One of the challenges with charitable giving is that we give money to causes that we know of, but without regard to their degree of importance.
While many charities exist as a conduit to put money in other charities, I have never heard of one that exists in the following form:
Imagine a website that asks the question "What are the world's most pressing problems that can be solved by charitable endeavors this year?"
People vote on what the problems are, and people vote on what charities do the best job of solving each of the top ten problems. People then separately commit a certain amount of money to donate and your donation at the end of the year will be spread across the top ten charities.
The website would manage the process of gathering the documentation to give you a receipt for the full amount of your donation.
There are many assumptions to this idea:
- Using a democratic process, people can come up with the most important problems facing the world today and the best charities to solve them
- People would be interested in donating money to charities deemed "best at solving the world's problems" in a democratic process
- Donating money to many charities is "better" than concentrating your donations on charities that are meaningful to you
With the first assumption, I think the internet has shown that collabritive networks with good structures are able to build software and encyclopedias. Why can't collaborative networks create a more effective donation mechanism?As far as the second two assumptions, I think it assumes a flawed zero sum belief in charity. This idea would simply provide a new and innovative way to donate your money, it wouldn't neccesarily supplant current donations. It would simply give another tool for people in their quest to make a better world.
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By the way, if anyone knows of charities, like that, definitely let me know.
"What are the world's most pressing problems that can be solved by charitable endeavors this year?" Do you have any idea? I sure don't. Can you name a charity that has ever solved a problem? Charities don't solve problems, they usually just try to manage them a bit.
I think the best solution to this problem is to pool all the charity funds and collect them collectively instead of individually.
One box, one account. End this confusion by ending their accounts and names or purposes. The degrees of their acuteness keep changing from time to time. Importance of spending money on saving wild animals can suddenly become secondary to the saving of human life somewhere. Let the pool controllers decide and shuffle their priorities from time to time. In this way, more rational and logistic spending will be done.
The donors will just donate without being concerned where and how the money will be spent.
In the late 90s, United Way was the focus of media attention because they were found to be spending the majority of money collected on executive wages. Very little of the charitable contributions actually was used for charity.
Here's a unique organization with a direct, over-head free approach to giving: http://www.modestneeds.org/
For me it would take the control of what my donation was going to and randomize it to a group. The majority may no longer exist, just look at the last few elections in America. The slight majority has also proven to be wrong, and I'm not going into the last few elections with that statement so don't get excited. Give to something you believe in and let God sort the souls of the ones that take advantage of your gifts.
Interesting idea, and one that could work if it were not for some tricky problems.
How are people to determine if a charity (I like the term Non-profit organization better) is actually doing the best job? How can you sift the truth from the spin doctoring that many multinational groups use?
And how are you to get the services and products to those in need?
The UN, for example, has proven to be practically useless in preventing starvation in Yemen and many parts of Africa despite having the resources and power to do so. And thousands of smaller organizations face similar problems wherever foreign goods or funds (mostly in Euros or US dollars) are being used locally.