We read all the research on which charities to give to, so you don’t have to | Hacker News Reader

We read all the research on which charities to give to, so you don’t have to

80000hours.org

I picked one to research (partially because I would have expected MSF / Doctors Without Borders to rate in the "Global health and development" category).

Charitynavigator has this to say about Against Malaria Foundation: "This organization is not eligible to be rated by Charity Navigator because it does not meet our criterion of having nontrivial fundraising expenses."

Oddly, they don't even include Charity Navigator among their six chosen sources.

I'm the author - Charity Navigator isn't very useful because it doesn't tell you whether the program delivered by the charity actually helps people, which is by far the most important and most frequently lacking factor. The only thing CN is useful for is identifying outright frauds, and even then it's not amazing.

As you can see GiveWell has investigated AMF including its finances in vastly more detail over 4 years than Charity Navigator has ever investigated anyone: http://www.givewell.org/charities/against-malaria-foundation

Where does Givewell break out fundraising costs, though? The specific breakouts of spending seem more detailed on CN.

If all of that 92% is actually going directly to programs, that's excellent.

I actually think it's a good thing for charities to spend more on fundraising than they do - it's a harmful metric to judge them by. Here's a discussion of that: https://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pallotta_the_way_we_think_abou...

However, IIRC all the fundraising and admin costs are covered by separate donors so that any additional donations go to nets. AMF doesn't have much of a fundraising operation as it gets its funding through GiveWell and Good Ventures primarily.

  it's a good thing for charities to spend more on fundraising than they do

Well, sure, if a little money spent fundraising yields far more in donations and/or broadens your audience to your cause.

What raises concern for me is when the percentage of receipts spent on fundraising is disproportionately high and/or spent on overpaid insider salaries.

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