What’s effective about effective altruism?
Knowing that we would be establishing, and investing in the Greenbridge Family Foundation, over the past several years, I’ve been actively learning about different approaches to granting and engaging with grantees. What quickly became apparent is just how many different philosophies there are to ground one’s approach to this work. I wasn’t looking to build a large infrastructure that required a big lift on the end of a prospect to fill out grant request proposals and therefore require a team to wade through all this information.
Instead, I’ve been drawn to approaches that are nimble, focused on relationships, and built upon trust. Ann and I believe firmly that our role at the foundation isn’t to come up with ideas or dictate solutions. Instead, our role is to identify the people and organizations that have the people and systems in place to be as effective as possible in achieving their intended impact. And then to get out of the way and let them get to work.
Along the way, we came across a concept that resonated deeply with this approach—ffective altruism. It’s been explored in several books, including Doing Well at Doing Good by Julian Friedland, Doing Good Better by William MacAskill, and The Mist Good You Can Do by Peter Singer.
One of the key insights of this philosophy was that measuring a “return on philanthropy,” while difficult, is possible. And that in order to be as effective as possible with one’s limited resources, decisions should be made “using evidence and reason to find the most promising causes to work on.”
Most philanthropy comes from personal desires to make a difference versus allocating capital to the highest and best use of that philanthropy. We have decided to allocate a portion of our philanthropy to “Effective Altruism” by choosing organizations that get the highest ratings of impact for every dollar regardless of whether it is in an area of core focus for us. We liken it to an “index" fund of the best philanthropic organizations.
In 2021 we’ve chosen to realize this idea by supporting a single organization, GiveWell, whose whole mission is to identify charities through the lens of effective altruism. They have an incredible team in place that assesses the impact of an organization in a far deeper and more sophisticated way than some of the simpler ‘go to’ metrics being used today, like administrative rates or fundraising costs. They have built robust criteria that include:
evidence of effectiveness
cost-effectiveness
room for more funding (We ask, "What will additional funds — beyond what a charity would raise without our recommendation — enable, and what is the value of these activities?"“)
transparency
By using these criteria they have identified a list of top charities - which are also regularly reassessed. Each aligning with GiveWell’s ultimate goal to “search for the charities that save or improve lives the most per dollar.” At the moment, the charities on this list include:
Malaria Consortium
Against Malaria Foundation
Helen Keller International
New Incentives
SCI Foundation
Evidence Action’s Deworm the World Initiative
Sightsaver’s Deworming Program
The END Fund’s Deworming Program
GiveDirectly
What’s more, they have something called the ‘Maximum Impact Fund’, managed by a dedicated team that is constantly looking at these top charities and which ones would benefit the most from grants as part of their next 2-5 years of planning. We’ve chosen to direct our gifts to this fund, knowing that they have robust internal processes in place to evaluate each grant being recommended by this fund to the top charities. Whether these dollars will fund malaria nets, deworming medication, or something else, we know that it will be put to work having the most impact possible.
We recognize that this is a rather unique approach to granting when looking at how we are approaching our other initiatives, and generally in the world of philanthropy, but it’s an approach that has resonated deeply with us and is one we hope you will consider as part of your giving as well.
Photo courtesy of GiveWell