While charitable organizations are potentially quite valuable, I suspect
that many of them are simply repeating whatever works at generating more
contributions without accomplishing any altruistic purposes,
much in the way that governments, and corporations in industries with little
competition, tend to become harmful bureaucracies.
See the paper He Who Pays The
Piper Must Know The Tune and my review of the book
Power and Prosperity for
more arguments that led me to this belief.
To try to avoid perpetuating this problem, I try to focus on organizations
whose results I can evaluate, but I'm still concerned about the subjective
nature of my evaluations, and am trying to look for better metrics, hopefully
something approaching the objectivity of the accounting system used to measure
corporate profits.
Also, I try to focus on organizations that are small enough that they don't
develop much of a self-perpetuating bureaucracy.
Here are the charities in which I have some hope:
- GiveWell rates some of the most transparent charities according to how many dollars they need to save one life. This seems to be a better criterion than any of the others I'm aware of, and I am giving at least 1/3 of my charitable contributions to the charities GiveWell rates highest.
See On Fudge Factors for a skeptical view.
- The Future of Humanity Institute is focused on minimizing existential risks. Astronomical Waste: The Opportunity Cost of Delayed Technological Development is a good explanation of why this is important. Unfortunately, it's unusually hard to evaluate the effectiveness of such efforts.
- Electronic Frontier Foundation
Defending freedom in cyberspace. If you're unfamiliar with the arguments
it makes, you shouldn't assume you're informed enough to vote in the U.S.
- Methuselah Mouse Prize
Dedicated to curing aging. Unlike most requests for health oriented research
money, this is an information prize. It doesn't require the donor to have
the expertize to distinguish in advance whether the research is promising
(since even researchers have trouble knowing whether their research is
valuable, it's unlikely that many donors are able to make even an educated
guess at that). Instead, all a donor has to evaluate is whether the results
it rewards are connected to something medically desirable. And a cure for
aging would certainly be one of the more important medical advances that
I can imagine, as it should reduce deaths from heart attacks and cancer to
roughly the rates seen in 20 or 30 year olds.
See the Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence web page for some serious discussion about the possibility of curing aging.
- Foresight Institute
Educating the world about the benefits and risks of accelerating technological change, particularly molecular nanotechnology.
Last updated 2011-10-24.