Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?
This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.
Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.
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Notes -
I have $92,000 in my Donor-Advised Fund. I haven't made a grant in 30 months, which means I have 6 months to make a grant or the fund will be liquidated and merged into some generic charity fund. I only need to donate $500, but I'm inclined to donate at least half the fund.
Who should I give to?
The first place I went to was GiveWell. Unfortunately, it would appear all their top charities are woke. For instance, here is what Helen Keller International had to say:
"We are overwhelmed with grief and concern over the killing of George Floyd—on the heels of the recent killings of Ahmaud Arbery and Breonna Taylor. Racism has no place in America, or our world."
Should I just give these people my money anyway? My problem is that I think wokeness makes the world a worse place, so while I think it's probable that the organization does good by preventing blindness, they are also harming the world by propagating a quasi-religious framework which hinders human thriving.
Are there any charities that would meet GiveWell's criteria for effective donations that are non-woke (or ideally even anti-woke)?
If you have any pet causes, now would be a good time to post them. My chance of donating is fairly high in the next week or two. I've been feeling a bit Scroogish lately and would like to turn that around.
The most important thing isn't really whether they're woke in the sense of feel obligated to post a statement, it's what they actually do with the money, so I probably wouldn't worry about that too much, as long as they spend pretty much all the money on what they're nominally for? I haven't looked in particular, but given that they're on givewell, I assume they're pretty good at making use of the money.
That said, by all means, prefer ones that more clearly stick to your values.
I do wonder what areas effective altruism is blind to. The fact that Open Philanthropy funded criminal justice reform significantly decreases my trust in their work overall, though I would imagine they would do far better on average than the default of not doing the math and hoping you end up somewhere effective. Based purely on vibes, GiveWell seems less likely to do things like that.
I agree with for the most part. Works matter more than intentions.
But it's hard for me. Would you donate to a Wahhabi charity that spent 80% of funds deworming in Africa but occasionally sent their staff on an expensive junket to a meeting of religious clerics? That's the question I'm wrestling with right now.
Were they the ones who were like "we ran the numbers and the most effective donation is giving to Democrats in swing states" or something? Motivated reasoning has no limits, so I think it's imperative to understand the people who make the calculations in addition to the calculations themselves.
I don't actually know. I do know that some enormous donors heavily tied to effective altruism (Dustin Moskovitz, SBF) spent a lot of money on democrats, but I don't know that it was through the EA-tied funds?
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