“But it’s got to confer status to the charity and people like Jay Z can gain more status by donating to it”—I think this brushes a good point which I’d like to see fleshed out more. On some level I’m still a bit skeptical in part because I think it’s more difficult to make these kinds of designations/measurements for charities whereas things like album statuses are very objective (i.e., a specific number of purchases/downloads) and in some cases easier to measure. Additionally, for some of those cases there is a well-established and influential organization making the determination (e.g., football leagues, FIDE for chess). I definitely think something could be done for traditional charities (e.g., global health and poverty alleviation), but it would very likely be difficult for many other charities, and it still would probably not be as widely recognized as most of the things you mentioned.
Great points. Thank you for them. Perhaps we could use a DALY/QALY measure. A charity could reach the highest status if, after randomized controlled studies, it was determined that $10 donated could give one QALY to a human (I’m making up numbers). Any charity that reached this hard to achieve threshold would be given the super-charity designation.
To make it official imagine that there’s a committee or governing body formed between charity navigator and GiveWell. 5 board members from each charity would come together and select the charities then announce the award once a year and the status would only be official for a certain amount of time or it could be removed if they dipped below a threshold.
I certainly would be interested in seeing such a system go into place—I think it would probably be beneficial—the main issue is just whether something like that is likely to happen. For example, it might be quite difficult to establish agreement between Charity Evaluator and GiveWell when it comes to the benefits of certain charities. Additionally, there may be a bit of survivor bias when it comes to organizations that have worked like FIDE, although I still think the main issue is 1) the analysis/measurement of effectiveness is difficult (requiring lots of studies vs. simply measuring album downloads/streams); and 2) the determination of effectiveness may not be widely agreed upon. That’s not to say it shouldn’t be tried, but I think that might contribute to limiting the effectiveness relative to the examples you cite.
“But it’s got to confer status to the charity and people like Jay Z can gain more status by donating to it”—I think this brushes a good point which I’d like to see fleshed out more. On some level I’m still a bit skeptical in part because I think it’s more difficult to make these kinds of designations/measurements for charities whereas things like album statuses are very objective (i.e., a specific number of purchases/downloads) and in some cases easier to measure. Additionally, for some of those cases there is a well-established and influential organization making the determination (e.g., football leagues, FIDE for chess). I definitely think something could be done for traditional charities (e.g., global health and poverty alleviation), but it would very likely be difficult for many other charities, and it still would probably not be as widely recognized as most of the things you mentioned.
Great points. Thank you for them. Perhaps we could use a DALY/QALY measure. A charity could reach the highest status if, after randomized controlled studies, it was determined that $10 donated could give one QALY to a human (I’m making up numbers). Any charity that reached this hard to achieve threshold would be given the super-charity designation.
To make it official imagine that there’s a committee or governing body formed between charity navigator and GiveWell. 5 board members from each charity would come together and select the charities then announce the award once a year and the status would only be official for a certain amount of time or it could be removed if they dipped below a threshold.
What do you think
I certainly would be interested in seeing such a system go into place—I think it would probably be beneficial—the main issue is just whether something like that is likely to happen. For example, it might be quite difficult to establish agreement between Charity Evaluator and GiveWell when it comes to the benefits of certain charities. Additionally, there may be a bit of survivor bias when it comes to organizations that have worked like FIDE, although I still think the main issue is 1) the analysis/measurement of effectiveness is difficult (requiring lots of studies vs. simply measuring album downloads/streams); and 2) the determination of effectiveness may not be widely agreed upon. That’s not to say it shouldn’t be tried, but I think that might contribute to limiting the effectiveness relative to the examples you cite.