Epistemic status: I am a university student who has read a lot of EA material but has little knowledge about B1G1 programs. I thought carefully about this post for a few hours.
I think there’s a wide spectrum of possible effectiveness depending on implementation, but in practice they seem unlikely to be much more effective than the average non-EA charity, and a factor of at least 10 behind many EA causes.
Overall, the strictest forms of B1G1, where a company gives the exact same product they’re selling, seems gimmicky to me. The reason is that needs of people in the developing world are vastly different from those of the wealthy people buying the products. I think market forces might even dictate that these programs are not much more effective than direct cash transfers: If they were much more effective, the target population would be willing to buy them, which would cannibalize the sales of the company. [1] None of the 3 companies you list is so naive—they mostly outsource their work to charities. But this comes with its own problems: they don’t apply their own domain knowledge to their interventions.
Warby Parker works with Pupils Project and VisionSpring. Pupils Project operates in the US, so it’s unlikely they are cost-effective. VisionSpring at least works in Bangladesh. According to a [GiveWell interview][2], they do undercut commercial prices by a factor of 2 by selling glasses at cost for 150 taka ($1.77) [3], but I doubt that glasses are a leveraged intervention in the developing world. GiveWell does not currently recommend VisionSpring as a top or standout charity, instead recommending charities that can beat cash by a factor of 5-60 and are supported by very strong evidence.
TOMS has stopped distributing shoes in favor of donating 1⁄3 of their profits to a fund managed by their giving team. Their 2019 impact report is basically a marketing document full of infographics; it appears they make some attempt at evaluating impact of charities, but don’t follow effective altruist principles. For example, they fund projects in the US, and clean water programs (The Gates foundation has studied the water, sanitation, and hygiene sector extensively and finds better opportunities in sanitation).
P&G’s MNT vaccine program is through UNICEF, which is massively overfunded by comparison to charities recommended by GW and the Open Philanthropy Project.
There are more fundamental problems. The B1G1 website says they primarily evaluate causes by “progress of the project activity” and financial records; it’s likely they’re falling for the overhead myth and vastly underemphasizing the effectiveness of the cause area, which is left up to the company. EA has at least three branches where effective cause areas are found: global health/poverty, farm/wild animal welfare, and existential risk. It would be ideal if companies’ B1G1 programs either supported effective programs in one of these areas, or found a unique niche. B1G1 programs need to yield good PR, and sometimes have the additional constraint of providing a tangible product, so it appears they’re limited to a small subset of global health interventions, which in these three examples look no better than the average charity in terms of effectiveness. I don’t see any companies with B1G1 programs in farm or wild animal welfare, probably because it is politically contentious. Existential risk causes seem even less likely to yield good PR because they’re the exact opposite of the tangible transaction at the heart of B1G1. And B1G1 seems unlikely to let companies find a unique niche given that they’re outsourcing to nonprofits.
Finally, I have other concerns. B1G1 companies could be decreasing the amount given to more effective charities, which given that some charities are hundreds or thousands of times more effective than others, might cause net harm. They also might be using such programs to cover up being socially irresponsible (e.g. poor treatment of factory workers, or contributing to high-suffering animal agriculture).
Since this comment is rather long, I’ve split it into two, with the second comment directly answering the 12 questions.
Sorry for getting back to you so late but WOW. I was mind-blown by your insightful responses. It will be a tremendous help to my preliminary research and simply delightful to have been posted my inquiry here on this forum. Thank you so much tkwa!
Epistemic status: I am a university student who has read a lot of EA material but has little knowledge about B1G1 programs. I thought carefully about this post for a few hours.
I think there’s a wide spectrum of possible effectiveness depending on implementation, but in practice they seem unlikely to be much more effective than the average non-EA charity, and a factor of at least 10 behind many EA causes.
Overall, the strictest forms of B1G1, where a company gives the exact same product they’re selling, seems gimmicky to me. The reason is that needs of people in the developing world are vastly different from those of the wealthy people buying the products. I think market forces might even dictate that these programs are not much more effective than direct cash transfers: If they were much more effective, the target population would be willing to buy them, which would cannibalize the sales of the company. [1] None of the 3 companies you list is so naive—they mostly outsource their work to charities. But this comes with its own problems: they don’t apply their own domain knowledge to their interventions.
Warby Parker works with Pupils Project and VisionSpring. Pupils Project operates in the US, so it’s unlikely they are cost-effective. VisionSpring at least works in Bangladesh. According to a [GiveWell interview][2], they do undercut commercial prices by a factor of 2 by selling glasses at cost for 150 taka ($1.77) [3], but I doubt that glasses are a leveraged intervention in the developing world. GiveWell does not currently recommend VisionSpring as a top or standout charity, instead recommending charities that can beat cash by a factor of 5-60 and are supported by very strong evidence.
TOMS has stopped distributing shoes in favor of donating 1⁄3 of their profits to a fund managed by their giving team. Their 2019 impact report is basically a marketing document full of infographics; it appears they make some attempt at evaluating impact of charities, but don’t follow effective altruist principles. For example, they fund projects in the US, and clean water programs (The Gates foundation has studied the water, sanitation, and hygiene sector extensively and finds better opportunities in sanitation).
P&G’s MNT vaccine program is through UNICEF, which is massively overfunded by comparison to charities recommended by GW and the Open Philanthropy Project.
There are more fundamental problems. The B1G1 website says they primarily evaluate causes by “progress of the project activity” and financial records; it’s likely they’re falling for the overhead myth and vastly underemphasizing the effectiveness of the cause area, which is left up to the company. EA has at least three branches where effective cause areas are found: global health/poverty, farm/wild animal welfare, and existential risk. It would be ideal if companies’ B1G1 programs either supported effective programs in one of these areas, or found a unique niche. B1G1 programs need to yield good PR, and sometimes have the additional constraint of providing a tangible product, so it appears they’re limited to a small subset of global health interventions, which in these three examples look no better than the average charity in terms of effectiveness. I don’t see any companies with B1G1 programs in farm or wild animal welfare, probably because it is politically contentious. Existential risk causes seem even less likely to yield good PR because they’re the exact opposite of the tangible transaction at the heart of B1G1. And B1G1 seems unlikely to let companies find a unique niche given that they’re outsourcing to nonprofits.
Finally, I have other concerns. B1G1 companies could be decreasing the amount given to more effective charities, which given that some charities are hundreds or thousands of times more effective than others, might cause net harm. They also might be using such programs to cover up being socially irresponsible (e.g. poor treatment of factory workers, or contributing to high-suffering animal agriculture).
Since this comment is rather long, I’ve split it into two, with the second comment directly answering the 12 questions.
[1]: See https://www.givewell.org/international/charities/income-raising-goods for why. Other GiveWell charities manage to outperform cash because they don’t sell commodities—individual families can’t buy a school deworming program.
[2]: https://files.givewell.org/files/conversations/VisionSpring_05-17-19_(public).pdf
[3]: Strangely, they sell glasses for $0.85 each on their website. Perhaps they have high distribution costs.
I just wanted to say I thought this was overall an impressively thorough and thoughtful comment. Thank you for making it!
Sorry for getting back to you so late but WOW. I was mind-blown by your insightful responses. It will be a tremendous help to my preliminary research and simply delightful to have been posted my inquiry here on this forum. Thank you so much tkwa!
Glad I could help. By the way, it came to my attention that GiveWell is investigating the cause area of providing glasses in developing countries: https://www.givewell.org/international/technical/programs/eyeglasses#How_cost-effective_is_the_program
This is promising, but I still endorse the general stance that B1G1-type programs have obstacles to overcome to reach effectiveness.