Oh my word! This should make anyone laugh. What exactly would an acquiror get with Givewell? A few rambling spreadsheets?

Seriously, Sean, you can’t write something like that and then say Givewell’s biggest contribution was its hypocritical call for transparency. If you are telling us Givewell has something worth being bought, you owe it to your devoted readers to tell us what Givewell taught anyone about properly analyzing nonprofits.

Cheers!
Erich

Then Sean writes: I do agree that GiveWell’s transparency was a greater focus than their results, but I think that was the right focus.

Wow, again, as is typical for this group of bloggers, diverge and divert. Rather than try to point out some success Holden had in analysing nonprofits, which Sean originally said was the puprose, he cheers on Holden’s brash, condescending attitude.

Note, Sean writes there were no decent resoures for we unfortunate donors. The condescending attitude of Sean, Holden, Phil, and others towards the people in the industry who have actually made it easier for donors such as myself to analyze nonprofits is reason enough to ignore them. If they had anything to contribute, they would do it, rather than insult others.

The irony here is that there really is NOTHING all that new about what Holden (and Elie Hassenfeld, who has inexplicably not been punished or called out in any of this) were doing. There are many similar efforts going on, many of them much more professional and better funded and managed. Please read the Metafilter “Metatalk” thread where Holden was outed for a long discussion — including many NPO professionals — for the details. This is puffed up and inflated Holden-kissing nonsense, as if he and Elie had invented the idea of accountability or measurement of impact.

Indeed, an Australian organization called “Givewell” has been doing this since . . . . 1997. Not only are Holden and Elie online liars; they are concept lifters, at best.

What this really shows is that the corporate “hedge fund” mentality which diminishes ethics and privileges arrogant young people claiming they are going to change the world with attitude rather than professional development will bring down the NPO world into the muck of corporate dishonesty, where PR rules everything.

Keep defending him. He didn’t lose his job. The response by the Givewell board is total smoke and mirrors. Some of us will not let this die, at all, and will follow whatever becomes of “Givewell” around until it is out of business. This was more than a dumb kid making a mistake. This was dishonesty by a 27 year old professional with corporate experience. Stop acting like he’s a teenager or did not abuse the public trust.

I wouldn’t call him a risk taker either. Misrepresenting himself wasn’t a risk, it was stupid and careless and yes, arrogant. But not arrogant in the fearless way, arrogant in the elitist way.

True, this story is not about the merits of transparency, but rather about the ethics of online behavior. But this standard wasn’t ambiguous. He just screwed up. And I think his weak apology made things worse.

Regarding my original reference, this situation isn’t much different. Embellishing his autobiography wasn’t nearly as unforgiveable as lying about it and maintaining its veracity. He lied, lied about lying and then incurred the wrath of Oprah. Oddly enough, it was the latter two that caused the problems, not the original lie.

What does this mean for the world of philanthropy? In my opinion, not much in the long term. We’re all a-buzz about it on the blogs, but even this will eventually die down. Transparency will be a hot issue for a while, and everyone will scramble to make sure they are transparent and consistent - and that everyone knows they are transparent and consistent.

So temporarily, this brought the issue front and center, which I suppose can be spun as a good thing. But inevitably, this will evolve into no more than an industry anecdote and story to tell at board meetings about how NOT to conduct outreach online.

I find it a little disconcerting, Sean, that Holden slips up, and your first response is that GiveWell needs to be bigger and better-funded. An episode like this ought to lead to criticism and examination, and “more funding” - I think I’ll pat myself on the back here for not spelling it MOAR like a rabid 4-channer - is neither of those things. I’ll assume good faith here: I think you’re very dedicated to the very worthwhile cause of transparency, and view this episode as an opportunity to promote transparency. I simply think that you can do that without supporting GiveWell, and that GiveWell doesn’t deserve your support.

For example, their metric for causes in Africa: cost-effectiveness at saving lives *as measured by the organization* - what’s more, measured for whatever program the organization *chose* to report on. And roughly half the organizations GiveWell contacted didn’t bother filling out their forms, so GiveWell did zero analysis on them - yet they still try to claim that they find the best nonprofits for each cause, period. When GiveWell does bother doing its own analysis, rather than simply crunching numbers from organizations’ reports, it ends up with (in its own words) “extremely rough” estimates. There’s more criticisms to be made, but I think the philanthropy-blogging community should pick up that slack, not me.

I do agree that GiveWell’s transparency was a greater focus than their results, but I think that was the right focus. Every foundation, every grantmaker, every donor in the world is engaged in charity evaluation. When you give to a nonprofit you are implicitly deciding that it is the best choice for your money. What was different about GiveWell was they made their decision making transparent so that other donors could benefit from their research.

I think that GiveWell worked very hard to produce the best results they could, but at the end of the day the important thing was that they showed that there is a hungry market for nonprofit evaluation being made publicly available. I hope larger foundations with more resources and experience follow suit. They are doing the same work that GiveWell was, they just won’t share their knowledge with anyone.

“In a less drastic way transperancy could lead to someone pointing out your ineffeciency and you change your way of doing things (become more efficient).”
That’s what I’m hoping will happen in this case. However, I do think that GiveWell has trumpeted its transparency in a way that actually deflects attention from its results. I’d like to know if others feel the same way - have GiveWell’s promises of transparency become a greater focus than their actual work?

Concerning transpaerency I don’t think that this will allways lead to less effectiveness. Actually I think that usually the opposite is true, especially if you are non-prfit. If you mess around and are transparent, someone will notice, make it public and you will have less donations to mess around with in the future. In a less drastic way transperancy could lead to someone pointing out your ineffeciency and you change your way of doing things (become more efficient).

As for GiveWell’s transparency, that’s a great attribute. But transparency always takes a backseat to effectiveness - that’s why they’re called charities, not clarities.

Regarding Givewells model I won’t say that it is perfect, but they brought in some new ideas and asked some very important question. Maybe that has all be done before but this is the first time I and a lot of other people heared about it and that in itself is worth something.

Besides I am very interested in any organisation that is more transparent in the way they make decisions than Givewell. Who else is offering the board meetings as an mp3, who else makes their thoughts publicly available through a well written blog, who else provides more information why they think one charity is better than another?

As for the GiveWell model, it has its flaws. I’d like to see an organization publicly evaluate charities based on their effectiveness - and by publicly, I mean completely transparently, sharing its methodologies. I don’t think GiveWell is up to the task, though - their analysis is lacking, and their scope is much smaller than they claim.

All that Givewell really did is weed out nonprofits which are willing to submit a grueling proprietary application.

Trusting Holden’s opinion because he bullies people and claims to care is pathetic.

Even so, it’s good that he remains involved. I’d imagine that this won’t actually change much, internally - perhaps, for the good of GiveWell, it shouldn’t.

Nobody involved, and nobody watching, is likely to ever make that mistake again, and perhaps it’s good (nay, great) for the rest of this burgeoning movement to get its scars and scary stories now, rather than later on when there’s less chance for lessons to be learnt across the board, for good.

That being said, I think that removing the entrepreneurial founder of a start up this early in the orgs history is going to be almost impossible to overcome.

However, I would hire Holden in a heart beat if I can an organization that could use his skills. That’s why I suggested that a large foundation should “acquire” GiveWell.