More Effective Giving

During a site visit to a water purification project in India.

Elie Hassenfeld was a 2004 graduate of Columbia University with a degree in Religion. He entered the field of finance and worked with hedge funds. Not that long after starting his career, he and a few colleagues got together and started a charity club. Each member researched a particular area in order to find out which charities were most effective in that area. It was sort of like market research, done with charitable organizations.

The goal, in essence, was to find out which group provided the most bang for the charity dollar, in order to stretch those dollars to make the most impact. So, in 2007, Elie became a founding member of the group GIVE WELL, which operationalized their club into a larger organization, with a greater impact.

The group can be useful for anyone who wants to spend his/her charity dollars wisely. They require the organizations which they support to be even more transparent than what Charity Navigator, another charities rating group, requires. Another stipulation was that the charity be underfunded, so that the dollars contributed filled a real need.



The group transparently reports its research criteria and results, makes onsite visits, and reports the impact of the money given. Yes, indeed, they even report mistakes, both major and minor. Now, if you look at the site, under donations, they list their top charities, and underneath those are other outstanding charities. Each listed name has a description of what the charities do, and then a donate button, with which the reader can give directly to that charity. All the way down the page, near the end is a donate button for Give Well, and they state for what the funds will be used.

According to Elie Hassenfeld, the reason for all the scrutiny and evaluation: "It's very important to us to critically evaluate what we're doing to do better in the future. And we look for charities that do the same. If something goes wrong, they would know about it, and they would highlight it, and they would learn from it." So, he doesn't want all good news, without the bad. As he says, "If you're hearing some bad news, that's a good thing. You should hold organizations accountable to that standard, rather than a totally unreasonable one of perfection. These charities are all trying to solve some of the world's hardest problems. If it were easy to eradicate malaria, it would have been done. So things obviously go wrong. They face all sorts of struggles. I think it's really important to be open about them."

If you like this approach to giving, seeing charitable groups in the raw, but also want your dollars to go where they can do the most good, check this site out and see if it's for you. You may end up with making this world a lot better.

Vaccines stored in refrigeration at a VillageReach clinic.

Thanks to this article from Huffington Post: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/03/26/elie-hassenfeld-givewell_n_6927320.html?ir=Impact&ncid=fcbklnkushpmg00000054.

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