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Responding to the Shock in Haiti
Jan. 15th, 2010 03:06 amTwo days ago, Haiti suffered the largest quake the island has seen for two centuries, basically leveling the place, yet another disaster for a country whose recent history (since 1492) seems to consist entirely of crushed hope and unmitigated suffering. The good news is that the international response to the disaster has been generous and decisive.
(With the notable exception of a few scumbags, evidently still upset that those people thought they could have their own country.)
Pat Robertson aside, I have only a few things to say about the quake. First, if you have money to give for disaster relief, you should give money for disaster relief. Money, not goods, the people there can better determine what is needed and having to sort through donated goods is an organizational nightmare. Some links:
Partners in Health
Direct Relief International
Doctors Without Borders
Second, please pay attention to political responses to the disaster as well. Disaster relief, too, has been used to push through policies that favor big business at the expense of the poorest. (Read up on the aftermath of the Indian Ocean tsunami.) The relations between Western powers (especially the US) and Haiti has been less than good. Jubilee Act for Responsible Lending and Expanded Debt Cancellation (HR 4405) might be a good thing to consider supporting. When thinking about debt relief, remember that many of the poor nations in question were often coerced into giving those debts, and that development loans were often given on the condition that US companies be hired to do the work (basically ensuring that the loan be repaid twice, especially since many of the companies in question imported their workforce instead of hiring locals).
(With the notable exception of a few scumbags, evidently still upset that those people thought they could have their own country.)
Pat Robertson aside, I have only a few things to say about the quake. First, if you have money to give for disaster relief, you should give money for disaster relief. Money, not goods, the people there can better determine what is needed and having to sort through donated goods is an organizational nightmare. Some links:
Partners in Health
Direct Relief International
Doctors Without Borders
Second, please pay attention to political responses to the disaster as well. Disaster relief, too, has been used to push through policies that favor big business at the expense of the poorest. (Read up on the aftermath of the Indian Ocean tsunami.) The relations between Western powers (especially the US) and Haiti has been less than good. Jubilee Act for Responsible Lending and Expanded Debt Cancellation (HR 4405) might be a good thing to consider supporting. When thinking about debt relief, remember that many of the poor nations in question were often coerced into giving those debts, and that development loans were often given on the condition that US companies be hired to do the work (basically ensuring that the loan be repaid twice, especially since many of the companies in question imported their workforce instead of hiring locals).
A Bit More on Charity
Dec. 14th, 2009 01:45 pmHere's a bit more from my thoughts about charitable giving.
Among other things, I've been doing some research on Charity Navigator (evaluates many 501(c)(3) organizations based on their public tax filings) and GiveWell (looks for more in-depth measures of performance and effectiveness, but evaluates far fewer organizations as a result1). (I knew about Charity Navigator before, but I found out about GiveWell through Singer's book.)
Here's a list of my favorite nonprofit organizations (intentionally leaving out local causes, partisan political organizations, and organizations that I support in large part because I personally enjoy / benefit from their work):
Combating Poverty (Direct Approach)2
Oxfam (CN)
UNICEF (CN)
Partners in Health3,4 (CN, GW)
Combating Poverty (Innovative Approach)
The Carter Center (CN, GW, more commentary)
Cultural Survival4 (CN)
Kiva5
Solar Oven Society
OLPC4
Environmental
Union of Concerned Scientists4 (CN)
Sierra Club6 (CN)
Political
American Civil Liberties Union6 (CN)
Electronic Frontier Foundation (CN)
Human Rights Campaign6 (CN)
If you have other nonprofit organizations you'd like to mention or something to say about any of the above, I'd like to hear from you in the comments.
1 Also grants $25k grants to the charities they identify as most effective, as a way of encouraging transparency and self-evaluation.
2 Big donations go here.
3 Their administrative overhead and fund-raising costs are extremely low.
4 Organization has headquarters in Boston area.
5 I recommend both backing microfinance loans through Kiva and funding Kiva itself.
6 Not 501(c)(3)s, though they have 501(c)(3) foundations that do only non-lobbying stuff. The Charity Navigator page gives info about the 501(c)(3) foundation only.
Among other things, I've been doing some research on Charity Navigator (evaluates many 501(c)(3) organizations based on their public tax filings) and GiveWell (looks for more in-depth measures of performance and effectiveness, but evaluates far fewer organizations as a result1). (I knew about Charity Navigator before, but I found out about GiveWell through Singer's book.)
Here's a list of my favorite nonprofit organizations (intentionally leaving out local causes, partisan political organizations, and organizations that I support in large part because I personally enjoy / benefit from their work):
Combating Poverty (Direct Approach)2
Oxfam (CN)
UNICEF (CN)
Partners in Health3,4 (CN, GW)
Combating Poverty (Innovative Approach)
The Carter Center (CN, GW, more commentary)
Cultural Survival4 (CN)
Kiva5
Solar Oven Society
OLPC4
Environmental
Union of Concerned Scientists4 (CN)
Sierra Club6 (CN)
Political
American Civil Liberties Union6 (CN)
Electronic Frontier Foundation (CN)
Human Rights Campaign6 (CN)
If you have other nonprofit organizations you'd like to mention or something to say about any of the above, I'd like to hear from you in the comments.
1 Also grants $25k grants to the charities they identify as most effective, as a way of encouraging transparency and self-evaluation.
2 Big donations go here.
3 Their administrative overhead and fund-raising costs are extremely low.
4 Organization has headquarters in Boston area.
5 I recommend both backing microfinance loans through Kiva and funding Kiva itself.
6 Not 501(c)(3)s, though they have 501(c)(3) foundations that do only non-lobbying stuff. The Charity Navigator page gives info about the 501(c)(3) foundation only.
Meta-Utilitarianism and Charity
Dec. 14th, 2009 01:01 amI've been thinking about my end-of-year charitable donations, so I read a book which has been siting on my shelf for some time, The Life You Can Save by Peter Singer. Singer is known for suggesting that you should give all of your disposable income to charity,1 among other things,2 so needless to say he's spent plenty of time thinking about the subject.
The book is not just a repetition of that article, fortunately. It provides a pretty broad look at the issue. The first two chapters cover the basic argument about the ethics of giving and background on world poverty, the third covers some common objections to giving (cleverly, he holds off more serious arguments about the effectiveness of charitable donations until chapter seven, and he titles that chapter "Improving Aid"3). The fourth chapter is about the reasons why people don't give, or don't give as much as they might.4 The fifth chapter is about how to mitigate those factors. The sixth asks how to evaluate charities, and discusses which are the most effective.
Chapters eight through ten are the most interesting part, though: That's where Singer does the hard work of pinning down his recommendation as to what people should donate. In doing so, he draws some really interesting distinctions between moral codes, ethical recommendations, and moral ideals. In particular, Singer defends his modest recommendations5 in utilitarian terms: If it's "sainthood or bust", no one will be persuaded and all this book-writing will have done very little good.
I recommend the book, it's interesting, reasonable, clear, and convincing.
1 By charity, specifically organizations that attempt to save the lives and alleviate the suffering of the world's poorest.
2 Singer is an interesting ethicist and I largely agree with his core ethical philosophy (utilitarianism with a bit of Kant and Rawls). However, he takes that philosophy to some rather radical conclusions, some of which I don't agree with. This problem is compounded by the fact that the guy often says things that are way too easy to take out of context.
3 One notable weak-point of the book is in this chapter: Singer discusses the neo-Malthusian argument against charity (aid now leads to overpopulation and more misery later) without once mentioning oil (bizarre, since he mentions that high food prices once again hit the headlines in 2008 and notes the use of food for biofuels).
4 Some ways researchers have found to reduce donations: Say that more people will be helped in the same way for the same amount of money, say that the problem is bigger, give information about more than one individual that will be helped, have the would-be donor think about money (doesn't take much: monopoly money or pictures of money in their general vicinity is sufficient).
5 Here, if you want the full detail. The short version is: 1-5% if you make less than $105k a year (as close to 5% as you can do without hardship), after that he suggests a graduated system.
The book is not just a repetition of that article, fortunately. It provides a pretty broad look at the issue. The first two chapters cover the basic argument about the ethics of giving and background on world poverty, the third covers some common objections to giving (cleverly, he holds off more serious arguments about the effectiveness of charitable donations until chapter seven, and he titles that chapter "Improving Aid"3). The fourth chapter is about the reasons why people don't give, or don't give as much as they might.4 The fifth chapter is about how to mitigate those factors. The sixth asks how to evaluate charities, and discusses which are the most effective.
Chapters eight through ten are the most interesting part, though: That's where Singer does the hard work of pinning down his recommendation as to what people should donate. In doing so, he draws some really interesting distinctions between moral codes, ethical recommendations, and moral ideals. In particular, Singer defends his modest recommendations5 in utilitarian terms: If it's "sainthood or bust", no one will be persuaded and all this book-writing will have done very little good.
I recommend the book, it's interesting, reasonable, clear, and convincing.
1 By charity, specifically organizations that attempt to save the lives and alleviate the suffering of the world's poorest.
2 Singer is an interesting ethicist and I largely agree with his core ethical philosophy (utilitarianism with a bit of Kant and Rawls). However, he takes that philosophy to some rather radical conclusions, some of which I don't agree with. This problem is compounded by the fact that the guy often says things that are way too easy to take out of context.
3 One notable weak-point of the book is in this chapter: Singer discusses the neo-Malthusian argument against charity (aid now leads to overpopulation and more misery later) without once mentioning oil (bizarre, since he mentions that high food prices once again hit the headlines in 2008 and notes the use of food for biofuels).
4 Some ways researchers have found to reduce donations: Say that more people will be helped in the same way for the same amount of money, say that the problem is bigger, give information about more than one individual that will be helped, have the would-be donor think about money (doesn't take much: monopoly money or pictures of money in their general vicinity is sufficient).
5 Here, if you want the full detail. The short version is: 1-5% if you make less than $105k a year (as close to 5% as you can do without hardship), after that he suggests a graduated system.
L33t Links: WALL OF TEXT Edition
Dec. 2nd, 2009 05:48 pmBeen ages since I did a links post, so here's some of the best of the web since last time:
A bunch of Overthinking It essays: One on Starship Troopers (on why critics got it wrong), one on Fantastic Mr. Fox (a Freudian analysis), one on Avatar (the James Cameron sci-fi movie; starts off slow but then gets brilliant at the end). For those of you who don't read Overthinking It, it's a great site for those who like literary criticism applied to things that often aren't looked at through that lens.
A comic, Mysteries of Public Transit, mainly because I identify far to much with point 3. Subnormality is a great comic (for those who like their comics to be WALLS OF TEXT).
An 18-minute video essay on the world's most important six-second drum loop. Actually rather fascinating.
Every two years, Robert Jensen writes an essay on how much he hates Thanksgiving. Here's his offering for this year.
Here's an essay titled Can Videogames Be Our Friends. Yeah, it's about Japan.
Here's a post explaining why only an infinitesimal subset of all numbers can be described. Speaking of things which can't be counted, here's some crazy's argument that the real numbers are countable, and a rather entertaining takedown of that essay.
Finally, here's a news piece on one of my favorite charities, Kiva.org. Evidently, there's some confusion about how the site actually works, some people were surprised to learn that money can be loaned out before a loan is marked as "funded". To be clear, it's not necessarily your money that goes out to the entrepreneur in question. Rather, your funds secure the loan in question, if the loan is not paid back, you take the loss, rather than the microlending institution. That spreads their risk, so they can keep on lending. As long as every loan funded through Kiva is actually disbursed to the entrepreneurs by someone, and as long as Kiva lenders are repaid when the loan they agreed to secure is repaid, Kiva is living up to their end of the bargain.
A few brief bonus links for those of you not yet put to sleep:
A bunch of Overthinking It essays: One on Starship Troopers (on why critics got it wrong), one on Fantastic Mr. Fox (a Freudian analysis), one on Avatar (the James Cameron sci-fi movie; starts off slow but then gets brilliant at the end). For those of you who don't read Overthinking It, it's a great site for those who like literary criticism applied to things that often aren't looked at through that lens.
A comic, Mysteries of Public Transit, mainly because I identify far to much with point 3. Subnormality is a great comic (for those who like their comics to be WALLS OF TEXT).
An 18-minute video essay on the world's most important six-second drum loop. Actually rather fascinating.
Every two years, Robert Jensen writes an essay on how much he hates Thanksgiving. Here's his offering for this year.
Here's an essay titled Can Videogames Be Our Friends. Yeah, it's about Japan.
Here's a post explaining why only an infinitesimal subset of all numbers can be described. Speaking of things which can't be counted, here's some crazy's argument that the real numbers are countable, and a rather entertaining takedown of that essay.
Finally, here's a news piece on one of my favorite charities, Kiva.org. Evidently, there's some confusion about how the site actually works, some people were surprised to learn that money can be loaned out before a loan is marked as "funded". To be clear, it's not necessarily your money that goes out to the entrepreneur in question. Rather, your funds secure the loan in question, if the loan is not paid back, you take the loss, rather than the microlending institution. That spreads their risk, so they can keep on lending. As long as every loan funded through Kiva is actually disbursed to the entrepreneurs by someone, and as long as Kiva lenders are repaid when the loan they agreed to secure is repaid, Kiva is living up to their end of the bargain.
A few brief bonus links for those of you not yet put to sleep:
- Japanese people mortified by crazy US media.
- Don't use regular expressions to parse HTML or Cthulu will devour your soul.
- One of the most dramatic examples of missing the point I have ever seen.
- "Thinking about your own beliefs" and "thinking about God's beliefs" look suspiciously similar on an MRI.
Yesterday, I was trying to decide where to donate my latest batch of change (ultimately donated to OLPC). While I was looking at various organizations, I wished there was a site for nonprofits along the lines of Yelp or Amazon, and posted this thought on Twitter.
This resulted in a brief conversation between me and Michael Hoffman (who evidently reads every Tweet containing the word "nonprofit"). Two links he provided were Change.org and Changents, social networking sites focused on social change. Another, Charity Navigator is the site of a nonprofit organization that catalogs and evaluates other nonprofit organizations, which is more like what I was thinking of, except an expert-based instead of a crowdsourced approach.
Of course, maybe crowdsourcing isn't effective in this context. The average donor doesn't necessarily have the means to accurately evaluate whether a nonprofit is effective and efficient (although I'd hope such a site would benefit from the comments of beneficiaries and insiders as well).
This resulted in a brief conversation between me and Michael Hoffman (who evidently reads every Tweet containing the word "nonprofit"). Two links he provided were Change.org and Changents, social networking sites focused on social change. Another, Charity Navigator is the site of a nonprofit organization that catalogs and evaluates other nonprofit organizations, which is more like what I was thinking of, except an expert-based instead of a crowdsourced approach.
Of course, maybe crowdsourcing isn't effective in this context. The average donor doesn't necessarily have the means to accurately evaluate whether a nonprofit is effective and efficient (although I'd hope such a site would benefit from the comments of beneficiaries and insiders as well).
Give Some Olin Students Your Support
Dec. 30th, 2008 12:27 pmPlease grant some of my fellow Olin students a moment of your time:
There's an organization called IdeaBlob that gives a $10k grant to whichever new non-profit idea garners the most votes each month. There's a team of six Olin students trying to start an organization called Alight Learning, which makes free multi-media software for facilitating education. They're taking a full year working without pay to start this organization. They could really use the grant money.
Go here and vote for Alight Learning, if you like the idea, and pass the link along.
There's an organization called IdeaBlob that gives a $10k grant to whichever new non-profit idea garners the most votes each month. There's a team of six Olin students trying to start an organization called Alight Learning, which makes free multi-media software for facilitating education. They're taking a full year working without pay to start this organization. They could really use the grant money.
Go here and vote for Alight Learning, if you like the idea, and pass the link along.
Donation Links
Dec. 27th, 2008 06:35 pmGave year-end donations to a few organizations, so I'm posting the links for those interested:
Weekend Fun and Anticipation
Oct. 13th, 2008 01:00 amI found a used copy of Snow Crash, so I'm rereading that. Good times.
Saturday evening, I went to karaoke (Japanese style, your group in a private room) with friends (Xave, Neruson, Ginneh, DJ, and Kelcy). Was a ton of fun. I'd never done karaoke before (not counting with marketing class in Japan when we toured that record label's studio), and I'll have to do it more often in the future. I really don't sing much these days, hadn't realized that was something I missed.
Today, Xave's TV got repossessed by the friend he was borrowing it from, and I found a new one for cheap on Craigslist. Unfortunately, it doesn't quite fit in our TV cabinet. On the plus side, this is because the TV was even larger than advertised, and it seems to work perfectly. We were still able to set up the TV in a decent spot, even though the arrangement is aesthetically sub-optimal.
I counted my spare change jar (actually a plastic bag), so I have some money to donate to charity. I asked this before, but if you didn't have a response then (or if you did but have a different one now or want to repeat your previous one), any suggestions for where my funds might do the most good?
I've also ordered an XBox360 for the sake of preordering Fallout 3. I loved the first two games in the series, and the next one looks extremely promising. I'm going with the console release because I don't want the experience marred by computer hardware troubles and because there are some other games drawing me to the 360 as well (this one just pushes that incentive over the required threshold). I hope that the game won't be a disappointment. Some fans are worried about the transition from 3/4 overhead turn-based tactical combat to a hybrid turn-based and first-person system, but I'm less concerned about mechanics than world-building and story. Maybe the game won't live up to the originals, but I'm glad that Bethesda picked up the series rather than let it die an ignominious death.
Saturday evening, I went to karaoke (Japanese style, your group in a private room) with friends (Xave, Neruson, Ginneh, DJ, and Kelcy). Was a ton of fun. I'd never done karaoke before (not counting with marketing class in Japan when we toured that record label's studio), and I'll have to do it more often in the future. I really don't sing much these days, hadn't realized that was something I missed.
Today, Xave's TV got repossessed by the friend he was borrowing it from, and I found a new one for cheap on Craigslist. Unfortunately, it doesn't quite fit in our TV cabinet. On the plus side, this is because the TV was even larger than advertised, and it seems to work perfectly. We were still able to set up the TV in a decent spot, even though the arrangement is aesthetically sub-optimal.
I counted my spare change jar (actually a plastic bag), so I have some money to donate to charity. I asked this before, but if you didn't have a response then (or if you did but have a different one now or want to repeat your previous one), any suggestions for where my funds might do the most good?
I've also ordered an XBox360 for the sake of preordering Fallout 3. I loved the first two games in the series, and the next one looks extremely promising. I'm going with the console release because I don't want the experience marred by computer hardware troubles and because there are some other games drawing me to the 360 as well (this one just pushes that incentive over the required threshold). I hope that the game won't be a disappointment. Some fans are worried about the transition from 3/4 overhead turn-based tactical combat to a hybrid turn-based and first-person system, but I'm less concerned about mechanics than world-building and story. Maybe the game won't live up to the originals, but I'm glad that Bethesda picked up the series rather than let it die an ignominious death.
Charity Coin Jar
May. 16th, 2008 02:00 pmI counted and deposited my spare change today. It came to just over $40. Haven't figured out where to donate it yet, suggestions are welcome in the comments.
