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.