Hello
I have been debating a family member on charitable donations in Christian communities, and he pointed out that the vast majority of charities were founded by Christians. I pointed out that out of the worlds most effective charities, there was no overrepresentation of Christian founders like there was in the less-effective charities, implying that it wasn’t so much the higher rates of generosity as much as it was a confounding variable. Unfortunately, most of these charities do not give much information as to their founders or religious or secular philosophies, so I can only give information on the charities that do which is a much smaller sample which may have confounding variables of its own. I have no reason to doubt that I’m wrong, but it would be nice to know if I am.
Cheers
Jack
Isn’t it in one sense trivially true that that most of everything in the west was founded by Christians? (most people in the west were Christian for a very long time)
But FWIW many EA charity founders are active Christians.
Bruce Friedrich, founder of GFI (an ACE top-rated animal charity) is firmly Catholic. See --> https://www.christiansforimpact.org/episodes/bruce-friedrich
Paul Niehaus, cofounder of Give directly is Christian. See --> https://youtu.be/J98CRcahYIc?si=IGAe5w86ceQly9wr
The founder of ID Insights and many Charity Entrepreneurship charities are religious, too. The EA Christian directory has a list of many.
What makes EA development charities special isn’t being Christian/non Christian. It’s being evidence -based, willing to update on new information, willing to share info, and being highly positively impactful on the margin, etc.
Most charities (Christian or non Christian) are not this.