the good spread - velir presentation - simplifying the process of charitable selection
TRANSCRIPT
The Good Spread
Simplifying the process of charitable giving
David Craft
Jan 30, 2014
Velir presentation
Charitable Donations in the U.S.$303 billion total, 2009
The Good Spread
Total charitable giving holding steady at 2% GDP
(majority of individual contributions go to religion)*
*Stanford Social Innovation Review, see also Dan Pallotta's TED talk.
The Good Spread
The overall goal of The Good Spread:
Increase charitable giving by making the process of charity selection and donation better.
Searching for charities
CharityNavigator.org Givewell.org
Information Overload (Results 1-10 of 2.9 zillion))
Information Underload(Here are the 3 charities we like)
The Good Spread
Evaluator Description Number of charities evaluated
Charitynavigator.org Quantitative, large number of charities evaluated
7000
CharityWatch A, A-, B+ type ratings 600
Greatnonprofits.org Yelp/zagat style user ratings 16,000
MyPhilanthropedia.org Expert style ratings (thumbs up, thumbs down)
700
Better Business Bureau Set of old school criteria. If met, a seal (for a price) is awarded.
12,000
GiveWell.org Lots of research boiled down to three recs
-
GivingWhatWeCan Similar to givewell -
Charity evaluation/search sites
Charity navigatorThe Good Spread
GiveWellThe Good Spread
PhilanthropediaThe Good Spread
BBBThe Good Spread
Great NonprofitsThe Good Spread
The Good Spread vision
Simple yet reliable (trustworthy) way to choose a charity and make a donation.
Avoid analysis paralysis!
Four challenges
1) Scoring charities in order to build a great database
The scoring method
Four challenges
1) Scoring charities in order to build a great database
2) On-the-fly user specific charity recommendations (e.g. user searches “tampa domestic violence”)
The scoring method
Four challenges
1) Scoring charities in order to build a great database
2) On-the-fly user specific charity recommendations (e.g. user searches “tampa domestic violence”)
3) User experience
Not overwhelming But...
Complete with all the info anyone might want and tailored to the user
Fun (Zappos...)
The scoring method The UX
Four challenges
1) Scoring charities in order to build a great database
2) On-the-fly user specific charity recommendations (e.g. user searches “tampa domestic violence”)
3) User experience
Not overwhelming But...
Complete with all the info anyone might want and tailored to the user
Fun (Zappos...)
The scoring method The UX
Business/legal organization
4) Owning the entire process
Scoring charities
With close to 1.8 million charities in the U.S. alone, this is a gigantic task.
Aggregate the aggregators.
Still, how to score a charity?…
The Good Spread
Scoring charities – hard numbers
CharityNavigatorCharityWatch
GreatNonprofitsMyPhilanthropedia
Givewell / GivingWhatWeCan
Numbers between 0 and 1
GiveDirectly, Schistosomiasis Control, Deworm the World, Against Malaria, Project Healthy Children
Scoring charities – softer numbers
“Local”Headquarters locationSite of work
Category
Company size ?
Categories
Good Spread Defaults
User values
international development
10 2
education 6 2
global health 6 2
arts and culture
4 4
environment 4 2
animals 4 10
distance
scor
e
Scoring charities – final scoreWeighted sum of the component scores:
Example
The Good Spread
Other sources for automatic charity evaluation
Google News
Google Nonprofits / OneToday
“Big Data” solutions
How to assess impact?
???
The Good Spread
Other ideas for charity scoring
The Good Spread
Statistical / machine learning approach
(Test set and validation set)
Crowd sourced “expert opinions”:
See e.g. The Wisdom of Crowds: A summary of decades of research in behavioral economics, by JamesSurowiecki
Drill down interface
Education Homelessness
Gay rights Microfinance
The Good Spread
Donate now!
Donate now!Donate now!
Donate now!
Donate now!Donate now!
“Education” selected
Music Inner city
Student loans Worldwide access
The Good Spread
Donate now!
Donate now!Donate now!
Donate now!
Donate now!Donate now!
drill deeper
The Good Spread
It is more difficult to give money away intelligently than to earn it in the first place. - Andrew Carnegie
How many charities? [plan big: if The Good Spread takes off, we don't want to flood smallish charities with too much money. See givewell.org.]
Continuously updated databases
Weekly featured charities. “Quick Give” amount.
Expert recommendations
Giving news, blog, discussion board, contests
Business questions
Other “customers”: foundations etc that need to make large yearly charity decisions.
Pass along the donations? i.e. tax write-off would come from charity chosen (if the user drilled down to a final charity or one was selected for the user) or does the good spread become a charity itself and the letter comes from it?
Eventually, should The Good Spread have a dedicated team of charity evaluators?
EXTRAS