Philanthropy for Hackers

GiveWell[1] and Open Philanthropy[2] would probably be of interest here. (I am a donor to some of GiveWell's recommended organizations but otherwise not affiliated with them)

[1] http://www.givewell.org/

[2] http://www.openphilanthropy.org/

Re: Philanthropy for Hackers

#5

Post by melling » Sat, Jun 27, 2015, 3:13 AM UTC

brokencup wrote: post #4

GiveWell[1] and Open Philanthropy[2] would probably be of interest here. (I am a donor to some of GiveWell's recommended organizations but otherwise not affiliated with them) [1] http://www.givewell.org/ [2] http://www.openphilanthropy.org/

I've recently donated to the mosquito nets. I don't see where they recommend institutions for medical or scientific research.

Re: Philanthropy for Hackers

#6

Post by reasonattlm » Sat, Jun 27, 2015, 3:32 AM UTC

You might look at Peter Thiel's presentations on radical philanthropy or venture philanthropy for a similar view on how philanthropy at the institutional level might be changed. He's been arguing for years that the balance of risk and how money is put to use in the philanthropic world is well out of line with the goal of achieving meaningful results, changing the world rather than just propping up present situations, and rather than the very conservative way it runs now it should look a lot more like venture funding:

http://www.mercurynews.com/business/ci_16792615

So that view seems to be spreading, which I think is a good thing in the long run.

Of course as I've argued in the past, I think that the best thing everyone could do with excess money is to donate to some form of SENS-like rejuvenation research to accelerate progress towards an end to degenerative aging. 100,000 lives are lost every day in really very horrible ways, the slow crumbling to a painful death, until we stop it from happening. It's just another medical condition, and the only think stopping the research community from producing therapies is money and the will to use it.

Re: Philanthropy for Hackers

#7

Post by codinghorror » Sat, Jun 27, 2015, 3:32 AM UTC

Didn't Bill Gates set the model here for everyone to follow? This reads like an exercise in how many times he can use the word "hack" in an article.

Re: Philanthropy for Hackers

#8

Post by philip1209 » Sat, Jun 27, 2015, 4:13 AM UTC

On the other end of the spectrum, check out the Detroit Water Project (YC alum) - which aims to solve a problem like a charity, but is structured as a profit-seeking company. Addressing inefficiencies can be helpful for society, even if you pursue profit.

Re: Philanthropy for Hackers

#9

Post by jonpaine » Sat, Jun 27, 2015, 4:33 AM UTC

This is exciting to see here! I’ve spent a lot of time and effort on the challenges surrounding effective philanthropy.

Prior to seeing it firsthand while managing IT for a non-profit, I imagined that the bottleneck issues were advanced technical challenges; things like capital smoothing and what I think of as elastic capital allocation: capital allocation directed by marginal cost (per unit-social-benefit) among a portfolio of operating non-profits. That stuff is exciting - and when it comes to fruition it will change the world in a huge way.

However, as you get into it you realize that even for high-performing and well-funded organizations, the challenges and roadblocks are much more pedestrian. They’re things like standardized metrics [1] and data collection when your program’s target members don’t have internet access.

Perhaps the toughest challenge is the most straightforward: the non-profit employees trying to tackle these problems are non-technical, with limited access to technical resources. They’re forced to become subject matter experts on impact metrics and analytics, data science and their database-of-choice all at once. It’s quite a challenge.

My passion for both the sector and the technical challenges led me to found sluce.io [2], which makes software that addresses this exact challenge for operating and supporting organizations as well as Impact Investors. I’m happy to discuss these challenges with anyone who’s interested.

[1] https://iris.thegiin.org/metrics [2] http://sluce.io

Re: Philanthropy for Hackers

#10

Post by reagency » Sat, Jun 27, 2015, 4:35 AM UTC

reasonattlm wrote: post #6

You might look at Peter Thiel's presentations on radical philanthropy or venture philanthropy for a similar view on how philanthropy at the institutional level might be changed. He's been arguing for years that the balance of risk and how money is put to use in the philanthropic world is well out of line with the goal of achieving meaningful results, changing the world rather than just propping up present situations,…

The billions of people suffering from non age-related maladies and mistreatments aren't well served by devoting yet more resources to the health concerns of the wealthiest.