1. The Good Spread
Simplifying the process of charitable giving
David Craft
Jan 30, 2014
Velir presentation

2. The Good Spread
Charitable Donations in the U.S.
$303 billion total, 2009
Total charitable giving
holding steady at 2%
GDP
(majority of individual
contributions go to
religion)*
*Stanford Social Innovation
Review, see also Dan
Pallotta's TED talk.

3. The Good Spread
The overall goal of The Good Spread:
Increase charitable giving by making the
process of charity selection and donation
better.

4. The Good Spread
Searching for charities
CharityNavigator.org
Information
Overload
(Results 1-10 of 2.9 zillion))
Givewell.org
Information
Underload
(Here are the 3 charities
we like)

5. Charity evaluation/search sites
Evaluator
Description
Number of
charities
evaluated
Charitynavigator.org
7000
CharityWatch
Quantitative, large number of
charities evaluated
A, A-, B+ type ratings
Greatnonprofits.org
Yelp/zagat style user ratings
16,000
MyPhilanthropedia.org
Expert style ratings (thumbs
up, thumbs down)
Better Business Bureau Set of old school criteria. If
met, a seal (for a price) is
awarded.
GiveWell.org
Lots of research boiled down
to three recs
GivingWhatWeCan
Similar to givewell
600
700
12,000
-

6. The Good Spread
Charity navigator

7. The Good Spread
GiveWell

8. The Good Spread
Philanthropedia

9. The Good Spread
BBB

10. The Good Spread
Great Nonprofits

11. The Good Spread vision
Simple yet reliable (trustworthy) way to choose a
charity and make a donation.
Avoid analysis paralysis!

12. Four challenges
The scoring method
1) Scoring charities
in order to build a
great database

13. Four challenges
The scoring method
1) Scoring charities
in order to build a
great database
2) On-the-fly user
specific charity
recommendations (e.g.
user searches “tampa
domestic violence”)

14. Four challenges
The scoring method
1) Scoring charities
in order to build a
great database
2) On-the-fly user
specific charity
recommendations (e.g.
user searches “tampa
domestic violence”)
The UX
3) User experience
Not overwhelming
But...
Complete with all the info
anyone might want and
tailored to the user
Fun (Zappos...)

15. Four challenges
The scoring method
1) Scoring charities
in order to build a
great database
2) On-the-fly user
specific charity
recommendations (e.g.
user searches “tampa
domestic violence”)
The UX
3) User experience
Not overwhelming
But...
Complete with all the info
anyone might want and
tailored to the user
Fun (Zappos...)
Business/legal organization
4) Owning the entire process

16. The Good Spread
Scoring charities
With close to 1.8 million charities in the U.S. alone, this is
a gigantic task.
Aggregate the aggregators.
Still, how to score a charity?…

17. Scoring charities – hard numbers
CharityNavigator
CharityWatch
Numbers between 0 and 1
GreatNonprofits
MyPhilanthropedia
Givewell /
GivingWhatWeCan
GiveDirectly, Schistosomiasis Control, Deworm the World,
Against Malaria, Project Healthy Children

18. “Local”
Headquarters location
Site of work
score
Scoring charities – softer numbers
distance
Categories
Good Spread
Defaults
Category
international
development
User
values
2
education
6
2
global health
6
2
arts and
culture
4
4
environment
Company size ?
10
4
2
animals
4
10

19. The Good Spread
Scoring charities – final score
Weighted sum of the component scores:
Example

20. The Good Spread
Other sources for automatic charity evaluation
Google News
Google
Google Nonprofits / OneToday
“Big Data” solutions
How to assess impact?
???

21. The Good Spread
Other ideas for charity scoring
Statistical / machine learning approach
(Test set and validation set)
Crowd sourced “expert opinions”:
See e.g. The Wisdom of Crowds:
A summary of decades of research in
behavioral economics, by James
Surowiecki

22. The Good Spread
Drill down interface
Education
Donate now!
Gay rights
Donate now!
Homelessness
Donate now!
Microfinance
Donate now!

23. The Good Spread
“Education” selected
Music
Donate now!
Student loans
Inner city
Donate now!
Worldwide access
drill deeper
Donate now!
Donate now!

24. The Good Spread
It is more difficult to give money away
intelligently than to earn it in the first place. - Andrew Carnegie

25. How many charities? [plan big: if The Good Spread takes off, we don't
want to flood smallish charities with too much money. See givewell.org.]
Continuously updated databases
Weekly featured charities. “Quick Give” amount.
EXTRAS
Expert recommendations
Giving news, blog, discussion board, contests
Business questions
Other “customers”: foundations etc that need to make large yearly
charity decisions.
Pass along the donations? i.e. tax write-off would come from charity
chosen (if the user drilled down to a final charity or one was selected for
the user) or does the good spread become a charity itself and the letter
comes from it?
Eventually, should The Good Spread have a dedicated team of charity
evaluators?