This car. Goeth would have bought this car. Why did I keep the car? Ten people right there. Ten people. Ten more people. This pin. Two people. This is gold. Two more people. He would have given me two for it, at least one. One more person. A person, Stern. For this. I could have gotten one more person... and I didn't! And I... I didn't!In the film, you're supposed to think he's being too hard on himself. But isn't he right? Ten people died so some rich industrialist could drive around in luxury. How many died so that I could sit up late typing this comment on my computer? How can that possibly be just?
Explanatory note:I have to also say that most charities that are not in an expansion phase and have secure and growing support from a committed donor base would not need to engage with a program like GiveWell's. Well-run charities already have plenty of legitimacy and a proven track record and tend to be successful at drawing funding from their own donor base and more established sources of grantmaking, making it unappealing and unnecessary to jump through the hoops they ask, especially for the small dollars that most of their recipients are getting for their efforts. That kind of thing is very inefficient unless you're in dire need, are a startup, or are in a growth phase.
We expect the donor to get most of their information from their own experience as an audience member, and ask themselves whether they support the services provided and values promoted. The following questions are supplementary.
Questions:
* How would your budget likely change if you had more revenue than expected? Less?
* How much of your revenue comes from fees paid (e.g., ticket prices, admission) vs. donations?
* Do you have data on your audience - how many people visit, what their interests are, whether they're local or tourists, how happy they are with the experience you provide and what they'd like to see changed/added?
* What is your "audience per dollar of expenses" and how does it compare to that of other organizations? If it is lower, why do you think this is? (Note: we think there can be many good reasons to support an organization with a low "audience per dollar," but we think this is a metric for donors to check and be aware of. They should know whether they're supporting an organization that is unusually "niche" or perhaps just unpopular.)
Come on. This is basic stuff.
I do what I feel I can do to provide the most good to the most people. Sure I might be able to send money and arguably save more people but I have no empirical data that proves that. I think that providing a sense of accomplishment and self worth to a kid from my city could be just as important. Maybe it will prevent he or she from becoming a criminal and killing someone, causing great hurt to many, and becoming a drain on our taxes. Maybe he/she will go on to be a famous star and be able to raise more money for starving children than I will make in a lifetime. I have little data so I go with what my small, isolated steeltown trained, mind makes sense of.The notion of the butterfly effect can't be discarded in our evaluations of how we choose to spend our resources. Entertaining the idea that any organization could provide you a "maximum return on investment" guarantee (or even less strongly, a vague asssurance) is only logical if you're willing to disregard the enormous amount of variables involved in thess chains of events.
Effective January 3, 2008, Holden Karnofsky has been removed from his position as Executive Director of GiveWell and from his position as Board Secretary. The Executive Director position is now vacant; Tim Ogden will serve as interim Board Secretary. In addition to being removed from his positions, a financial penalty has been imposed on Mr. Karnofsky. While we are removing him from the Executive Director position, we believe that his previous contributions outside of the acts noted above have demonstrated a commitment to the goals of the organization and have been important to accomplishing GiveWell’s work. As a result, Holden will be moved to a Program Officer position, where we believe he will be valuable in helping GiveWell meet its outstanding commitments to applicants and donors. He will also participate in a program of professional development and mentoring.(emphasis mine)Personally, this strikes me as a situation where the organization couldn't stand to let this individual go. Perhaps because they allow their personal attachments to Holden to override their concerns from a business perspective. This should give anyone looking to support the organization pause, since it raises questions about their capabilities in all other operations. What other activities are they engaging in for personal reasons even if it's detrimental to their donors or GiveWell as an organization? We'll only find out after another suitably public PR disaster.
We recognize that people can make mistakes and that they can learn powerful lessons from those failures. When we think about the whole picture of Holden, and view his mistakes in the context of his contribution to GiveWell so far as well as his character prior to this project, we believe that he will continue to make a positive impact for the organization in the future.This reads to me like something you'd write about a close family member seeking to be forgiven for a transgression, not an employee who has potentially ruined your business reputation. There are many qualified people who could fill his job. That the board was unable to overcome its personal attachment to Holden and find such a replacement is extremely unsettling.
Many leaders of high-growth nonprofits experienced a pivotal point when they needed to bring in new talent. Typically, there was a strong tension between promoting internal, often program-oriented employees and hiring external candidates with deep experience in areas like marketing or logistics. Introducing new blood into critical roles, though vital, is usually trying.Also, the article points out that when you begin taking in serious cash, the board will often determine that its fiduciary responsibility is to direct some or much of that cash to increase endowment or investment in order to build greater long-term security and stability for the organization. This can reduce dollars to direct action, as well, but you have to ask the question about whether it's better to ensure that the organization stays around long enough to complete its work or whether it's better to blow all the cash on the need until resources are gone and then fold (extreme ends of a spectrum, but that's the essence of the debate). This decision is arguably ethical, moral, responsible, and increases long-range good, but it doesn't always sit well with front-line crusaders - or dollar maximizers:
When Patrick Lawler arrived at Youth Villages in 1980 as the new chief executive officer, he was just 24 years old. “I’d been a probation officer,” recalls Lawler. “I’d never seen a budget. I didn’t know anything about management. What I knew about was how to take care of tough kids. For my first two or three years, I acted like we were a charity and we had to take in just enough money to pay the bills. Around 1982, one of our board members told me how we had to have margins or we couldn’t run our business. Not a charity, a business. We were running on extremely limited resources and raising money via yard sales, car washes, and garage sales. That board member opened my eyes to a broader future.”The article also talks about how thought trends can drive growth, but when fashion moves on to another topic, that can mean that income to these organizations starts to decline and that can require scaling services back, as well:
Timing can have a major influence over a nonprofit’s ability to raise money and to grow. Some nonprofits have the good fortune of being founded during a period of heightened interest in their mission. Take environmental and international aid groups, for example. About 70 percent of all U.S. environmental groups over $50 million in size were founded in or after 1970. And about 40 percent of all U.S. international aid groups were founded since 1970. By contrast, only 15 percent of all educational groups and 16 percent of all arts and culture organizations of that size were founded during that period.I think these things are worth thinking about, and help illustrate why this isn't just a math problem - it's a cultural problem, a human resources problem, a management problem. It's nowhere as simple as more dollars in = more outcomes out. These are the kinds of reasons why I'm not confident the winner-take-all, here-s-the-giant-pot-of-money award is a good approach to charitable contribution. A business plan that looks like a charity has some ideas about how to implement monies recently gained is not the same as an up-close assessment of whether this charity has the management competency, leadership and oversight, and fine-grained understanding of its working area to make that plan as it was written a concrete reality, or give a donor full confidence that pitfalls don't lie ahead.
posted by box at 6:43 PM on April 20, 2011