january 2022 donation

this month I gave $50 to eddy, the same person I gave money to back in august. I guess he's trying to move now? I'm not sure, but anyway, he posted on FB asking for help so here you go! it's not much, obviously, but I'm sure it'll help him more than my giving my usual $25 to a non-profit with $1m annual budget. 

give well

while listening to 99% invisible recently (great podcast, btw), i've been hearing adds for givewell.org, a non-profit which rates other non-profits mostly based on the "maximum impact" of your gift. basically, how of your donated dollar actually goes to programming rather than overhead.

I think this is a great idea, but as a person working in non-profit, i have to caution over emphasizing this single metric. i say this over and over, but you should want to pay overhead. overhead includes staff pay, insurance, rent, utilities, office supplies, and all sorts of shit including stuff you would rather not pay for, but ultimately, is necessary. of course, orgs shouldn't waste your money, and a large majority of your donated funds should go to programming, but efficiency of your dollar should not be the greatest metric you're using when judging whether or not to donate.

all that being said, I was happily surprised to see that givewell recommends givedirectly as one of their top charities. they seem to only recommend about 10 or so non-profits a year, so it's pretty dope they recommend an org that i recently discovered and really like as well.

you should look into give well and see if they align with your giving philosophies. their giving priorities are not mine, since most of theirs are medical science stuff done overseas because medical stuff dierectly affects lives (and is an easier metric to calculate) and donating overseas to poorer nations means your dollars go further. still, medical stuff is of less interest to me. but I think they're doing really great work in pooling their donations and giving directly to the orgs they think have maximum impact. they seem very thorough in their research and also very transparent in their reporting.

give directly

I occasionally listen to the podcast econtalk. not often tho, because it's pretty academic so I often don't know what theories they're referring to. but I did listen to one recently about givedirectly.org. the podcast interviewed the two guys who started givedirecly, and why they did it, what they've accomplished, and what they're trying to accomplish still. 

givedirectly is really interesting because it's like privately funded UBI in other countries where the impact is greater. giving an american $500 to spend on whatever they want doesn't get them very much: food for the month, school supplies, a car payment, but certainly not rent. give a non-urban area dwelling kenyan $500 and they can send multiple kids to school for a year, or start a whole business, or build a small house.

it's similar to kiva, in that way, sort of. encouraging the idea that smaller amounts money pooled from donors in wealthy countries can create an outsize impact on poorer areas. but better than kiva, is that it's free money, AND they don't have to justify a damn thing. 

as someone who works in non-profit, i love donations. but i LOVE unrestricted donations. even better? large unsolicited unrestricted donations! that's what this is. the givedirectly people go from town to town asking people if they want free money. sometimes people say no (because it sounds too good to be true!). often times they say yes. eventually they get the money deposited to a digital wallet, which they withdraw from, and spend it on whatever they want. the givedirectly people follow up about what they spent on, and such, for research and accountability purposes, but there's not supposed to be judgement. because, well, people know their own needs best.

I think I'll be donating to kiva whatever balance I get back from them, since it's a micro-lending org. and instead give to give directly more often because it better aligns with my values. I never really cared to get the kiva money back anyway.