April 8, 2008 | Read Time: 1 minute
The GiveWell blog is holding a discussion on how donors should pick their beneficiaries — should they identify an approach to fighting a social problem that appeals to them and support charities that use that approach, or find effective charities and let them decide the approach?
The discussion was prompted by a question by Sean Stannard-Stockton, author of the Tactical Philanthropy blog.
Holden Karnofsky, a program officer at GiveWell, a grant maker that publicizes its evaluations of nonprofit groups, writes that he would like to delegate as many decisions as possible to the charities, as long as they provide evidence of their effectiveness.
But since many charities fail to provide information about the results of their efforts, sometimes a donor will need a different criteria to choose a beneficiary, he writes.
“Between blind faith and micromanagement is conditional confidence: trusting an organization to make decisions because of an evidence-based case that they can make them well. That’s our ideal; when it isn’t available, some degree of micromanagement (i.e., picking an organization based on its approach) seems preferable to blind faith,” he writes.
What do you think?
