This is the final post in our Gift-Giving Guide series by Kris Zyp. Read posts one, two, and three here. Enjoy!
As we finish this series, here are several recommendations and final comments.
Bread for the World –
This is a distinctly Christian organization with strong focus on Biblically driven values, and seems to be very productive and influential. I wish that they were more narrowly focused on international issues. While they do advocate on international issues, they spend a lot of their focus on domestic poverty that has lesser returns. http://bread.org/
Micah Challenge –
This is a UK-based organization, that is also a Christian organization (their name comes from Micah 6:8). I love their strong focus on international issues, advocacy for the millennium development goals, which cover the range of important poverty issues. They have also done a good job focusing on injustices that have received relatively little attention, including tax havens, and their impact on developing countries. There were chosen by Live 58 as their advocacy organization to support. However, this is a UK-based organization, and I haven’t found much evidence of their influence in US policy. http://www.micahchallenge.org/
Jubilee –
This organization is based on the Biblical principle of Jubilee, and thus focuses specifically on the issue of debt injustice. Third world debt is well-known to be a major factor in keeping countries in poverty, and this movement’s focus on this issue has helped them to have influence in rather spectacular victories in debt cancellation, freeing billions of dollars for development. http://www.jubileeusa.org
It is also worth noting that while I have been primarily doing comparison in financial terms for consistency, in comparison to other efforts, you can easily have a powerful impact in advocacy with your own time and effort and minimal training. Becoming an effective missionary can take years of theological training and language acquisition, other aid workers often require similar levels of training before they become fully capable workers. On the other hand, with a little bit of research you can instantly start emailing and calling your representatives to affect change.
In addition, there are many aspects of fighting poverty aren’t simply matters of injecting more money; sustainable change really requires policy changes in areas like trade injustice, debt relief, tax havens, immigration constraints that cost the poor billions of dollars every year.
Gift Matching
Gift matching is another catalyst, encouraging others to give to cause by increasing the incentives and potential to attract other donors. This is a great strategy for those that are well-researched and have significant funds to offer. Note, this generally requires some coordination with charities to start such an offer. You can also take advantage of gift matching with donations that have matched offers. Many charities offer multiplicative donations, based on existing donor offers for matching. However, be aware that the actual impact of gift matching can easily be overrated. Typically the donor that offers that matching funds has minimum and/or maximum amounts and the offered matching funds may be released by other donors regardless of whether you give, making the multiplication level an illusion in many cases.
Some Comments on Projects I Didn’t Recommend
Fair trade or charity-connected products
It may sound surprising that someone who writes about social justice issues would not be a fan of fair trade and charity-connected products (buying a product where some money or item is donated to those in need), but these products have simply not demonstrated cost effective benefits to others that are anywhere close to the other recommendations I have made. Fair trade has very limited impact, and can create market distortions that are actually counter-productive. Charity-connected products combine marketing and charity in ways that typically are sub-optimal on both counts.
Now if you were really faced with the isolated decision to buy a fair trade produce vs a standard product, than yes, buy fair trade. But, this ignores the alternate opportunity cost. If you are truly interested in doing the most good, buying a cheaper product, and giving the difference to a high quality charity is almost always the most beneficial approach.
There is a caveat. Buying certain products can have a side-effect in raising awareness. While the economic benefit may be dubious, buying a product that raises awareness of poverty or trade injustices can further the social movements that working towards real policy reforms that do make a difference. I wrote about this in greater depth here: http://thezyps.com/2012/06/14/trade-injustice/. Also, the one decision you can make in choosing between similar products is simply to prefer products from developing countries (even just choosing China over US products is better for fighting poverty).
Animals
Making donations for the purchase of livestock for poor families is common way to contribute. While this is a good idea, and has benefits, there is a lack of any evidence that the benefits are big or long-lasting as the other projects recommended. The complications and ineffectiveness of giving animals has been expressed with more detail by Givewell:http://blog.givewell.org/2009/12/27/gifts-of-livestock-eg-heifer-international/
Still there are a couple of reasons why giving animals is not bad: such donations can be a good entry way to encourage people to start giving (with a gift that appears quite tangible). There is another bright side to giving animals, that may seem surprising: most charities involved in this type of work don’t actually spend most of the donated money on animals. This may be disturbing, but the reality they often spend most of the money on the more important and beneficial details of community development and education that are far productive than the animal gifts themselves.
Making Your Own Evaluations
I have made several recommendation, but you may want to make some of your own assessments. Hopefully these recommendations demonstrate some key ideas of researching the cost and benefits of different approaches. In addition I wanted to share a couple more ideas for assessment:
Often people use program expenditure percentage to evaluate an organization. This is a natural inclination since it is one of the few objective measures that we can really directly compare between charities. However, it is also one of the poorest indicators of the value of the work a charity is doing. First, the difference between the different activities carried out by charities can easily vary in efficacy by hundreds of percentages points, thus the different in program expenditure is usually negligible in comparison. Second, non-program expenditures can be very valuable in growing in charity. Spending more on marketing doesn’t necessarily indicate ineffectiveness, it can easily prove to be an investment in the future of the charity that will pay off in the years to come (charities frequently vary greatly from year to year in percentages).
Instead, If you really want to look at a simple objective numerical indicator, here is what I recommend: look at how much of their funds come from foundations. The unfortunate reality is that success in acquiring funds from individuals is based on the quality of marketing, how well a charity tells it stories, and has little relation to the actual quality of their work. Foundations, on the other hand, exist to make more in-depth evaluations. Foundations pour through statistics, assessing the efforts, sometimes do interviews and read papers on different programs. Therefore foundations have a huge advantage in accurately directing their funds towards organizations that are actually doing good work. While it is not always true, in general, organizations funded by individuals are good at marketing, programs funded by foundations are good at helping the poor.
The most effective giving is directed to those in the deepest global poverty. Not only is it a morally logical to help those in greatest need, it also is most effective. Numerous factors like exchange rates and opportunity for impact, and combine to make dollars spent internationally towards developing countries result in the greatest benefit (see http://thezyps.com/2010/09/20/international-giving/ for more on this).
I hope this giving guide will provide some useful insights and suggestions for you, as you look to obey the Biblical call to help the poor, bringing them the greatest benefits, driven by love that looks to the interests and needs of others. Thank you for reading! {And thank you, Kris, for writing!}