June 19, 2007 | Read Time: 2 minutes
If you want money from a new grant maker called the Clear Fund, don’t be afraid to speak your mind. The donors say they want to change the power imbalance between “funders and funded.”
“In private, personal conversations, I hear all kinds of horrible things about large foundations—yet public criticism of them is unbelievably rare considering that they are (a) huge (b) constantly making controversial and debatable decisions that affect us all,” writes Holden Karnofsky, executive director of the new fund—a project of GiveWell, a group that reviews the effectiveness of charities.
“I’m already brainstorming about all the ways I can induce our applicants to give constant, totally honest feedback about how we’re running the process and how we can do better,” he adds on The GiveWell Blog.
Mr. Karnofsky in an earlier post spells out his vision for a new, more open kind of charity: Organizations would pool money into “clear funds,” make large and well-researched grants, and publicly publish everything they do. He pictures a world in which “every tactical giving decision is publicly explained, and those who wish to can challenge it.”
If the Clear Fund has enough impact, it could eventually become obsolete, he muses. Perhaps existing foundations will begin operating more openly and “do our job better than we do.” Or, after competing with the Clear Fund for fund-raising dollars, perhaps United Ways and other charitable money managers will open their own doors and “blow us out of the water.”
“What we know is how much better the world would be if there were a public, thorough discussion of how to help people as well as possible,” he says.
Do you agree that grant makers need to operate more openly and get more feedback from charities? Click on the comments link below this post to share your thoughts.
