Three charitable recommendations for COVID-19 in India
This post was written by the two of us (Manya Gupta and Tejas Subramaniam) as the justification for the charitable recommendations of the Fundraiser for India Debate Workshop Series, with help from Prashasti Saxena (who set up the workshop series), Rohan Goda, and Namita Pandey. It is a list of five recommended charities/fundraisers (on three cause areas) to donate to during COVID-19 in India. We are uncertain about these conclusions, but thought it’s worth posting them here regardless. Some of our recommendations are engineered to maximize donations to the workshop (e.g., placing a higher premium on transparency/accountability to make people more comfortable donating).
Edit May 25, 2021: We are currently in the process of revising some of our recommendations, both due to recent trends in COVID-19 cases, changes in room for more funding, and this piece by Smarinita Shetty on changing needs (we do not endorse it yet, and are simply thinking about it and asking people we know working on this).
Some of our key uncertainties on this:
We are very unclear about the marginal value of oxygen plant construction, given its possible medium-term effects on oxygen supply and second-order effects like improving health capacity or risk-aversion. Jeff Coleman thinks that donations to oxygen plants are less cost-effective than oxygen concentrators and type-B oxygen cylinders. There are also raw material constraints which might make plant construction not as effective in the short run. However, we do not have a strong opinion on this issue and are open to more resources.
Our prior is that vaccination is the best path forward, but our current best guess is that private donations directed toward vaccination efforts in India – at least at the level of individual donors – is unlikely to substantially change vaccination rates, because the main bottleneck in the short term is vaccine supply, which depends significantly on government action. It is possible that over the next few months, behavioral interventions such as those run by Suvita become much more important as boosting vaccine demand becomes a priority (this is highly uncertain, and we have not looked into Suvita in depth).
There are potential second- and third-order microeconomic effects of our recommendations that we are not considering, such as donations affecting oxygen prices or expanding the black market. A lot of this depends on precise calculations of supply and demand elasticities that we do not have access to.
Context
At the time of writing (May 4, 2021), India has recorded 20.3 million cases of COVID-19. Last week, India saw over 400,000 recorded cases in one day – more than any country in the world. This is likely a significant underreport, because not enough testing is being done – on May 2, the test positivity rate was 24.2%, and the amount of testing is decreasing due to unavailability. The IHME model, which attempts to correct for the lack of testing, estimates that there were nearly 12 million new cases of COVID-19 on May 3 alone, an unprecedented number. Health capacity in major cities is struggling to keep up. There are severe shortages of oxygen, vaccination rates are very slow and there are shortages in the vaccine stock, and hospital beds are filling up rapidly. The IHME estimates that there have been over 450,000 total deaths due to COVID-19 in India alone, making it one of the world’s most serious humanitarian crises.
Despite the grim situation, we also think this provides a unique opportunity to do good. We believe that donations to charities focused on public health and relief in India are likely unusually cost-effective, and are comparable to GiveWell’s recommendations for cost-effective charities. Technologist Jeff Coleman, using conservative estimates, finds that most oxygen-related interventions for COVID-19 in India, in the short term, outperform GiveWell-recommended charities. For example, just 22 days of use of an oxygen concentrator will do more good than the equivalent amount of money being donated to a GiveWell-recommended charity.
Our values
Our list of recommended charities is based on the belief that the most urgent problem to address is the direct effects of COVID-19 in India on public health and poverty. While virtually every community – from marginalized social groups to particular professions and trades (e.g., artisans) – has been impacted negatively by the pandemic, our focus is recommending charitable donations targeted at alleviating the public health and economic crises.
Given this, we used four criteria to select our recommendations:
Ensuring there are accessible donation methods for as many donors as possible. For this reason, we have omitted some Indian grassroots organizations, which might be comparably effective but don’t offer ways for international donors to donate money. We also recommend charities that allow accessible payment options (e.g., ensuring they accept debit cards and not just credit cards, allowing for some diversity in payment options).
Looking for charities that have room for more funding. Many highly effective charities have met their funding needs, and often have numerous donors willing to cover funding gaps. This means we prioritize charities that are unlikely to get substantial funding anyway, or have the room to accommodate additional donations. This is due to the principle of diminishing marginal returns. This also means we will likely reevaluate the funding needs of these charities soon.
Ensuring the charities are cost-effective. This both means choosing causes that are important (by the number of people affected, how tractable the problem is, and how neglected it is), but also ones where significant progress can be made at relatively low cost. For example, in choosing charities within a particular cause area, we placed substantial weight on how much they were paying to engage in service delivery. Due to the lack of rigorous cost-effectiveness estimates, we do have high uncertainty about our recommendations, and rely on both data and “napkin math.” However, the expected value of these donations is likely high.
Aiming for charities that are transparent and trusted. We looked for organizations that were open about the costs that they faced, what their budget and overheads were, and engaged in due diligence to find out ways to do good. We also heavily used recommendations from groups of people we trust, such as members of the effective altruism community, grantmaking organizations, and researchers in these fields, and aim for relatively well-known organizations and fundraisers. This is important because during crises, a lot of organizations don’t prioritize clarity about where exactly they’re spending their newfound funding.
We also need to integrate more direct evidence from medical research on the efficacy of concentrators into the post, which we expect to add soon.
Our recommendations
We prioritize the following three cause areas (in order of priority).
Oxygen supply
Our highest priority is oxygen supply.
Why?
A large cause behind the many deaths and severe cases of the second wave of COVID-19 in India is a shortage of oxygen. The BBC notes that India currently “has the greatest demand for oxygen out of all other low, lower-middle and upper-middle-income countries,” that “[d]emand has been growing between 6–8% each day,” and thus that “hospitals across India are also experiencing oxygen shortages, with some forced to put up signs warning of a lack of supplies.” There’s countless stories of single hospitals losing 10 patients each night because of not having oxygen, and of families turned away at hospitals that have run out. Hence, we believe that oxygen is the most urgent priority, and donations to organizations that improve access to oxygen is our top recommendation.
Oxygen concentrators, cylinders, and generators
What we’ve read also indicates that oxygen concentrators are, on balance, a better investment than oxygen cylinders, though there is lots of uncertainty. This is because oxygen concentrators can be imported (through flights), while only empty oxygen cylinders can be imported. Empty oxygen cylinders would need to be filled or refilled at local plants, and there’s currently extremely long delays at such plants. This suggests that importing devices that can directly increase oxygen supplies is the better bet. Concentrators are also reusable – if multiple members of a family or people living close together are affected, which is likely, a single concentrator can be used for a long time. It functions almost like an air conditioner by constantly generating oxygen.
In addition, oxygen cylinders have higher recurring costs. Jeff Coleman estimates that if these costs are borne by donors, then it takes 33 days for B-type oxygen cylinders to beat equivalent investments in GiveWell top charities (as opposed to 22 days for concentrators), and that D-type oxygen cylinders do not beat GiveWell top charities. So while B-type oxygen cylinders are a very good investment, concentrators are a better use of limited resources. Edit May 6, 2021: SammyDMartin estimates that “it seems like, very roughly, three quarters to twice as good as Givewell’s top charities is a reasonable range of uncertainty.”
A common objection to this argument is that concentrators cater to people with less-severe cases and only cylinders can be used in ICUs. Experts suggest that roughly 2% patients require critical care (only possible through cylinders) and 8% could recover at home with appropriate support. Right now, those 8% either worsen and become severe cases, burdening the already overstretched system, or die without support. Concentrators make a huge difference for moderate COVID patients, and in doing so, help the healthcare system and could cater to patients who can’t access beds.
We are much more uncertain about the value of oxygen generators. They offer a more long-term solution, but their costs are much higher, so needs for oxygen generators might be better met by big philanthropists and governments.
Recommendations
Our recommended charitable donations for oxygen are the following:
GiveIndia Oxygen fundraiser (for its reputation among effective altruists, transparency about costs, and the fact that it pays among the lowest prices for concentrators, cylinders, and generators)
Oxygen for All concentrator fundraiser on Milaap (for its ties to the established and credible public health accelerator Swasti, its focus on oxygen concentrators rather than cylinders and generators, and the transparency and accessibility of their team in direct communication with us).
Swasth’s Oxygen for India concentrator fundraiser on Milaap (for the price at which they are buying oxygen concentrators, room for more funding, and transparency about procurement and funding). We didn’t initially include this because our document was prepared for a debate lecture series, and there are fewer options (particularly among our target audience) to donate to this fundraiser internationally. However, we think this could also be a cost-effective opportunity – thanks to Ian David Moss for their comment on this! (This was added on May 6, 2021.)
Direct cash transfers
Our second highest priority is direct cash transfers.
Why?
The pandemic in India has caused severe economic disruptions, with a major recession, high unemployment, overburdened welfare systems, and many families losing earning family members. We believe that a low-risk option is to donate to direct, unconditional cash transfers for low-income families in India. Especially given that healthcare costs are also serious for low-income families, economic relief is a priority concern.
Evidence
While our guess is that this is less cost-effective than donations to oxygen, this also probably has less uncertainty, for two reasons.
First, we think cash transfers have to meet an unusually low burden of proof. Giving cash to a low-income family – thus reducing the extent of poverty they are in – is good in itself, by expanding their choices and allowing them to consume and save more, it does not necessitate a rigorous analysis of the instrumental or flow-through effects.
Second, from other contexts, we think the evidence on unconditional cash transfers is broadly positive. Randomized controlled trials have demonstrated positive effects on various metrics, including health (which is especially important during the pandemic), quality of life, and regional economic growth. For example, a literature review by the Cochrane Collaboration finds improvement in “some health outcomes (i.e. the likelihood of having had any illness, the likelihood of having been food secure, and the level of dietary diversity), one social determinant of health (i.e. the likelihood of attending school), and healthcare expenditure.” A randomized controlled trial by Banerjee et al. (2020) found that cash transfers during COVID-19 “significantly improved well-being on common measures such as hunger, sickness and depression in spite of the pandemic, but with modest effect sizes.” Egger et al. (2020) also find a positive fiscal multiplier from unconditional cash transfers, implying positive effects on aggregate demand without significant inflation. This is in line with recommendations from the effective altruist community for the charity GiveDirectly.
Hence, we think direct cash transfers are our second highest priority (after oxygen).
Recommendation
Our recommended charitable donation in this area is the GiveIndia Cash Transfer fundraiser, which gives one-time cash transfers of over $400 to low-income families that have recently experienced a COVID-related death in their family. Our recommendation is because of GiveIndia’s positive track record, recommendations for GiveIndia’s cash transfer fundraisers in the effective altruism community last year, and its strict “due diligence framework” to verify the authenticity of recipients. We also think GiveIndia works with trusted charitable organizations, such as ActionAid.
Community-based responses
Our third highest priority is broad community-based responses.
Why?
We recognize that a lot of the harms and causes of the current pandemic wave include systemic issues: a lack of healthcare capacity, food shortages, information gaps about risk mitigation, no vaccine access, and broken supply chains. In many areas where normal supply chains are disrupted, cash transfers might not be enough to support families in need. For supporting healthcare capacity, it’s possible that a vertical, narrow approach addressing a single capacity issue like oxygen shortages might not be enough. In cases like this, a more flexible approach where the real-time needs of on-ground partners are considered and responded to might be better, whether those be oxygen, support in setting up field hospitals, PPE, or telemedicine. This is especially important as a consideration considering how quickly disasters like this one change and information gaps can exist for distant donors. It is expected that the locations most affected by the second wave will also change from highly populated cities like Delhi and Bangalore to regions like rural Uttar Pradesh, which makes broad community networks and adaptability important. The conclusion here is that what is most effective will change throughout the second wave and differs for each place, therefore, funding organizations that can account for that change is valuable.
We recognize the risk with this approach, for it requires placing trust in a few organizations’ ability to use the funds effectively and honestly without our strict control. Our conversations with mentors, like people at the International Rescue Committee who have worked on public health in disasters before, suggest that unrestricted funding is a critical need for organizations in crisis settings. Otherwise, they are legally bound to fund a specific campaign even if that’s not what is most required or most manageable on ground. This is a less certain approach than the others, but could allow for more community-led and adaptable solutions.
Recommendation
Our recommended charity here is SEEDS India. SEEDS operates in 11 states and union territories in India. It has a history of working in disaster management and crisis response, and their response to COVID’s first wave in India was very large-scale. Their response to the second wave focuses on medical capacity support. We chose it over other organizations because in this category of community centered organizations, very few accept foreign funding, and SEEDS’ recommendation by groups like IndiaCOVID SOS’s funding team suggested legitimacy to us. Here is a press release explaining their plans. This is less certain in terms of effectiveness than our other recommendations, and we are seeking conversation with their team to get more information.
Why not include another organization?
The reason we have chosen to not recommend large international organizations based in the US, like Oxfam, MSF, or Project HOPE, is that we expect those organizations will likely be able to fundraise from US based large donors anyway. Their inclusion on this list might also mean they crowd out other options due to being more well-known, even if their effectiveness is just as unclear. We also have a prior favoring local nonprofits who might have deeper relationships with the communities they serve.
We strongly considered and compared other oxygen providers before narrowing down on the two we mention. These include Hemkunt Foundation, Oxygen on Wheels, Oxygen for India, Mission Oxygen, Khalsa Aid, SEWA International, and other Milaap fundraisers. They were removed if they focused primarily on ventilators/cylinders or less evidence-backed interventions like oxygen ambulances, had met their funding targets, had transparency gaps, or did not allow you to choose which of their projects to donate to.
If you are a Canadian donor interested in giving to COVID response in India please email me at siobhan@rethinkprojects.org.
Update—Canadian donors can now support GiveIndia’s O2 and Cash Transfers program through RC Forward here: https://rcforward.org/covid-19-giving/.
Thanks for getting this done so quickly! Do you have any internal estimates (even order of magnitude ones) of the margin by which this exceeds Givewell’s top recommended charities? I’m intending to donate, but my decision would be significantly different if, for example, you thought GiveIndia Oxygen fundraiser was currently ~1-1.5 times better than Givewell’s top recommended charities, versus ~20 times better.
Thanks for the comment! We are honestly quite unsure about the margin, especially because the cost-effectiveness analyses we have access to are about the cause area and not a model for the specific charitable donations.
Our guess is that donations to oxygen likely beat GiveWell top charities – here are Jeff Coleman’s calculations for the GiveIndia’s various programs for magnitudes. It’s hard to give a precise estimate partly because each oxygen concentrator or cylinder, for instance, is a fixed cost which can be used for a while (and we‘re unclear what demand will be like over the next few months) – so the best Coleman can do is an estimate of days of use it takes to beat GiveWell top charities.
Our current guess is that the direct cash transfer program in our second recommendation is competitive with GiveDirectly but most other GiveWell-recommended charities beat it on pure cost-effectiveness terms, and we are much more uncertain about our third recommendation.
Thanks for getting back to me—I took Jeff’s calculations and did some guesstimating to try and figure out what demand might look like over the next few weeks. The only covid forecast I was able to find for India (let me know if you’ve seen another!) is this by IHME. Their ‘hospital resource use’ forecast shows that they expect a demand of 2 million beds, roughly what was the case in the week before Jeff produced his estimate of the value of oxygen-based interventions (last week of April), to be exceeded until the start of June, which is 30 days from when the estimate was produced. I’m assuming that his estimate was based on what the demand looked like over the previous week.
There’s a lot of uncertainty in this figure, but around 3-8 weeks is a reasonable range for how many weeks demand for oxygen will be at or above what it was in the last week of April, given that the IHME forecast is 4 weeks.
Taking the mean of the estimates, excluding ventilators (since they’re an outlier), gives us 31 days of use to equal givewell’s top charities, i.e. 4 weeks, and we can expect 3-8 weeks of demand being that high. So depending on how the epidemic pans out, it seems like, very roughly, three quarters to twice as good as Givewell’s top charities is a reasonable range of uncertainty.
EDIT: what I said should be taken as a lower limit, as it assumes that the value of oxygen is exactly what Jeff calculated when demand is greater than or equal to 2 Million, and zero below then, when in reality the value is real but smaller if demand is under 2M. I tried to account for this by skewing my guess, so 0.75 to 2x as good, where IHMEs demand numbers would suggest 1x as good.
Thanks a lot for this estimate! I will link your comment on our post.
Thank for you this! Donated today based on your recommendations!
We really appreciate it!
Thank you so much!!
Did you consider advocacy, as mentioned in a recent Future Perfect piece (talking about vaccine supply generally, not specific to India): https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/22440986/covax-challenges-covid-19-vaccines-global-inequity
″ Arguably, donors could have a bigger impact by donating to an advocacy group than by donating to Go Give One, though this field is so new that it’s hard to know for sure.
For donors who prefer to invest in advocacy, Dodson and Glassman both recommended three groups: Global Citizen, the ONE Campaign, and the Pandemic Action Network.
“To the extent that advocacy movements help reduce the political cost of doing the right thing and create political benefits, I think it’s a good thing,” Glassman said. “And the amounts of money at stake that they could potentially influence are large, especially in the United States.” ”
Thanks for the link! I will look into this soon.
My immediate reaction is that that depends on the specific objectives of the advocacy organizations, as well as who they’re aiming to influence.
For example, the article mentions the patent waiver a lot. While this is (I think) a point of difference between Manya and me, I’m currently unsure (50-50 split, in fact) about the sign of the effect of the patent waiver, and pretty convinced the magnitude is small (and that it obscures the deeper problems with vaccine supply).
Thanks for this post!
I shared it in a slack group, and someone asked the following question:
Hi, I’m a little unclear regarding the impact of donations for the oxygen cylinders versus focused Social Media / lobbying efforts to thank and encourage medical gas companies such as Air Liquide to do more to help out. My inclination is lobbying could be much higher leverage than donations; what do you think?
I understand the question to be about the value of taking action/volunteering vs. the value of donating (noting that we can do both).
Do you have an opinion on the impact of this sort of action?
Really interesting point! I think the first thing I have to agree on is doing both is ideal, but if you need to pick, people should think about their comparative advantage. If you work with or know people at medical gas companies who could be convinced by your lobbying efforts, your time and resources are probably really effective when it comes to convincing them to supply here. The largest difficulty is certainly sourcing medical oxygen for hospital usage, and this is going to be really effective if it works out. If you have the ability to donate and earn to give, and can maybe tweet once about medical gas but don’t have the ability or capacity to try to meet and convince higher-ups in the companies, then donating is probably better as a focus area.
Thanks so much for this work! It’s great.
A few questions largely on the basis of things that seemed surprising in Jeff’s twitter thread.
I was hoping that someone else might understand his work better than I do and show me where I am missing something:
1. Where does the 28 days of oxygen to save a patient’s life come from? I am guessing:
- Perfect deployment (i.e. 100% usage).
- 5-6 days of oxygen per patient.
- 20%ish change in patient to-recovery mortality (this seems pretty high from what I have read, but I am no doctor).
2. The costs of cylinder refills seem to be assumed to just be a market rate cost, but given the lack of oxygen in the right location at all, wouldn’t refills be a hard constraint (i.e. refilling the given cylinder simply substitutes for refilling someone else’s cylinder).
3. Are most concentrators/cylinders being sourced by GiveIndia or Milaap being sourced internationally or domestically?
- How does this interact with the seemingly constrained transport of oxygen (as opposed to concentrators) given the specialized distribution infrastructure?
- In the international case, what seems to be the timeframe for getting them to where they are needed?
- In the domestic case, is there enough certainty around where concentrators will be needed over the next month for us to be confident that this is having a meaningful effect in alleviating a constraint on healthcare?
Really appreciate any feedback, as I am trying to assess where the best place is to help provide a meaningful amount of funding in the next few days.
More information on 3:
3. Are most concentrators/cylinders being sourced by GiveIndia or Milaap being sourced internationally or domestically?
Both the Milaap fundraisers source internationally only (China, Israel, Russia, Europe), I’m less sure about GiveIndia but very very likely that it’s only international. They might get a domestic concentrator if a citizen gives them an unused concentrator they have, but no domestic purchases.
- How does this interact with the seemingly constrained transport of oxygen (as opposed to concentrators) given the specialized distribution infrastructure?
Not sure if they interact? Concentrators are fairly easy to transport from what I understand (think an AC being transported). Empty cylinders can be transported easily, but we don’t know enough about liquid oxygen distribution infrastructure to vouch for cylinders confidently.
- In the international case, what seems to be the timeframe for getting them to where they are needed?
Varies quite a bit! Most fundraisers are pursuing a lot of leads to procure concentrators, so the timeframe for each supplier is slightly different. It isn’t an insane amount of time such that they’ll get them when the crisis is significantly better, though. The first Milaap fundraiser plans to deploy a third of their aim by mid-May, the second Swasth fundraiser has so far deployed many concentrators so they seem to have a functional timeline as well.
- In the domestic case, is there enough certainty around where concentrators will be needed over the next month for us to be confident that this is having a meaningful effect in alleviating a constraint on healthcare?
The way distribution works is based on active data collected on oxygen shortages collected on national dashboards. As far as I understand, there aren’t pre-existing partnerships about where to supply the concentrators. Once they get the concentrators, they will assess where they are needed, and get them there asap. The areas the pandemic in India is affecting are expected to keep changing, but it’s been many weeks of major Tier-1 cities being completely cripped and Tier-2 cities essentially also out of ventilators and oxygen. The likelihood that the problem is solved to the extent that this isn’t a bottleneck by the time the concentrator is supplied seems low to me, but that’s based on my intuition, anecdotal knowledge, and trends so far; I don’t have data to support that.
I hope this helps!! Thanks so much for your interest and your questions. I’ll ask someone about the 28 days question, but (a) all the doctors I know are struggling to find time to answer questions (b) the claim that oxygen for this much time can make a meaningful difference for moderate cases (spO2>90) seems to be confounded anecdotally quite a bit.
Thanks so much for getting back to me so quickly—I am trying to target a substantial amount of funds at this issue, but have historically targeted interventions in SSA so our network in India is weak.
I’ve been looking at Milaap and Swasth and having conversations about the extent to which supplies are able to be targeted to locations less likely to be recipients of other concentrator fundraisers and which will see the peak of the pandemic hit shortly. Samhita and oxygenforindia.org were also recommended by a few public health professionals we respect—that said this information has been hugely helpful. I have also spoken with Samhita which seems to have a very solid plan to increase concentrator supply—and potentially increase production capacity.
Thank you so much for your help in this regard—will contribute what I find out to the discussion.
These are really excellent questions, and I want to take a day or so to do some research and speak to people in pulmonary crit care about (1) to respond. In the meantime, I want to point out https://opencriticalcare.org/oxygen-supply-demand-calculator/ and other content on open critical care for more information about how concentrators and a specific amount of O2 supply affects patients. Based on people on the GiveIndia fundraisers’ board, concentrators can make a fairly large difference in preventing moderate cases for worsening.
For question (2), this is what we’re unclear on as well, re: cylinder refilling, which is why we recommend concentrators above cylinders for the timebeing, or increasing cylinder refilling capacity by investing in plants.
For question (3), the majority of the ones sourced by the first Milaap fundraiser are international and all the ones in the second Milaap fundraiser are international. We’re calling a person who runs that fundraiser today for more information on their procurement and distribution processes, and I will keep you updated. Thanks!
Excellent work! Do you know if there’s any relationship between Swasti and Swasth, which also has an oxygen campaign?
I’ve added Swasth as a recommendation, because it seems to purchase concentrators at lower prices and seems to have more room for funding at the moment, and because our concerns on accessible payment options are likely less relevant among EAs (as opposed to the high school and college students who will likely attend our debate lecture series). Thanks for pointing it out!
I don’t think the two are related!
We actually looked at Swasth and think it’s another very promising opportunity – definitely comparable to our other two recommendations – but we didn’t recommend it because it only accepted the payment method of a bank transfer for foreign donations, which could be less accessible (particularly for the lecture series that we originally wrote this for).
In general, however, it looks quite good, both for the prices at which Swasth is getting concentrators and given their focus on concentrators, which we think are the most cost-effective option.
Thanks for adding the rec! It looks like they are working together, actually. From Swasti’s updates page: “The campaign is in association with Swasti.org which in-turn is working with the Swasth Alliance & ACT to procure oxygen concentrators for the most in-distress areas in the country.” It sounds like you’ve been in touch with Swasti directly, have you heard differently?
From talking to the people helping the Swasti fundraiser in question, they seem to be working on data and coordination, but appear to be working separately on procurement and distribution! In any case, our point was more that Swasti and Swasth are separate organizations (and the similar name seems like a coincidence).
Thanks for this post! I was wondering if you had looked into ACT Grants (https://actgrants.in). When I looked into this on my own a few days ago, they seemed promising for several reasons:
- They’re focusing on oxygen concentrators right now, which suggests that they are prioritizing well
- Their impact report is pretty impressive; most charities in this space don’t seem to have impact reports at all
- Because of the above two, I am more confident that they would be able to use my donations well if the funding goals for concentrators are reached
- They’re partnered with Swasth, which has a longer track record
I’d be curious to hear about it if anyone else has looked into this!
That’s why our third recommendation (not in order of importance) under oxygen is the Swasth/ACT Grants fundraiser! From our post: “Swasth’s Oxygen for India concentrator fundraiser on Milaap (for the price at which they are buying oxygen concentrators, room for more funding, and transparency about procurement and funding).”
From a conversation with the people running the Swasti Oxygen for All fundraiser, our guess is the two are equally cost-effective.
GiveIndia says donations from India or the US are tax-deductible.
Milaap says they have tax benefits to donations but I couldn’t find a more specific statement so I guess it’s just in India?
Anyone know a way to donate with tax deduction from other jurisdictions? If 0.75x − 2x is accurate, it seems like for some donors that could make the difference.
(Siobhan’s comment elsewhere here suggests that Canadian donors might want to talk to RCForward about this).
Hi! So the Swasti Oxygen for All fundraiser does not offer a tax deduction for the United States (I asked them recently). Swasth’s Oxygen for India fundraiser offers tax deductions for donations from the United States for donations above $1,000 (the details are specified in the link). We are happy to check about other countries!
Hello! Unfortunately I don’t think they have a list for all the countries where they’re tax exempt, but if you have a specific country in mind, I can try and check for you!
I have commented on Jeff’s tweets that the oxygen tank capacities and lifetimes don’t seem to make sense. If you could get to the bottom of that it would be appreciated.
Thanks for sharing! Manya and I will look this up/check the actual size of the oxygen tanks and times, and see how it affects Jeff’s model.