“I suspect your proposed model is perhaps more suited to megadonors and government aid, rather than small donors (except perhaps where those donors are influenced by the same recommender, e.g. GiveWell), because I’m not sure how individual donors would be able to know which services would otherwise not be covered by domestic funds? ”
To me this underlines the point that individual donors aren’t best placed to set priorities for what a countries or population needs. If the donor doesn’t have confidence in giving options with more structure, I could see a rationale for cash (such as Give Directly) but the problems that earmarked aid create for countries are increasingly well understood and this is no less of true for small donations than large. We summarise six key issues in the paper: volatility, fragmentation, fungibility, weak prioritisation, exit strategy and local autonomy.
To be clear I think cash is a low bar for effective giving and there are many better options, but I would suggest that it is crucial that we strengthen, rather than undermine, national institutions in the process.
In other words, I would love to see different narratives around giving with a focus on strengthening effective cause prioritisation in countries—rather than this prioritisation being done in London, SF, Geneva etc—and organisations that seek donations from individuals to provide technical assistance and top-up financing.
Thanks Matt, I’ll check out these links.
You say:
“I suspect your proposed model is perhaps more suited to megadonors and government aid, rather than small donors (except perhaps where those donors are influenced by the same recommender, e.g. GiveWell), because I’m not sure how individual donors would be able to know which services would otherwise not be covered by domestic funds? ”
To me this underlines the point that individual donors aren’t best placed to set priorities for what a countries or population needs. If the donor doesn’t have confidence in giving options with more structure, I could see a rationale for cash (such as Give Directly) but the problems that earmarked aid create for countries are increasingly well understood and this is no less of true for small donations than large. We summarise six key issues in the paper: volatility, fragmentation, fungibility, weak prioritisation, exit strategy and local autonomy.
To be clear I think cash is a low bar for effective giving and there are many better options, but I would suggest that it is crucial that we strengthen, rather than undermine, national institutions in the process.
In other words, I would love to see different narratives around giving with a focus on strengthening effective cause prioritisation in countries—rather than this prioritisation being done in London, SF, Geneva etc—and organisations that seek donations from individuals to provide technical assistance and top-up financing.