Network for Good roundup I wrote last week about the apparently high fees that Network for Good charges to process donations. Katya Andresen was good enough to stop by and give some clarifying info via comments (which you can see by clicking the link to the post). One of the major differences she pointed to…
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Enough about lives – how many dollars can we save?
I think most discussions of charity are way too fuzzy. Your standard fundraising proposal has several adorable pictures, a couple disturbing ones, and one or two numbers that seem to have been shouted in a moment of impassioned inspiration, with nary a source to be found. Then, though, there is the occasional economist/mathematician/cyborg who comes…
Network for what now?
Note: As of 2017, this blog post no longer represents GiveWell’s views on Network for Good. Help me understand this. For those of you whose browsers don’t support hyperlinks: Charity Navigator processes direct donations to charities using Network for Good, which processes credit cards and applies a fee of 4.75%. Charity Navigator claims that this…
NYC update: People still have problems
We met with New Visions for Public Schools on Friday afternoon. The contrast with the Children’s Aid Society meeting was instructive. CAS met us for lunch; New Visions met us in a conference room. (I like food, but I think we’re going to avoid lunch meetings in the future so we don’t end up with…
Straw man? Or 75% of the population?
I’ve been ranting about how ridiculous it is to judge a charity by the % of its funds that go to administrative expenses, which I’ve dubbed the “Straw Ratio” because I was too lazy to find a prominent advocate of it so I just invented a Straw Man. Well, it turns out there quite a…
Food, friendz, and figuring out how to improve the world
Elie and I had lunch with three people representing the Children’s Aid Society (CAS) yesterday. At this point we aren’t used to having meetings without a wiki handy for note-taking – and dealing with corn chowder at the same time intensified the challenge – but here are the highlights of what I remember: The meeting…