Comment by os7borne | Hacker News Reader

Comment by os7borne | Hacker News Reader

I have a fundamental issue with the way in which the Gates foundation gets its work done. Sure, there may actually be impact achieved in some of its investments, but in most others, the team does not even know the name of the founders they have invested in. I've interacted with Associates from the Foundation based in London who know the broad strokes of investments they've made in India, for example, but the actual companies, they have no idea. Their process has been to spray and pray. No active involvement, no process optimisation, no impact metric monitoring etc.

Further, the manner in which the foundation functions in India is what makes me cringe when I hear their name. They have unrestricted access to members of parliament in India, they promote Indian government programs e.g. Ayushman Bharat (Health insurance for 500 mn Indians), Aadhaar (digital unique number for all Indians) and they ensure policy changes to suit their funding programs. Their close linkage with the Indian government to further their propoganda is what makes me cringe. Sure enough, do implement some programs its commonplace to liase with Governments, but where's the ethics in that? Where do you draw the line to limit promotions for government projects that fake numbers and are not really having any impact on the ground?

This Annual Letter is just another propaganda piece, as stated by others here.

The first time I worked in a NGO, it was a Gates mission. We had a very small budget, under $100k.

The mission was part of the Millenium Village Project, and the various entities adhering to MVP were managing our money. The Gates foundation never checked how it was used.

And 37% of this budget stayed in new york, as a management fee.

14% of this budget stayed at the local MVP antenna, again as a management fee.

What were they managing you ask ? Well, one thing was our budget: if we ever had to order something, we needed to go through them, "to avoid inappropriate spendings". Once, I ordered a printer, knowing exactly the price of the device. It arrived alright, but the bill stated twice the price it should have cost.

The NGO in the street next to us had a worse story. We managed to perform our mission. They didn't. Yet they consummed $ 2 millions doing so.

For the 3 years I have been active in Africa, every time I went on a mission, no matter the degree of success, a marvelous report with shiny graphs was sent to our backers stating how great we did on the field. According to them, I saved so many children overpopulation is probably kinda my fault now.

We never heard once from the Gates foundation. Like you said, they sprayed and prayed.

One time, we had a gig from MS themself. We were supposed to do a conference over a few days in Senegal with their money. One MS guy came the first hour, distributed a few t-shirts, then leaved forever. We decided "fuck that", and proceded to give a training on Linux based products for the rest of the conf.

That's how ridiculous all that is.

> no matter the degree of success, a marvelous report with shiny graphs was sent to our backers stating how great we did

This seems like the core problem: every organisation's incentives are to look good to those paying, and if you're in the aid business, these people are not the poor. Spending 37% on new york people who can make just the perfect glossy report & get it into the hands of the people who matter... this may well be the right move for your organisation.

There are other incentives too. Lots of academics need fieldwork time on their CVs. Lots of rich people's kids need management experience for their CVs, and something to talk about at parties.

I'm happy to believe that Mr Gates's motivations are sincere, but the whole industry seems rotten to me.

Why is it bad that some people are not effective altruists? (Of course if someone is just giving out of guilt, then the shiny booklet industry is a scam basically, but I don't think we have data about this.)

No organization is perfect. Because organizations are made of people and people are not perfect. Can the resources be utilized in a better way? maybe so. Even with all these inefficiencies what Bill Gates is doing through his foundation should be commended.

Every time I have seen Bill Gates praise Nandan Nilekani (the one who headed the Indian irrevocable and unchangeable “unique” ID program called Aadhaar) and the Aadhaar program itself (going purely by fake numbers put by UIDAI and the government), my beliefs have been strengthened — that Gates is mostly clueless and that he still pushes things that would monetarily benefit him or his friends, without any care toward how these affect the poorest and most vulnerable people in society.

We may probably be better off without philanthropy of this kind!

Do you have any pointers to organizations which have a higher hit rate than Gates foundation?

What are you basing the following on? -> "Their process has been to spray and pray. No active involvement, no process optimisation, no impact metric monitoring etc."

"Do you have any pointers to organizations which have a higher hit rate than Gates foundation?"

- It's true they have the capital that spreads far and wide compared to most others. No doubt.

"What are you basing the following on? -> "Their process has been to spray and pray. No active involvement, no process optimisation, no impact metric monitoring etc.""

- Conversations with individuals that work at the foundation.

> Do you have any pointers to organizations which have a higher hit rate than Gates foundation?

I think there are a couple that are significantly better, e.g. Doctors Without Borders, who run an extremely targeted operation with low overhead (you can find spending breakdown in their annual reports). They also explicitly limit the amount of funding they accept from governments/etc. such that they remain politically neutral. I'm sure there are others in the same category.

GiveWell, Watsi.

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