What's an effective charity?

[zestyping]

Thinking about charities to support? Perhaps you have opinions? I think it's good to talk about this stuff openly, so we can learn from and encourage each other.
If you're curious or looking for ideas, these were my top picks in 2010:

• Partners in Health
• Second Harvest
• charity:water
• CAMFED
• Doctors Without Borders
• Project Respite 2.0
• Oxfam
• UNICEF

Comments

[dushai]

One topic I don't see discussed often is the question of what type of charities make the biggest impact in the long run. How do you decide whether to help feed the hungry vs. control a disease vs. promote education vs. save the environment? Most people tend to start with a cause in mind, and look for the organizations that are most effective at that cause. But if you have no attachment to any particular cause and you just want to do the most good in the world with your philanthropic dollar, what cause should one support

[almiqui]

I think you don't see this discussed often because there isn't much to discuss---we just don't have the tools to build a useful argument about whether trying to feed the hungry is better than trying to cure the sick. Development economics is far, far, far from an exact science, and I suspect it won't be much better by the time I die. Here's hoping, though?

[dushai]

It may be an inexact science, and hard data may be limited, but all that means is that definitive, incontrovertible, peer-reviewed conclusions can't be reached. The conversation that I had hoped would be more widespread would be (at its minimum) a discussion group of like-minded people who want maximum impact for their philanthropic dollar, or better yet, people who collectively have enough information to reach provisional conclusions such as "If you believe in Theory-Of-Change A, and you think Chain-Of-Events B is more likely then Chain-Of-Events C, then you probably want to support Cause D over Cause E."

Or "An argument can be made that supporting Cause J will help the world more than supporting Cause K, because your dollar will accomplish X, which will lead to improvement Y. On the other hand, here is the counter-argument for supporting Cause K over Cause J. Should I make my choice of J vs. K based on which of these two arguments I believe more, or does anyone know of a better argument for either cause?"

[almiqui]

Thanks for posting this! I've been thinking about exactly this kind of thing lately, so I'm glad you picked this week to write about it.

I'd never heard about Giving What We Can or Give Well before, and they both seem really interesting. Do you have any information about either org beyond what's on their web sites?

What do you think about the sock-puppet squick surrounding Give Well a few years ago? On one hand, the GW founders come out of that MetaFilter thread looking like total slimebuckets. On the other hand, the only reason I know about any of this is because it's featured prominently on GW---the MeFi thread is linked in Karnofsky's apology. And in the end, scam or not, it really does look like GW is doing solid research... I can't verify any of it myself, but it seems too detailed to be made up, and it would be incredibly useful if true. So who do I trust? MetaFilter or my lying eyes?

As for charities I like...
- Nothing But Nets looks good to me. I'm told that mosquito nets are dirt-cheap and proven to be effective, and I

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