Best way to donate? Do your research
TEXT OF INTERVIEW
KAI RYSSDAL: Lean times mean a lot of us are trying to stretch our budgets and, given the season, trying to stretch our charitable contributions Because as great as it feels to get, it can feel even better to give.
Today, as we continue our look at philanthropy, how we can put our dollars to work more effectively. If there’s less money to donate this year, should you give your time and volunteer?
Holden Karnofsky is the co-founder of GiveWell.net. That’s a nonprofit charity evaluation website.
Holden, welcome to the program.
Holden Karnofsky: My pleasure.
RYSSDAL: As people look to cut back in this economy — and philanthropy’s going to be one of those areas — does it make sense to volunteer time instead of money?
Karnofsky: I would actually make a different suggestion. I would say that if you’re finding yourself this year with more time and less money than you usually have, I would encourage you to put that time into researching and really thinking hard about where you’re giving rather than volunteering. I think volunteering is often adverstised as being more than it is for a very specific reason. Which is that volunteering is often about recruiting donors. And so what I would say is that there is some volunteer work that’s certainly valuable, especially if you have a particular skill such as . . . let’s say you’re a cleft palette surgeon and you’re going over to perform corrective surgeries. But a lot of time, when a charity’s asking you to volunteer, what they’re really trying to do is get you involved, get you excited, and the real benefit to them is the donation anyway.
RYSSDAL: All right, well let’s get to the econometrics here, then. How do I know what to look for when I want to maximize the charitable return on my dollar?
Karnofsky: Right. Well, it all depends on what you’re aiming for. But the general advice I give is, I would just try and go out there and really push charities to say, “All right, what’s the evidence that this is changing people’s lives for the better?” And a lot of times programs that sound really good in theory just don’t turn out to have the impacts you would hope for in practice.
RYSSDAL: There is obviously a set of criteria that you guys look at. What are the top couple? I would imagine it’s administrative overheads versus amount actually given. It’s staff versus volunteers — those sorts of things?
Karnofsky: Actually, we don’t like to emphasize the administrative-overhead aspect because we think that, for one thing, it’s often a distraction. It doesn’t matter how much money you throw at a problem if you’re not doing a good job of it, and if you’re not taking the right approach. And a lot of times taking the right approach means being able to measure what you’re doing and learn from it. Which often, depending on how the accountants want to do things, gets classified as overhead.
So, we actually feel that when people insist that as many pennies of my dollar as possible need to go straight to the children, what they’re doing is they’re leaving out a lot of the overhead that’s needed to hire great people, to do self-evaluation, to figure out what really works and to do a good job.
RYSSDAL: What about newer charities that are just getting off the ground and maybe don’t have the data trail that will let you figure out whether they’re worth it or not?
Karnofsky: Well, in my opinion, there’s a lot of those charities out there that may be doing great work. And if you are close enough to one that you’ve really seen it and you’re very connected to it, then that may be all you need to have a lot of confidence that they’re doing good.
But, you know, if you’re not in that position, and you’re trying to find a charity that you can have confidence in that you haven’t heard much about, I think it’s the wrong approach to try and guess yourself which of these new, unproven charities really has what it takes.
I think you’re much better off with a bigger, more established one. And I think that oftentimes in charity there’s too much discussion given to the next, big, great revolutionary idea that’s going to solve the root cause of poverty and not nearly enough attention given to, “Hey, what are the things that already work and how can we do more of them?”
RYSSDAL: Holden Karnofsky is the co-founder of GiveWell.net. That’s a group that studies the effectiveness of charities and advises donors about them. Holden, thanks a lot.
Karnofsky: Yeah. My pleasure.
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