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Comment by tlb | Hacker News Reader

Thanks, Pineapple person / people.

The benefit to society from donating to charity can range from positive, to zero, to negative. Often negative. Anyone with money can donate, but it takes a lot of work to donate to things that make the world better. The Pineapple fund seems to have put in the effort to donate to projects with high positive impact, in a way that does the most good. (It's possible to donate to good projects in bad ways, such as by requiring them to use the money to build a building with your name on it.)

Doing the work can be exasperating, because you think "I'm giving away money, and I have to do all this work too???" But it's the work that makes the difference.

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Personally, this year I donated money via https://app.effectivealtruism.org/funds. I somewhat trust them to do something reasonable with my money, if that's naive of me I hope somebody will tell me.

I used it work in that world (specifically effectivephilanthropy.org). Givewell is and was one of my favorite organizations. This group appears to be affiliated and think similarly. I do not believe you are being naive, I think this is a very good approach.

If you care about helping the most cost effective charities with proven track records to deliver well researched interventions than you are doing the right thing! :)

Thank you for investing the time to research and think about this topic! If you are in the tech space and thinking about great causes to work on you can also check out https://80000hours.org. They are also Effective Altruism affiliated and recommend areas that need more attention by smart people! :)

Can you explain to me why you believe the benefit to society from donating to charity is often negative?

I can't speak for the parent, but I've personally known people with parents who ran charities and political campaigns for the sole purpose of collecting donations and spending 100% of the donations on "operations"; paying their salary while they do nothing other than the occasional fundraising as the well dries up.

A lot of attempts at charity have backfired, often due to cultural differences between the benefactor and those on the receiving end, or a lack of oversight or poorly-thought-out plans. See: PlayPump [1], UNICEF's Cluster-bomb-colored food drops [2], etc

[1] http://blogs.ei.columbia.edu/2010/07/01/the-playpump-what-we... [2] https://www.upi.com/Defense-News/2003/04/02/UNICEF-Rations-b...

Also see: https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unintended_consequences, specifically the Indian cobras.

Even with good intentions, predicting outcomes is difficult. When you donate to a charity(or any organization), you are giving them more influence while delegating decision making. The best option seems to be: find something you really care about and get your hands dirty.

Scared Straight is a well-known program that has been well-studied and found to cause significant harm. "In 2004 the Washington State Institute for Public Policy estimated that each dollar spent on Scared Straight programs incurred costs of $203.51."[0]

It was based on an intuitive idea: if teenagers see how bad jail is, they'll want to do anything they can to avoid it. That turned out pretty poorly - they instead built social connections with criminals, and were substantially more likely to get involved with crime themselves.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scared_Straight!

Charities range from high-impact, through useful, mostly useless, to ones having good intentions but really causing damage, and at the very end of the spectrum, outright scams.

It probably doesn't take much work to ignore the latter, as long as you ignore emotional appeals and use a little bit of reason instead. But it takes some work if you want to go up the spectrum, if you want to find the more effective charities. If saving lives is your primary concern, then GiveWell does great jobs in rating charities by their effectiveness (in dollars per life saved). If you're interested in different types of social impact, then you'll likely have to do this work yourself.

> Can you explain to me why you believe the benefit to society from donating to charity is often negative?

For one thing, the fact that it is tax deductible itself results in it being the focus of self-serving tax dodges that aren't really charitable. If charities remained tax exempt but donations weren't tax deductible, the abuse incentive would be removed.

There's also, of course, well meaning but counterproductive charities, but the subsidy also probably increases the share of donations that goes to those, since it reduces the incentive for donor diligence.

In the UK, we have Gift Aid, where instead of reclaiming the tax on donations, the tax paid is also donated. That sounds like a better system to me.

There can be unintended consequences like here: https://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/25/world/africa/mosquito-net...

Some also feel that donating has a risk of creating dependency.

A ton of reasons, but a big one is that external involvement weakens local infrastructure. Eg. dumping free food in poor countries seems like a lovely idea from a distance, and is the sort of thing people like to donate to, but in practice it undermines local producers and sabotages the local food economy.

I think this would have been a reasonable criticism 20 years go, but it is well recognised these days.

Is there relevant literature on this? Would this also be a strike against Universal Basic Income?

The food thing is probably well recognized at least among reputable charities (as opposed to opportunistic religious charities or whatever), but in general the role of external donors in weakening local infrastructure is still a live issue.

https://www.livemint.com/Opinion/b6rCZ0tubpb0GIYfq7hnBM/Weak...

Occasionally the idea crops up in my mind to make a website called something like "ifihadabilliondollars.com" where people could nominate and discuss worthy causes. The philanthropists who actually have the money are inundated with requests worthy and otherwise.

It would be nice to give them a resource where they have access to good information and can pick without pressure.

How do you prevent this from effectively becoming a marketing/popularity contest? Seems like if it actually became popular then you're right back where you are now, where the charities that get the money are the ones with the best marketing and not the best impact.

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