promoting legislation that could lead hundreds of thousands of animals to be lethally poisoned. Sometimes, charities squander vast sums of money, such as Yele Haiti, the Haitian relief organization founded by musician Wyclef Jean, which spent huge sums on celebrity plane tickets, personal payouts, and unfinished projects. Sometimes, organizations spend exorbitant amounts on overhead, such as the Cancer Fund of America, which spends over 80 percent of its income on fundraising.
Exposing bad apples like these is critically important, and we should tip our hats to anyone who does so. But that's not what this book is about. Because, as incompetent, counterproductive, or even criminal as some charities may be, our biggest barrier to doing good is not that we might be duped by a few bad organizations.
The biggest barrier is the set of mistakes that all of us make in our everyday charitable decisions. It is the critical flaws in approach and reasoning that plague even the most highly respected non-profits. It is the biases and lack of rigor that prevent us from accomplishing anything close to the amount of good we have the potential to accomplish.
Those missteps seem to stem from two main causes. The first is the fact that, as with many things in life, our perceived motivations as donors, volunteers, and non-profit workers are often quite different from our actual motivations. Our decisions are mainly driven by the crystal-clear objective embedded into our DNA over millions of years: look out for number one. Even when carrying out charitable work, our primary reward systems and concerns are often centered on ourselves.
The second reason our charitable efforts fall short of their potential is that we are taught charity is a warm, fuzzy thing and that as long as our intentions are good we should be applauded. We are not taught to think rigorously about our approach. We are not taught how to succeed at doing good, or even that success is what matters. So we aren't in the habit of making calculated decisions when it comes to doing good.
Over the course of this book, we'll take a closer look at what's holding us back in our efforts to make the world a better place. We'll learn how we can go around those barriers and make smarter charity decisions.
In Chapter Two we'll look at the difference between doing good and doing great. Instead of simply asking whether a certain charitable effort does good, we'll introduce a second question: How much good does it do?
In Chapter Three we'll examine, in the words of famed business author Jim Collins, the “brutal facts” about the relative impact that different charities and different charitable programs have on the world. Accepting these facts and allowing them to guide our charitable decisions is one of the most potent things we can do to achieve more good.
In Chapter Four we'll discuss how most non-profits – and most of us as individual donors or volunteers – fail to set a “bottom line” for our work. Setting a bottom line can bring increased focus to our charity work and enable us to do more.
In Chapter Five we'll talk about the importance of efficiency, or doing the most good for the least amount of money. For donors and non-profit staffers alike, efficiency is everything if we want to change the world.
In Chapter Six we'll consider why the amount of money a non-profit receives has virtually no relationship to how much good it does. We'll look at how we as donors can incentivize non-profits to become great and the barriers we face in trying to make smart donor decisions.
In Chapter Seven we'll discuss some of the ways in which our brains seem to hardwire us to make poor charity choices. We'll identify the biases that threaten to steer us off course and show how we can outsmart our brains and achieve our charitable goals.
In Chapter Eight we'll put the advice we've been given about charity our whole lives under the microscope. Being able to identify and weed out advice that sounds good but isn't true can help pave the way for intelligent charity decisions.
In Chapter Nine we'll explore our unwillingness to admit what we don't know, and our tendency to let assumptions guide our charity decisions. Testing those assumptions can help non-profits become a lot more successful.
In Chapter Ten, the final chapter, we'll review how to be great at doing good. We'll outline nine steps for making smart charity decisions and empowering ourselves to do far more good with the time, money, and energy that each of us has.
The Challenge of “Why?”
Why donate to this charity and not that one? Why carry out this program and not that one? Why work in this charitable field and not another one?
When it comes to talking about charity, “Why?” is often the elephant in the room. Politeness and hesitancy to critique the seemingly well-intentioned actions of others often prevents the question from even reaching our lips. Asking it seems to go against the spirit of charity. It could lead to hurt feelings. It could also lead to our own charitable actions being called into question, and if that happens, we might find ourselves at a loss for answers. If we are serious about making the world a better place though, there is nothing more important than asking that fundamental question of all charitable decisions: “Why?”
This little book is intended as a challenge. It is a challenge to get serious about charity. The challenge rests on two premises:
1. The first premise is that the goal of charity is to make the world a better place. It is to help those who are suffering and to increase well-being.
2. The second premise is that in whatever capacity you carry out charity – as a donor, a volunteer, or a non-profit worker – you want to succeed as much as possible.
If you disagree – if you think that the goal of charity is to benefit yourself or if you don't care how much your charity work actually improves the world – then this book won't be of use to you.
But if you do agree, then the challenge of this book, and the challenge of charity, is simple: keep those two premises in mind at all times, ask “Why?” of all charitable decisions, and follow that path where it leads you. It's a path that's sometimes uncomfortable and often surprising, but it's well worth the effort. The further along the path we go, the more power we'll have to truly change the world for the better.
2
Doing Good or Doing Great?
A Tale of Two Charities
In 1953, a former U.S. Naval Reserve officer and newspaper editor named W. McNeil Lowery took a job at the Ford Foundation. Launched by Ford Motor Company founders Edsel and Henry Ford, the Foundation's noteworthy achievements have included providing initial funding for the creation of the Public Broadcasting System (PBS), helping launch the microloan movement of providing small loans to the global poor, helping launch civil rights groups like the Mexican American Legal Education and Defense Fund and the National Council of La Raza, and playing a major role in funding research to fight the AIDS epidemic.
But Lowery, whose personal background included contributing to and editing literary and theater journals, is credited with helping steer a portion of Ford Foundation funding toward a new area: the arts. After providing initial modest funding to orchestras and operas in the late 1950s, the Foundation distributed $6 million in grants to repertory theatres in 1962 and nearly $8 million in grants to major ballet organizations in 1963, with major gifts to support the performing arts continuing in the following years. By the time Lowery passed away in 1993, the Ford Foundation had become the largest non-governmental supporter of the arts in the United States. So crucial was Lowery's role in this shift that Lincoln Kirstein, co-founder of the New York City Ballet, called Lowery “the single most influential patron of the performing arts that the American democratic system has produced” (Anderson, 1993).
At the same time
