Charities we’d like to see

http://blog.givewell.org/2015/10/15/charities-wed-like-to-see/

by BenjaminTodd • 11 years ago

99 17 11 years ago

blog.givewell.org

rdl2• 11 years ago

Not sure if it would be helpful, but I'd love to do a charity someday which focused on providing infrastructure services (power, communications, medical support (testing and other things to make local doctors more effective), logistics, data, maybe utility restoration) in disaster and especially conflict zones. Essentially what the US Military can accomplish on its own bases, as a service for other NGOs (easier) and for local population (harder). Being able to secure part of an airfield, run logistics and communications which are head ends for domestic infrastructure, would be a huge improvement in quality of life for the civilians stuck in these places.

There's a void in the NGO and commercial space between people who do good stuff, and people who can provide security and operate in denied areas. Some orgs like MSF can operate in semi-permissive environments, but not as well as states can. There are a lot of downsides to state involvement in this kind of thing -- unless you're neutral, it's really hard to get involved in a lot of conflicts, and states are pretty horrible at providing IT services in general, and have all kinds of incentives to scale too big/inefficiently.

thenipper2• 11 years ago

I don't have too much to say but you're on to something. I was at the Humtech conference in May and the Navy came in and said basically they're the only ones who can do what they do.

It'd be nice to have a non military option for that kind of operational support. The place where I work now can do some of that, but it's hard to convince donors to invest in those sort of "someday we'll need this" resource.

rdl2• 11 years ago

The nice thing is this gets easier all the time with tech, in that it requires a smaller footprint and thus physical security on the ground. I could run UAV communication relays, satcom, etc. over Syria right now, from bases in Kurdistan, with no personnel physically at risk, for <$10mm/yr.

roymurdock• 11 years ago

I worked for a company called Roshan in Afghanistan last summer. They're the largest telecom company in the country, as they were the first to risk buying the necessary gov contracts in 2003 after the US ousted in the Taliban.

Roshan's founder, Karim Khoja, was basically sent to build a telecom network in Afghanistan by his religious leader, the Aga Khan. The Aga Khan heads the Ismaili religion, which is a small (~25m) sect of Shia Muslims. He oversees the Aga Khan Development Network [1] which has both a non-profit and a for-profit arm that work together to build up developing economies. I know they're also pretty heavily involved in humanitarian efforts in Syria at the moment.

Roshan was well-managed and very successful. It employed a large number of awesome Afghans, and contributed a lot to an economy that had nothing else going for it besides war, opium, and rugs.

Just one example of an organization that is doing good things out there, especially in the war-torn middle east. Things might change for the worse now that the US/Europe is pulling out of Afghanistan and the Taliban/ISIS are coming back to power. At the end of the day it was the stability brought by the armed forces that allowed expats and investments to flow into the country.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aga_Khan_Fund_for_Economic_Dev...

pratyushag4• 11 years ago

My wife runs an early stage charity called New Incentives supported by Givewell, hoping to become a candidate for their top charity recommendation.

They use an evidence-backed model called conditional cash transfers. They give money to disadvantaged pregnant women when they achieve health goals that increase the probability of their child's survival (example: activities to reduce HIV transmission from mothers to babies).

The whole organization is a mobile-first organization using biometrics for verification (because technology is the best way to cut across corruption) and they work on many interesting operational challenges. The organization could really use the help of more engineers, especially Android app developers, to tackle some of these challenges.

If anyone is interested, please respond to this comment or ping me.

tgb2• 11 years ago

I have a (minor) concern that we here at HN are biased towards charities that are tech-oriented, hip app-developing to solve the world, versus a more mundane charity. Can you (or your wife) comment on that? Why does this charity need flashy tech? New tech comes with costs, like unreliability or unexpectedly high costs or extra training - any concern for that? Givewell's support is a significant confidence booster in this regards, but I think it's an interesting subject to discuss.

Best of luck to New Incentives.

(P.S. if you want to recruit in this thread, I'd specify if it's paid or volunteer and whether it's on-site or remote. Or anything else they have in Who's Hiring? threads.)

tormeh• 11 years ago

Tech is very effective in reducing corruption, because tech makes it possible to make for example bureaucrats and applicants unknowable to each other in simple cases, thereby making it harder to ask for, or give, money.

Online applications are a huge success, corruption-wise. So tech does really have something going on in a very meaningful amount of cases.

pratyushag4• 11 years ago

Great question! The key is in what way are we using tech. Our model, conditional cash transfers (CCTs), has been used for many years by governments in several contexts. We are not inventing anything new by any means. However, our manner of implementation is trying to innovate by reducing some of the biggest challenges these government programs face: corruption and accountability.

For example, without technology we'd be facing the same issue as the Nigerian government (the country we work in): ghost beneficiaries. By taking advantage of currently available biometric solutions, we reduce this and increase the likelihood that our money goes to real beneficiaries. We are wary of adopting technology unless it is absolutely necessary. Another way we use technology is to collect data in the field. We are working in remote, rural areas with high levels of rainfall so we use mobile apps to collect data. This helps reduce the amount of data compromised and also provides an additional layer of verification: by seeing timestamps and knowing exactly who edits what and when. This helps us maintain higher levels of accountability and identify early warning signs of potential fraud.

cuchoi• 11 years ago

Do you know if there is a good cost-effective/cost-benefit analysis for Conditional Cash Transfers? In the one that I have seen, CCTs do poorly. I would like to know why GiveWell is pushing in that direction.

nindalf• 11 years ago

Article from 2013 analysing and comparing Conditional Cash Transfers (CCTs) and Unconditional Cash Transfers (UCTs) - Pennies From Heaven (http://www.economist.com/news/international/21588385-giving-...). The evidence suggests that they're both pretty effective, and you would choose between the two depending on the initial conditions in the region and budget available.

There are benefits besides poverty-reduction. For example, this study by the World Bank (http://www-wds.worldbank.org/external/default/WDSContentServ...) concludes that CCTs reduce child labout.

pratyushag4• 11 years ago

Thanks for this question! You can find GiveWell's preliminary cost-effectiveness assessment of New Incentives in their writeup here: http://www.givewell.org/international/charities/new-incentiv....

It's important to note that GiveWell is not necessarily pushing in this direction yet. Instead, they are placing bets that they potentially think could have a huge payoff if done right.

CCTs can be very effective or completely ineffective. This is because the second "C" matters a lot. What the program conditions makes all the difference. If the program is focusing on incentivizing interventions that are not cost-effective, the CCT won't be cost-effective because the underlying focus is too costly. Another aspect is what the long-term effects of the program are when the incentive ends. In our case, we are focusing on HIV transmission from mothers to infants and neonatal death. Our temporary incentives have a long-lasting effect by saving a child from getting HIV or a newborn from dying. However, if you were to have a CCT for something that is not life or death and would be needed throughout one's lifetime, the cost would potentially be too high.

Some of the most successful CCTs are for immunizations. This is because immunizations are a proven cost-effective health intervention in the first place. So adding the small CCT to increase coverage maintains cost-effectiveness while achieving benefits from having a greater percent of the population that is immunized.

icebraining• 11 years ago

On this topic, the recent doc "Poverty, Inc" is probably worth a watch. Giving well is more than getting a good buck for the dollar - it's also thinking about the second order effects of your donation.

(Note that there are two films with the same name launched around the same time. This is the one by Michael Miller, not the one by Gary Null.)

[1] http://www.povertyinc.org/about/

thephyber• 11 years ago

I heard about Poverty, Inc. from the EconTalk podcast episode[1]. It seems particularly relevant to discussion of charities on HackerNews, but may not necessarily be relevant to any specific charity.

[1] http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2015/11/michael_matheso.htm...

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