Thought these quotes from Holden’s old (2011) GW blog posts were thought-provoking, unsure to what extent I agree. In In defense of the streetlight effect he argued that
If we focus evaluations on what can be evaluated well, is there a risk that we’ll also focus on executing programs that can be evaluated well? Yes and no.
Some programs may be so obviously beneficial that they are good investments even without high-quality evaluations available; in these cases we should execute such programs and not evaluate them.
But when it comes to programs that where evaluation seems both necessary and infeasible, I think it’s fair to simply de-emphasize these sorts of programs, even if they might be helpful and even if they address important problems. This reflects my basic attitude toward aid as “supplementing people’s efforts to address their own problems” rather than “taking responsibility for every problem clients face, whether or not such problems are tractable to outside donors.” I think there are some problems that outside donors can be very helpful on and others that they’re not well suited to helping on; thus, “helping with the most important problem” and “helping as much as possible” are not at all the same to me.
(I appreciate the bolded part, especially as something baked into GW’s approach and top recs by $ moved.)
[Project AK-47′s emotionally appealing pitch to donors is] an extreme example of a style of argument common to nonprofits: point to a problem so large and severe (and the world has many such problems) that donors immediately focus on that problem – feeling compelled to give to the organization working on addressing it – without giving equal attention to the proposed solution, how much it costs, and how likely it is to work. …
Many of the donors we hear from are passionately committed to fighting global warming because it’s the “most pressing problem,” or to a particular disease because it affected them personally – even while freely admitting that they know nothing about the most promising potential solutions. I ask these donors to consider the experience related by William Easterly:
I am among the many who have tried hard to find the answer to the question of what the end of poverty requires of foreign aid. I realized only belatedly that I was asking the question backward … the right way around [is]: What can foreign aid do for poor people? (White Man’s Burden pg 11)
As a single human being, your powers are limited. As a donor, you’re even more limited – you’re not giving your talent or your creativity, just your money. This creates a fundamentally different challenge from identifying the problem you care most about, and can lead to a completely different answer.
The truth is that you may not be able to do anything to help address the root causes of poverty or cure cancer or solve the global energy crisis.* But you probably can save a life, and insisting on giving to the “biggest problem” could be passing up that chance.
Thought these quotes from Holden’s old (2011) GW blog posts were thought-provoking, unsure to what extent I agree. In In defense of the streetlight effect he argued that
(I appreciate the bolded part, especially as something baked into GW’s approach and top recs by $ moved.)
That last link is to The most important problem may not be the best charitable cause. Quote that caught my eye: