pulling out of poverty, albeit incrementally.
The question of getting to root causes is appealing and I used to be interested in this but the unfortunate truth of the matter is that nobody really has the answer. Economics is insanely complicated. In studies where you retroactively see whether economists predictions came true, the economists didn't do better than chance. So given that we don't know the root cause, but we do have interventions that provide long-lasting effects, we should focus on those.
You might be (probably are not) right, but it is definitely something that requires research instead of just taking their word for it.
While Givewell does recommend one charity that focuses on direct cash transfer not every charity recommended by Givewell does and Givewell analyses Charities in detail, so even if you don't agree with their conclusion reading their analysis of a particular charity can help you evaluate the charity.
They don't publish very long write-ups, it's more like a checklist of their particular criteria.
I do think the length of the analysis of GiveDirectly is fairly long (http://www.givewell.org/international/top-charities/give-directly). If you think that the recommendation of GiveDirectly is a mistake based on naive assumptions it makes sense to read the article.
I didn't say that, top level commenter did. I wish their evaluations of all charities were at least as detailed as that.
They would needs hundreds of staff if not more to do that.
Why do you want Canadian charities?
So that you can get a tax break or an employer match?
That makes your money about twice as effective, but changing charities often makes a much larger difference. So don't restrict to charities registered in Canada.
There are a few reasons. Part of it is that left-leaning Canadian charities have been under threat by our government recently, so there is a political element. Part of it is tax refunds. Part of it is that there are problems in our own country as well that need solving, not just in sub-Saharan Africa.
The effectiveness of different charities varies by orders of magnitude. I don't think tax refunds will make a notable difference.
Relvant xkcd comic. There will always be problems in your country. If you haven't gotten to the point where you'll start helping sub-Saharan Africa yet, when will you?
Relevant xkcd comic response: http://xkcd.com/871/
If you're suggesting that he donates to a not-as-good charity because he can't be a perfect altruist, I respond with purchase fuzzies and utilons separately. Sorry I couldn't find another xkcd comic for it.
That's a strong assumption regarding my charitable donation habits, of which you have no knowledge
What's the assumption? You just told me that you're planning on donating to a Canadian charity, and that it's because Canada still has problems. I suppose I assumed that you're only donating to one country. If not, there are further problems with your donation habits.
Again, weak simplification of things I didn't even say.
I was trying to guess what you meant. Can you just tell me? What was I assuming, and in what way was it false?
Based on the phrase "change which charities I donate to" I had assumed he or she was already donating to multiple charities, presumably including action in subsaharan africa.
Also can you explain the "magnitude" thing? I'm not sure I follow your definition of "effectiveness".
The money being donated to charities that are not in Sub-Saharan Africa would be better donated to charities that are. Even if that were not the case, that would just mean that the money that is donated to charities that are in Sub-Saharan Africa would be better donated to charities that are not. The money from a single donor isn't enough to change which continent you should donate to.
An order of magnitude is a power of ten.
Here's an example of what I mean.
The Seeing Eye trains dogs to help mitigate the effects of blindness for about $50,000 each. The Fred Hollows Foundation performs cataract surgeries to cure blindness for about 25$ each. It's not generally clear how to relate how much good two different charities are, but it is pretty obvious that a cataract surgery does more good than a guide dog, and for 2,000 times less. Thus, the Fred Hollows Foundation is more than three orders of magnitude more cost-effective than The Seeing Eye. Even if The Seeing Eye was tax-free and the Fred Hollows Foundation was taxed at 99.9%, it would be worth while to donate to The Seeing Eye.