In this email, I want to give a brief overview of our research plans for the coming year and also update this group on our plans for one particular area of research: disaster relief.
- Fleshing out additional areas in our international aid report. This includes (a) disaster relief, (b) a search for microfinance institutions (MFIs) in regions aside from Sub-Saharan Africa (the region we've looked at already), (c) looking into the causes of orphans and vulnerable children and sex slavery and human trafficking, and (d) continuing to review high-potential international charities regardless of focus area as we come across them. This work will largely be done by Natalie and Alanna Shaikh (who's going to be working with us a contractor).
- Completing a more comprehensive evaluation of US Equality of Opportunity. This work is intended to build out the report that already exists on our site (http://www.givewell.net/united-states) along the lines of how we improved our international aid report from our first release in December 2007 to our updated release in July 2009. This work will largely be done by Simon Knutsson, a graduate student who's going to be working with us as a contractor over the summer).
- Disease research. This work will largely be done by Holden and me. We've laid out some of our thoughts in a previous email: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/givewell/message/163
We intend to complete items #1 and #2 this year. We're not sure how much of time we'll able to devote to #3, and completing items #1 and #2 will take precedence over #3.
Update on plans for disaster relief
Why disaster relief
We believe that disaster relief is a good area for us to focus on because disasters generate a large amount of interest in the media and from donors who both (a) want to give and (b) don't already have a specific organization in mind to give to and are therefore looking for recommendations. If we do high quality research, this is an opportunity to influence a large amount of giving towards more effective options and an opportunity to engage in the conversation of how to think about effective giving at a time when there is significant attention.
In addition, we believe that many of the issues involved in disaster relief overlap with work we've done on international aid.
We think that these reasons to investigate disaster relief outweigh the downside that based on what we know, we would not guess that disaster relief charities will offer donors a better option than giving to our top-rated international charities (e.g., VillageReach, Stop TB).
What we've done so far
Since then, we've reviewed the websites of 10 big-name organizations as well as sites that publish reports on disaster relief (e.g.,
http://www.alnap.org/) looking for monitoring and evaluation reports from their responses to the 2004 Tsunami. We did not find particularly useful information.
Some preliminary thoughts
- Our goal is to be in a position to recommend an organization when a disaster hits. That means we have to find an organization that works in lots of different parts of the world. So, even though a local organization might offer better relief, it's not feasible for us to recommend one ahead of time. (It's also not realistic that we could evaluate local organizations in the day or so following a disaster.)
- It makes sense to us to distinguish between two phases of the relief effort: (a) immediate relief to provide for basic, short-term needs (e.g., food, water, medical) and (b) longer-term rebuilding.
- My instinct (not Holden's) is that A likely offers donors a better opportunity than B as because A includes providing for very basic needs like health, food, water. My instinct is that long-term aid post-disaster could easily be a case of over-funded, "general" international aid projects.
- On the other hand, it's possible that long-term aid for disasters provides for longer-term basic needs (e.g., roads, shelter) and is therefore likely to be more effective than "normal" international aid. There are people we respect who point to long-term aid as important and potentially under-funded relative to short-term aid: (see #4 at http://www.philanthropyaction.com/nc/advice_for_donors_to_haiti/)
- We should be able to evaluate organizations based on (a) their focus on immediate vs. long-term relief, (b) documentation of past relief efforts (plans and evaluations reports), (c) country-level or regional plans for responding to future disasters, and (d) what they can tell us about their process for deciding to respond to particular disasters; deciding how much money to raise; and what they do if/when they receive more money than they can use.
- We'll also considered "alternative" disaster-focused charities, for example, those that focus on disaster preparedness. This isn't an area we've looked into at all yet.
Our plans
Due to the fact that we want to find an organization we can recommend for disasters in different regions, we think the most likely place to start is with "big-name" charities like Doctors Without Borders, Oxfam, UNICEF, etc.
We're particularly interested in Doctors Without Borders (MSF) because of their past refusal of emergency response funds (they said they already had enough money raised); our understanding that they almost entirely focus their disaster response efforts on short-term relief; and they have a reputation for critical evaluation of their work (which may be indicated in the report of a program failure that earned them a 1-star rating from us).
Alanna Shaikh who's going to be working with us as a contractor is going to be leading our research here.
Please share any thoughts you have on our plans as we're at an early stage in this process and feedback would be very useful.
Best,
Elie
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