December 2, 2024 • 51 mins
It's the season of giving: colorful paper and shiny bows, sure, and charitable giving, too. In this special episode, Jacob Goldstein, the host of What's Your Problem, gets smart about donating.
Did you know that spending money on others makes you happier than spending money on yourself? Or that altruistic nerds have discovered four of the most impactful charities in the world (per dollar spent)? Have you ever wondered how poker players think about giving?
Dr. Laurie Santos from The Happiness Lab, Elie Hassenfeld of GiveWell, and Nate Silver and Maria Konnikova from Risky Business talk about how to maximize your giving – and why you’ll be happy you did.
Link to donate: https://givingmultiplier.org/happinesslab
Listen to The Happiness Lab with Dr. Laurie Santos
Listen to Risky Business
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:15):
Pushkin.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
Hello Tim Harford here. It's a giving time of year,
the kind of giving that means wrapping paper and shiny bows, certainly,
but people also give to good causes. At least we
hope they're good causes, but how can we be sure
they're the best causes. In this special episode, Jacob Goldstein,
the host of Pushkin's What's Your Problem, is trying to
(00:41):
help us figure out how to get the most good
out of our donations. He starts off talking with Dr
Lorrie Santos of the Happiness Lab about the good that
giving does for the donors. I'll be back again soon
with another episode of cautionary tales, but while you wait,
I hope you enjoy this extra conversation.
Speaker 3 (01:03):
I'm Jacob Goldstein. I host a Pushkin podcast called What's
Your Problem? And I am here rare talking to you
right now because today is the day before Giving Tuesday.
Giving Tuesday, as you may already know, is the Tuesday
after Thanksgiving, and it's supposed to be the day we
give money to charity.
Speaker 1 (01:23):
And I'm gonna be honest with you. In my middle aged.
Speaker 3 (01:26):
Somewhat calcified heart, I cringe a little bit every time
I hear the phrase giving Tuesday. I think Giving Tuesday
is not a real thing. It's not a real day.
It's just something somebody made up a few years ago.
But that cynicism is not helping anybody. In fact, as
it turns out, it isn't even helping me. I know
(01:48):
this to be true because over the past decade or so,
research has made two things really clear. One, giving money
away makes us feel better than we think.
Speaker 1 (01:59):
It will make us feel.
Speaker 3 (02:01):
In other words, we underestimate the benefit to ourselves of
giving money to others.
Speaker 1 (02:06):
That's thing one thin.
Speaker 3 (02:08):
Two is this, there are charities that are proven, proven
by really robust evidence, to do a tremendous amount of
good with the money.
Speaker 1 (02:16):
We give them.
Speaker 3 (02:18):
So today I and my colleagues at Pushkin are leaning
into Giving Tuesday. We are putting out this special Giving
Tuesday show to get into this evidence, to really understand
why giving money makes us happy, why we don't do
it more, and who we should give money to.
Speaker 1 (02:35):
To start out on the show, I'm going to talk
with Lori Santos.
Speaker 3 (02:39):
Laurie's a Yale psychologist who hosts a Pushkin show called
The Happiness Lab. And Lauria and I are going to
talk about the evidence that shows that giving makes us happy,
and then the obvious puzzle that follows from that evidence.
If giving makes us so happy, why don't we give more?
Later on the show, I'll talk with Ellie Hassenfeld. Ellie
is the co founder and CEO of give Well, and
(03:01):
he has spent nearly two decades scouring the world studying
the research to try to figure out which charities do
the most good with every dollar. And then finally I'll
talk with Maria Konikova and Nate Silver. Maria and Nate
are a pair of writers who host a Pushkin podcast
called Risky Business.
Speaker 1 (03:20):
But they're also both professional poker players. They are people whose.
Speaker 3 (03:24):
Livelihoods depend on making optimal bets. So I'll be talking
to them about how they bring that thinking to their
charitable given. Lorie Santos tell me why I am not
giving enough money to charity?
Speaker 4 (03:43):
Well, it's probably because your mind is leading you astray, right,
I mean, you're like a smart person, right. You probably
think through what would be the pros and cons of
giving a charity. You probably do some simulations in your
head about how it would feel for you, and you
know how the recipients of that money would feel. And
there's just tons of psychological evidence showing that when we
do those simulations, we get them really really wrong.
Speaker 1 (04:06):
Huh.
Speaker 3 (04:07):
We don't know what makes us happy with giving money,
as with everything, as with everything.
Speaker 4 (04:11):
Yeah, I mean, in some ways, the giving money part
shouldn't be surprising. You know, I have a whole podcast
about how we get happiness wrong all the time. But
this one's really insidious because it means that we're like
leaving opportunities not just to make ourselves happier kind of
on the table, but we're also leaving opportunities to just
do good in the world and do good in society
on the table too. So in some ways it's like
even sadder.
Speaker 3 (04:32):
Yeah, Like people talk about win when this is like lose, lose.
It's right, I feel worse and everybody feels worse.
Speaker 4 (04:37):
And it's another case where we could be building the pie.
Speaker 2 (04:40):
Right.
Speaker 4 (04:40):
You know, say I have you know, ten bucks sitting
around in my pocket. Right, it could spend it in
a way that makes me happy, or I could donate
it to a good cause. Right, I probably feel better.
The research would show spending at ten dollars on a
good charity, then I would feel kind of blowing it
on myself. But now the money is going to increase
happiness in other people, right, presumably somebody who really needed
(05:01):
that money. And so we're losing these opportunities to grow
the pie. And we really just need to understand this
bias better so that we can be happy.
Speaker 3 (05:10):
So you learn it to the research that shows that
giving money away makes us happier. Tell me more about that, Like,
what is the academic work that's been done on this subject.
Speaker 4 (05:18):
Yeah, well there's tons of studies now, you know. One
of my favorite is a really straightforward one. It comes
out of the lab of Elizabeth Dunn and her colleagues
at the University of British Columbia, and their method is
really straightforward. They walk up to some person on the
street and they say, hey, do you want to be
in a psych study? I think the person kind of
begrudging all he's like, okay, fine, But then it starts
out it's an awesome psych study because Liz and her
(05:38):
colleagues just hand you twenty bucks and she're like cool.
The key though, is that she tells you how to
spend that money. She either says hey, by the end
of the day, do something nice for yourself with this money.
Treat yourself, you know it's something you wouldn't have expected.
Or by the end of the day, do something nice
with this money for somebody else. Right, you could donate
it to charity, you could buy your friend a latte. Right,
it doesn't matter, but it has to be for somebody else.
(06:00):
And then the key is that she calls participants later
that day and even in some cases later in the week,
and what she finds is that people tend to feel
happier when they donate the money to somebody else or
do something nice for somebody else with the money, more
so than they feel when they spent the equivalent amount
of money on themselves. And the study I love because
it's just so straightforward. It's just suggests that you know
(06:23):
what we predict will happen, right, And Liz has actually
done these studies where she asks a different group of participants, Hey,
imagine you're in the study where I walked up to
you on the street and gave you twenty bucks. Would
you be happier spending that on yourself or somebody else?
And like robustly people say, oh, I'd be happier spending
on myself, right, because I get something out of the deal.
But what she finds is that we're just our prediction
is just totally wrong. When we spend on others, we're happier.
Speaker 3 (06:46):
So I feel like there's a subtlety there in the
spending on others group, right, Like it is in some
ways more intuitive to me that, like, whatever, buying lunch
for my friend would make me happy because my friend
would be so happy, and we'd be happy together, and
the thing would be happening in this very you know, social,
(07:06):
real physical way, Like I get that one.
Speaker 1 (07:10):
It seems less.
Speaker 3 (07:11):
Obvious to me that, like giving twenty bucks to a
charity helping people in Sub Saharan Africa would make me happy,
even though clearly, intellectually, analytically, I know that the twenty
bucks going to Sub Saharan Africa is going to do
more to increase abstract human happiness than buying lunch for
my friend who could have bought lunch for herself.
Speaker 1 (07:31):
So like, how does that piece of it work? How
do we think about that piece of it?
Speaker 4 (07:36):
You are onto an important point, which is that there
are better and worse ways to give to charity, right,
in terms of like boosting our own happiness and sort
of feeling the impact from that. We are a lot
happier if we can see the impact of our work, right,
But even when we don't see the impact of our work,
the act of donating winds up making us feel better
than we think. Again, I share the intuition that you have, Jacob, right, Like,
(07:58):
I know these studies. I can kind of quote the
stats and I still don't have the intuition that it works.
But the results really just suggest that we feel better
than we assume we will.
Speaker 1 (08:08):
Why do you think we get it wrong?
Speaker 3 (08:09):
I mean, I know we get everything wrong, But why
do you think we get this wrong?
Speaker 4 (08:12):
Yeah, I mean we get everything wrong right our minds.
I wish I wish we could just like update like
mind two point zero would be so much better. I
think there's some there's some reasons that we get this
one wrong. One is sort of when we're doing an
active kindness, what we focus on as opposed to what
the recipient will focus on. Right, I'm sort of focused
on whether or not my gift is kind of in
some sense competent, Like am I doing the right thing?
(08:34):
Am I picking the right charity? Maybe an in more
local acts of kindness. Am I doing it the right way? Right?
Speaker 1 (08:41):
Yeah? I don't want to be awkward.
Speaker 3 (08:42):
I don't want to be rude or make this person
feel some sense of obligation or reciprocity that might not
work for them.
Speaker 1 (08:49):
You overthinking it. You're saying we're overthinking it.
Speaker 4 (08:51):
But in terms of the overthinking, that's not what's happening.
On the other side. You think of the recipient of
a compliment, right, If you know, if someone walks up
to you in the streets like, hey, you know love
those glasses. They really see you, Jacob, like nicely done.
Speaker 1 (09:03):
You're not thinking you you're not mean it, and I
like it.
Speaker 4 (09:06):
But you're not thinking of like did they right? Did
they use the right adjective? Was it cool glasses or stylish?
You're just like, oh my gosh, I'm surprised, and I
have this incredible warm feeling. And so this is part
of the disconnect, is that when we're making the decision
to do something nice, we're overthinking. We're caught up in
if we're doing it right and so on. But the recipients,
they don't feel any of that. They're just like, oh
(09:28):
my gosh, I feel amazing, And so we kind of
mispredict what they're paying attention to when they react, and
that means their reactions are often a lot more positive
than we expect. And then we're like, oh, I guess,
I guess it was nice to do that kind thing
for somebody.
Speaker 3 (09:42):
It's the broader lesson of like everybody's just thinking about
themselves all the time. We're thinking about ourselves as givers,
and am I the optimal giver?
Speaker 1 (09:49):
Am I giving in the optimal way? But the recipients
aren't thinking about you. They're just thinking about.
Speaker 4 (09:54):
Them Yeah, And we get so caught up in the
awkwardness of it. Right, you know how many compliments have
you not given just because you're like, oh, I don't
want to do it wrong or seem weird and some
of Nick Eppley's a professor at the University of Chicago's data.
He finds that about a third of the compliments we
think in our heads, we don't actually tell the people
around us, right, which, when you think compliments usually are
(10:15):
received really well and make people's day, it's like a
lot of positivity that's just like stuck inside people's heads
that we're not giving out.
Speaker 3 (10:22):
Friction seems like another interesting piece, right, there's like you're
in your own head too much, and the other core
piece is like, ah, I don't know. I'm just some
guy in the world. How do I figure out who
to give to? And like I feel like that one
is underrated in the world in general, right, Like we
just we're like water, we just flow to the easiest rounde.
I mean, how do you see that playing out in
(10:42):
charity more generally, in giving more generally?
Speaker 4 (10:46):
Yeah, I mean I think that friction is a huge thing, right.
I Mean a good friend of mine just had a
baby with his wife, and my instagraction was like, oh
my gosh, I should do something nice for them. Maybe
I'll get them some food or some onesies or something.
But I was like, do I just show up at
their house? Like do they have any dietary restrictions that
I'm forgetting about?
Speaker 1 (11:03):
Is this weird?
Speaker 4 (11:04):
Like all again, all this overthinking in my head. But
another good friend of ours was like, I'm setting up
a meal train. Here's the day. You click on this link.
It's super easy, right, what you're gonna, you know, give
him if it's a lasa or whatever, Here's how you
drop it. Off, she just made it really easy for
me to do the nice thing that I was thinking
about doing. Anyway, I needed somebody to make that friction
(11:25):
go away for me to help. And so I think
there's so many cases of this in terms of what
we could do to do nice things for others, whether
that's with a charitable donation or even just like you know,
asking a friend if they need some support, checking in
on the people we care about, sharing compliments, and so on.
The friction kind of gets in the way, and I
think this is the idea, is that we can overcome
(11:46):
the friction by kind of reducing how much work it
is for us to do the nice thing. Right, Sometimes
the nice thing is just texting a friend, or you're
already there, you know, like you know, in the subway,
and you compliment somebody who's walking by. Right, these are
the kinds of things that we can do quickly, and
if we do them enough, then there's a second way
that we can reduce friction, which is that it just
kind of becomes a habit. Right, if we just get
(12:08):
in the habit of doing this over and over again,
doing more and more nice things, then all of a sudden,
it just becomes easier because so much that we know
about human psychology, even though we're kind of you know,
in the crappy beta version, shows that when we do
something over and over again, it just becomes easier to
do that same thing. And so one of the Giving
Tuesday practices that I talk about in my show The
(12:28):
Happiness Lab is just hey, practice doing nice things and
it will make it easier. You'll kind of experience less
friction over time, just because like it's just the thing
you do when you see somebody you know at work
who you know is wearing something nice or they do
something great in a team meeting. You'll just get good
at expressing compliments, expressing gratitude. It'll just become second nature
to you.
Speaker 3 (12:48):
So you have this project through your show, the Happiness Lab,
of giving money away, like built on this premise that
we're talking about that not only would recipients be better
if people gave more, but the givers themselves would be
better if people gave more. You have this project that
you do every year for Giving Tuesday, which is coming up.
Speaker 1 (13:09):
Tell me about that project.
Speaker 4 (13:11):
Yeah, So the site that we've worked with is this
group called giving Multiplier dot org and their goal is
to fight a different kind of thing that can go
wrong when we think about donating to charities, which is
that many of us really do want to be kind
of competent about it. We want our money to go
to really good causes in the world, but we also
kind of fall prey to the causes that feel really
(13:32):
close to my heart, right you know, like I might
want to give to my local food bank, which is great,
you know, it's good to do that, but that ten
bucks I give to my local food bank, it might
not have as much impact as you know, giving to
somebody maybe an extreme poverty right in like Sub Saharan Africa.
You know, I haven't really analyzed is my local food
bank doing the best with the money and so on
(13:53):
and so giving multiplier dot Org has this has this
really nice combination of they say, Okay, you really feel
compelled to give to your food bank, but what if
you gave just part of that ten bucks to one
of these so called super effective charities. Right They've done
the research. They're like the dollar that you give from
that ten bucks to the super effective charity is going
to go even further. And so they kind of allow
(14:13):
you to make this distinction between your your heart and
what you kind of really feel locally, the kind of
thing that make you feel good because you can see
the impact in your community versus what's doing the best
work out there and giving. Multiplier dot Org this year
has picked a really great super effective charity which is
called Give Directly. This is this group that just gives
(14:33):
these unconditional cash transfers like no strings attached, like cast
bonus to people living in extreme poverty.
Speaker 3 (14:40):
And there's a there's a happiness lab. You are l right,
shout it out, Shout it from the rooftops.
Speaker 1 (14:45):
What is it?
Speaker 4 (14:46):
It's giving Multiplier dot org slash Happiness Lab super easy.
Speaker 1 (14:50):
Go right now.
Speaker 3 (14:51):
Phones are open, operators are standing by, you know.
Speaker 4 (14:55):
And one of the things we've seen is that a
lot of our listeners will donate five bucks, three bucks
in some cases. But those kinds of donations really add up,
and especially if part of your donation is going to
one of these super effective charities, like that dollar is
going a really long way.
Speaker 3 (15:11):
Yeah, I'll say, And I know, like analyzing super effective
charities ends up being about like randomized controlled trials, which
is great, like real evidence. But I will say that
I actually for a story I did ten years ago
or so. I went to Kenya to a village where
Give Directly was giving money and I saw how profound
(15:32):
the impact is. I mean, it's people get one thousand
dollars at least at that time, no strings attached, and
like I talk to a guy who bought a motorcycle
so that he could start a motorcycle taxi business. Right,
So it's not just like they buy food and then
the money runs out. It's people have no capital, They
have no money, and so getting one thousand dollars allows
them to make these investments that can change their lives forever.
Speaker 4 (15:56):
Yeah, we saw that last year where we really focused
on GiveDirectly in particular and one community specifically. So we
worked with this community, Kebobo in Rwanda, which is a
tiny village just on the outside of Kigali, the capital.
But they just like all, most of the people in
the community live off less than a dollar a day,
and just like you're saying, they just lack so many
of the basic conveniences that we take for granted. Right,
(16:18):
they have to hike two hours to get access to
water and then the water comes back and it's like,
are you going to drink some water? Are you going
to give your kid a shower? Right, there's no access
to schools and these kinds of things. And last year,
Happiness Lab listeners were able to generate over one hundred
thousand dollars for this community in particular, and so, just
like you're saying, give directly, was able to give each
person in the community one thousand dollars unconditional cash transfer,
(16:41):
and the money went to things like motorbikes like you mentioned,
fixing roofs, buying mattresses. Right, most of the people in
Kebobo were sleeping on the floor. They just didn't have
access to a mattress. But some people did these really
creative things that One of the things I didn't expect
is that one of the couples that got the cash
transfer bought a pub, which you might think, like, ah,
they got a pub, a puppet.
Speaker 1 (17:02):
Like a bar like a I love that.
Speaker 4 (17:04):
But the bar like wound up employing people in the community.
It became this commun hub where people could get together
with each other at night, and it's generated more income
for them. So now they're turning kind of the side
of their pub that they put together into a little
mini grocery store, which is one of the first spots
that people can buy food in town so that they
don't have to leave town. And so it's like if
(17:24):
you leave it up to people's ingenuity, they kind of
come up with these interesting things.
Speaker 1 (17:28):
Yeah, I mean there's a really simple idea.
Speaker 3 (17:31):
Like the reason I wanted to do that story all
those years ago is like people know what they need, right,
Like they know if they need food or a motorcycle
or a roof, they just don't have the money, yes, right,
So like if you give them the money, they can
buy what they need.
Speaker 1 (17:47):
That's the great thing about money.
Speaker 4 (17:49):
Yeah, And this is something we forget with gifts in general.
I think this comes up in charity, but there's also
a work you know, giving Tuesdays sort of the prelude
to other holidays and gift giving moments coming up. And
it's just something we get wrong all the time, Like
we want to be able to come up with the
creative gift for somebody. But one of the best ways
to figure out the best gift is to just ask
people what do you want? And if you buy someone
(18:10):
that thing, they're going to be happy because that was
what they wanted.
Speaker 3 (18:14):
Yeah, it goes back to the like we're thinking about ourselves, right,
even when we're giving gifts this notionally you know, other
focused thing, we're actually like, oh am I a good gift?
Speaker 1 (18:24):
Giver? Am I a good It's just ego.
Speaker 3 (18:27):
It's just we're just screwing ourselves with our ego as always. Yeah,
it was great to talk with you, Laurie.
Speaker 1 (18:34):
It was truly a delightful conversation. Thank you.
Speaker 4 (18:37):
This is super Thanks for sharing the love on Giving Tuesday.
Speaker 3 (18:42):
Larie Santos is a professor of psychology at Yale and
the host of the Happiness Lab. They have a whole
episode on the psychology of generosity coming out this week.
We'll be back in a minute with my conversation with
Ellie Hassenfeld, who spent nearly two decades scouring the planet
to find the most effective ways to spend money.
Speaker 1 (18:59):
On other people.
Speaker 3 (19:18):
Okay, so, Laurie Santos explained convincingly that giving away money
makes us feel good. So now the question is who
do we give the money to? That is basically the
question that Ellie Hasn'tfeld asked himself almost twenty years ago.
It's a question that led him to co found give
Well where he's now the CEO, and it's a question that,
(19:39):
in some really interesting ways, as you will hear, has
started to change the way charities themselves think about what
they do. To start, I asked Ellie how he came
to found GiveWell in the first place.
Speaker 1 (19:56):
Back in two thousand and six, I was a couple
of years out of college working at a hedge fund,
and a friend, Holding Karnowski, and I wanted to give
to charity, and at the time, we were trying to
give a few thousand bucks away and we wanted to
find charitable organizations that were getting a lot of bang
for their buck. And when we went looking online for information,
(20:16):
we just couldn't find great information about what charities do
and how well it works. We heard a lot about
the overhead ratio, how much did they spend on administration
versus programs, but nothing that said this is what they're
doing and this is how many people they'll help with
their programs. We spent months trying to answer this question.
(20:36):
The two of us got a little bit obsessed with it,
and eventually, after about a year of working on this project,
left our jobs to start give Well as a full
time project, and the idea was to create the resource
that we had been looking for as donors well.
Speaker 3 (20:50):
And there is this interesting sort of broader idea in
the charity world, right in the philanthropic world, which is
what are they measuring? You Know, you can have a
charity that builds schools, and they might tell you how
many schools they build, but presumably you're not actually giving
money to build the school, right, You're giving money so
(21:11):
that children get a better education. And so I'm curious,
I mean, as you started to look deeper at the time,
as you founded give well, like what was just the
basic landscape of measurement within the charity Worldlike.
Speaker 1 (21:27):
It's just really hard to get information about the outcomes
that we cared about that I think donors ultimately do
care about. And those outcomes would be things like do
you save children's lives if you are providing funds for
health programs, if you're trying to reduce poverty? Do you
increase people's incomes so that they can buy more of
(21:48):
the kinds of things that they want? And I would
say that by and large this information was not available.
When we were calling up organizations and asking them for information,
they were often shocked that anyone would be even asking
a question like this, because it was just in two
thousand and six, two thousand and seven, it was completely
(22:09):
unusual that someone would be wondering about, like, what is
the program actually accomplishing? What is the impact that it's
having on the world? Huh?
Speaker 3 (22:17):
I mean, is it almost a rude question? Is it
almost like, Look, we're spending our lives helping these people,
We're giving them cows, we're building clinics, Like who are you?
Speaker 1 (22:27):
What are you asking about? Why where do you come
off asking these questions? I think it's definitely an odd
question to ask something that I say a lot internally.
I can well, now is that you know, we're the
people who react skeptically to organizations saying we're just trying
to help people around the world, and we say, well,
how do you know? And can you prove it? And
(22:49):
you know that's not a socially normal thing to do,
but I think it's necessary because gosh, it's so hard
to have an impact on people around the world, and
asking those questions helps get better information so we can
ensure that funding goes to the best place. So you
do have this.
Speaker 3 (23:05):
Short list of pop charities that seems kind of like
the center of what you do in some way. Right,
you've looked at all of these charities in the world,
then you've landed on this very small number. Briefly, what
are they? Yeah, so you know, these top charities account
for about two thirds of the funds we direct. There
are four of them.
Speaker 1 (23:24):
One is the Against Malaria Foundation, which delivers malaria nets
in Africa. The second one is called Malaria Consortium and
we support their Seasonal Malaria Chemo Prevention program. That's a
preventative malaria program giving medicine to young children. The third one,
and these are in no particular order, but the third
one is Helen Keller Internationals Vitamin A Supplementation Program. This
(23:46):
is a program that gives a small amount of vitamin
A to children under the age of five and it
is shown in numerous studies to reduce child mortality. And
then finally, New Incentives, which is the organization that provides
conditional cast trans or small cash transfers to encourage immunization.
You know, the top charities reflect you know, roughly two
(24:08):
thirds of the funds that we direct, and we see
them as the you know, really the tried and true,
Like if you're a donor, and you want to have
a lot of impact, and you want to have confidence
in that impact. These are organizations that we have followed
for many years and we have a lot of confidence
in because they are there's a lot of evidence that
supports their impact.
Speaker 3 (24:28):
So how do you get from sort of generally being
interested in charity and in you know, research driven outcomes
to specifically focusing on saving the lives of children in
the developing world.
Speaker 1 (24:43):
Yeah, I mean, so, at its core, GiveWell is about
finding outstanding programs that we can support with the aim
of getting having the most impact with the funds that
we direct. And when we started, we didn't know where
we were going to find those programs, so we were
looking at health programs focused on low income countries, but
(25:07):
also social program focused on New York City where we
lived at the time, so job training programs, education programs,
et cetera. And after our first year of work where
we were focused on both US social programs and also
global programs, we looked at the data and just saw
how big the difference was in what a dollar could
(25:29):
accomplish overseas versus at home. And just to make it concrete,
you know, we estimate roughly, but I think it's the
right ballpark that five thousand or so dollars will avert
the death of a young child in a low income country.
That's about what it costs to put a child through
school for a couple of years in a New York
(25:53):
City charter school. And so that differential really showed us
that the opportunities to use money to have a big
impactor over on the world where we're stronger overseas, and
it drove us. It drove us to focus our efforts there.
We're finding the the groups that are, I think, like
importantly like not sure that their own programs are working,
(26:17):
and so want to ensure that they're gathering the data
so that they know where the programs are effective, where
they're struggling, so that they can make changes to run
those programs more effectively.
Speaker 3 (26:28):
Yeah, I mean, so that's an interesting idea, right, Like
that idea of the groups themselves being unsure. It requires
a sense of what is what is the real endpoint?
Speaker 1 (26:42):
Right?
Speaker 3 (26:42):
I think quite often and reasonably, like things are clearly
helpful if you whatever, give someone a cow and you
know training on how to take care of that cow,
like pretty clearly that person is going to be better
off than if you hadn't done it, and so it
might not be obvious to say, oh, we need to measure, well,
how much does it cost to give them the cow?
Speaker 1 (27:03):
How much better off are they? Are?
Speaker 3 (27:05):
There things we could change that would be even more helpful,
Like most people clearly don't do that, right, Most people
in their jobs in many domains are not constantly measuring
and trying to optimize.
Speaker 1 (27:16):
Yeah, I mean, I just think the stakes are so
high that it's just absolutely critical that there is a
recognition that failure can happen and we have to do
the best we can. Billions of dollars go to health
aid every year and the stakes are quite literally life
and death. And so therefore the difference between some of
(27:37):
the best programs that can very roughly say, avert the
death of a young child for approximately five to ten
thousand dollars, and then other programs which could have very
limited impact, I think in the worst case, even cause harm.
The measurement in that feedback loop to say this, we
want to see whether it's working, we want to see
(27:59):
the extent to which it's working, and we want to
learn from what we've done so that we can do better.
That's true for the organizations we work with, that's true
for us as an organization. You know, we're trying to
follow the same project of learning from our own track
record in history to make better decisions in the future
and hopefully help people even more. The groups that we
work with most, and I think the kinds of people
(28:21):
who are most drawn to what we're doing, whether it's
donors or practitioners, are people who's I think their interest,
the idea that they have that we have is to
try to find the way to use charitable dollars to
accomplish as much good as possible. And if that idea
is preventing HIV and young children, then great. And if
(28:43):
we can do better, if we can distribute oral rehydration
solution to prevent deaths from diarrhea, or if we can
encourage additional testing and treatment to prevent cases of tuberculosis
and children, what I ultimately care about. The thing that's
important to me is just helping children. And I'm not
drawn to the specific cause or disease as much as
(29:04):
the outcome, which is trying to enable more people to
live long, healthy lives.
Speaker 3 (29:09):
I feel like, you know, traditionally philanthropy was largely about
making donors feel good, and maybe it still is to
some degree, the nature of human nature being what it is.
But it seems like the growth of give well and
of sort of research driven philanthropy more generally has coincided
(29:33):
with the long boom of Silicon Valley, right. And it
strikes me that the kind of people who get rich
in tech are more numerically driven, are more metrics oriented
perhaps than earlier generations of rich people, and that that
might be sort of part of what is going on,
(29:54):
part of the wind at your back, part of the
rise of research driven philanthropy.
Speaker 1 (29:59):
You buy that. I think there's a kind of person
in tech and also in parts of finance. Those are
the two sectors from which we draw most of our
donors who have I think, the perspective that they take
on the world as one we know that there's a
lot we can be wrong about. We know there can
(30:19):
be big differences in the investments we make or the
decisions we make as a company leader. We also know
that we can be wrong and we want to learn
about how to do it better. And I do think
we see that coming out of those industries, and it's
a big part of what has helped us grow to
the size that we are today.
Speaker 3 (30:40):
So you were mentioning that when you first started out
and you were calling up charities and saying, what evidence
do you have that you're actually helping people basically, and
they would say.
Speaker 1 (30:51):
How dare you? Who are you?
Speaker 3 (30:53):
Why are you asking me this? I'm spending my life
helping people. What do they say now when.
Speaker 1 (30:59):
You call them up? Has that changed? Very practically? It's
changed for us because when I was calling people up
almost twenty years ago, I was offering them a thousand
bucks and you know, now how we have a lot
of funding to give, and so that does make them
more responsive. Oh, that's interesting. So there's a sort of pull.
Speaker 3 (31:15):
So basically, because you're directing hundreds of millions of dollars
a year, organizations have an incentive to be more research based.
Speaker 1 (31:22):
Yeah, I mean very fundamentally. You know, there's a there's
a problem, so to speak, in the charitable market where
the person deciding to open their wallet is not the
person who's ultimately receiving the service. So there's a disconnect
between the recipient and the giver. Where in the consumer
market that we're used to, you know, I purchase my
(31:44):
laptop and then I also use it and see how
good it is. Yeah, and so I think, and.
Speaker 3 (31:47):
If it sucks you, you that company goes out of dens.
Speaker 1 (31:51):
But that's not how it works security. If you're great
at fundraising from donors but terrible at delivering a program
no one might ever know. And so very I think
just concretely give well has helped support the literal in
a very small way, the creation of an incentive to
operate in a way that is focused on demonstrating impact,
(32:12):
because the dollars that we have to give, the dollars
that we have to influence, are going after that evidence
of strong impact. And I should say, of course, we
are just part of a larger and I think ever
growing ecosystem. You see this in the academics who launched
the randomized control trial movement in economics, organizations like Evidence Action,
(32:37):
the Clinton Health Access Initiative, give directly. I mean this,
it's a large and growing group of institutions, even beyond
the scope of just give well, that are operating in
a way that is explicitly aiming to deliver great results
and demonstrate that those results are coming to fruition. And
I think that is just a massive change from where
we were twenty years ago.
Speaker 3 (32:59):
So you mentioned give directly, and as it happens the
there's a sort of charitable giving project out of one
of the shows at Pushkin that gives money to give
direct basically, and I'm curious about give well, sort of
ongoing evaluation of give directly, Like what do you think?
What do you think of give directly as work in
a quantitative professional way? Yeah, I think, like, extremely, extremely
(33:22):
highly of them. I've personally been a gift directly donor
for many years, you know, continue to give to them
last year and will this year because I really love
what they do. I think it's just so critical to say,
you know, with some of our giving, let's make sure
that we're just supporting people to purchase, you know, what
they most.
Speaker 1 (33:42):
Want still to come.
Speaker 3 (33:45):
On the show, Ellie talks about some of the most
surprising things he's seen in his nearly two decades in
the charity world. What do you make of the fact
that five thousand dollars can save a child's life?
Speaker 1 (34:09):
I think it is just an illustration of on some
level how unjust our world is, you know, potentially, how
I think all of us, myself included, don't perhaps don't
really take it seriously as we should, the kind of
impact that we can have overseas. But fundamentally, you know,
I think it shows that something is very broken in
(34:32):
our system for allocating resources globally, because it's very hard
to accept that it's possible to save someone's life for
five thousand dollars.
Speaker 3 (34:43):
Yeah, I mean with all the money, even with all
the money that people give away, Like why don't people
give enough money to buy bed nets for kids so
they don't get malaria?
Speaker 1 (34:56):
Right, Like, there's some amount of money. The more money.
Speaker 3 (34:58):
People give, the less valuable each marginal net would be, right, Like,
why haven't people given enough money to these programs to
sort of of give away all the bed nets that
you need to give away and give away all the
malaria medicine that you'd need to give away to stop
kids from dying of malaria, at least in these high
(35:19):
intensity malaria areas where it's obvious that kids are going
to die of malaria every year.
Speaker 1 (35:24):
I think, first of all, it's just worth noting how
much progress we have made globally in the last twenty
five years. The US government has given huge amounts to
a program called PEPFAR focused on HIV. The President's Malaria
Initiative focused on malaria and has been instrumental in the
creation of the Global Fund, which focuses on HTB and malaria,
(35:47):
and GAVI, which focuses on immanizations. So since the year
two thousand, the amount of funding going to global health
problems has gone up a huge amount. It has plateaued
more recently, but it's gone up a huge amount, and
we see a massive reduction in child mortality. So we're
doing a lot better today than we were in the
recent past. And then like, fundamentally, I don't know why
(36:11):
people don't give more or even give more to these charities, right,
It's it's more a question of direction. It's not even
why don't people give more money.
Speaker 3 (36:22):
It's like, if it's really that easy to save a
kid's life, like we want that number to go up, right,
like the cheaper it is to save a kid's life.
I mean, it's kind of you cuts both ways. Right
on the one end, it's like, well, great, we know
a thing that is helpful. But on the other hand, like, well,
let's buy all the bed bets.
Speaker 1 (36:40):
So it's not so easy do you know what I'm saying? Uh? Completely,
And and yeah, I think that you know, give Well
raises about three hundred million dollars a year. A Give
Well that was raising a billion dollars a year would
the marginal dollars would be much less less cost effective, right,
because we would have gone much further.
Speaker 3 (36:58):
Weirdly, you want to get to a place where it's
more expensive to save a child's life, Like, the more
expensive it is, the less inequality there is in the world,
the more kids lives we're saving.
Speaker 1 (37:08):
Exactly exactly, you know. And then I think I Give
Well itself is an institution that has raised much more
money over the last fifteen years than was raised previously
and is going and I think it reflects more people giving.
Why aren't people giving more to these programs? I think
because the honestly, the suffering and the poverty of say,
(37:31):
the poorest parts of Sub Saharan Africa is something that
we are largely blind to in our day to day lives.
It's not you know, we cover natural disasters when they occur,
but no one is covering literally the daily catastrophe of
child deaths due to infectious disease in sub Saharan Africa.
(37:54):
You know, very roughly one thousand children die every day
of malaria. We know how to prevent it, and that's
not covered because it's well, I guess it's I don't
know exactly why. That's a question for you, not for me,
but it's not covered. And I think that on some
level we're able to live as if it's not really
there in that motivating force to get people to see
(38:16):
it and then act isn't isn't happening.
Speaker 3 (38:20):
You've been doing this now for fifteen years ish. If
you go back to when you started, what's been surprising
to you? What has happened in a way you would
not have expected.
Speaker 1 (38:36):
I was really surprised when we started at how strange
our questions seem to the organizations that we were going to,
the question of how effective are your programs? How much
are you accomplishing, and how do you know? Seems like
a really an obvious question. Those are really surprising to me.
(38:59):
How much we've grown. When we started this, I think
we thought that we were just we were a couple
of guys who had this idiosyncratic interest in an approach
to charitable giving. And when we talk to people who
worked in philanthropy. They they reacted like we were nuts,
that no one would ever be into this. This is
(39:21):
not what donors go to gala's and donors like stories
and their names on buildings, and wow, it's shocking. You know,
people are people are normal. People are just giving three
hundred million dollars a year to help people around the world,
and they're buying large anonymous they're not getting their names
on buildings, and they're just you know, following along, trying
(39:41):
to make as big a difference as they can in
people's lives. So they'll never meet. And you know, on
some level that maybe that makes sense, but that's also
really surprising.
Speaker 3 (39:50):
It seems like the happy surprise, the happy surprise. I
appreciate you time very much. It was great to talk
with you. Yeah, that was great to be here.
Speaker 1 (39:57):
Thanks so much.
Speaker 3 (39:58):
Jacob Ellie Hasenfeld is the co founder and CEO of
Gift Well. Last conversation on the show is with Nate
Silver and Maria on a Cova. Nate is a statistician,
Maria's a psychologist. They are both writers and together they
host a podcast.
Speaker 1 (40:16):
Called Risky Business.
Speaker 3 (40:18):
They are also both professional poker players, and that's really
why I wanted to talk to them about charitable giving.
One of the things they do on their show is
they talk about bringing a poker mindset to the decision
making of everyday life, and so I wanted to hear
from them how professional gamblers think about giving money away. So, like,
(40:40):
the core idea of the show is making better decisions
using this expected value framework right in like one sentence,
what's expected value?
Speaker 5 (40:50):
Expected value is the net benefit you expect to get
averaged over all the uncertain outcomes. Now, I guess with
charitable giving, maybe it's more deterministic where we know, for example,
that mosquito nets in Africa have a high return on
investment they say lives and prevent male area at a
(41:13):
relative of low costs. It's not like a random element
there exactly, although there are always some implementation issues, But
really it's a framework about utility.
Speaker 6 (41:22):
And I was just jump in a little bit to
say that, you know, we have the economic definition of
expected value, and then when you look at behavioral economics
and the way that people actually make decisions, you realize
that there's a lot of psychology involved as well, and
so calculating expected value is not as straightforward as just
(41:44):
kind of doing these dollar calculations, because you know, how
do you put a dollar amount on how good you
feel after a decision or how bad you feel, or
the regret that you might feel when you don't take
a decision. And when we're looking at kind of the
broader picture of expected value, you do have to try
to quantify that a little bit and try to account
(42:04):
for all of those different psychological factors that come into
play as well.
Speaker 3 (42:08):
One of my favorite things about your show is when
you talk about the culture of professional poker players. Basically,
you're both professional poker players, and you live in this
universe where people treat money really differently. Right, And there
are these two terms that come up a lot on
the show, two kinds of people knits and djens. What's
(42:30):
a knit?
Speaker 6 (42:31):
I'll leave this one to you, Nate.
Speaker 5 (42:34):
A knit is basically George Costanzo, right. It's like a
neurotic risk of verse cheap, but more someone who is
so neurotic that they aren't taking plus ev bets. Right.
They're too conservative for their own good when it comes
to playing poker hands, for example, and have a low
(42:57):
openness to experience perhaps and can be annoying they're the
ones who want to itemize the bill when the checks.
Speaker 3 (43:05):
Wait, I didn't eat the app. I shouldn't have to
pay for one third of the app. That's the naty behavior.
Speaker 5 (43:10):
It, Yeah, Whereas a djen is someone who likes to gamble,
is risk tolerant, maybe to their own detriment, is freewheeling
with money and splashes around.
Speaker 3 (43:22):
Yes, and DGEN is short for degenerate gambler, but in
a loving way, right, that's my favorite. Yeah, So in
your experience, who is more generous a degenerate knit djen?
Speaker 1 (43:34):
Absolutely? Oh, yeah, for sure.
Speaker 6 (43:36):
I don't think it's even close.
Speaker 1 (43:38):
You guys give to charity.
Speaker 6 (43:42):
I give to charitable causes that I believe in. So
for instance, I gave a lot of money to Ukraine
when Russia invaded, And that is how kind of I
calculate my charitable giving. I understand that mosquito nets in
Africa are incredibly important. I have not given to malaria
because that is not something that you know, I feel
(44:04):
strongly about. There are other people feel strongly about that.
So for me part of it, you know, I I
have given to educational causes. You know, I give to
things that I have a connection with and that I
feel also are underfunded.
Speaker 3 (44:17):
Mari you mentioned given to Ukraine, and I mean I
know you a little bit, I know your your life
story seems connected to that, right, tell me about your
connection to helping Ukraine defend itself against Russia.
Speaker 2 (44:28):
Yeah.
Speaker 6 (44:29):
So my dad is Ukrainian and my mom is from Moscow,
and I was born in Moscow and then came to
the United States when I was four years old and
have always been very anti the autocratic tendencies of Russia,
very anti Putin And I think you know when Putin
(44:50):
invent invaded Ukraine. To me, that was a no brainer.
I think at this point Ukraine is one of the
only things standing between us and the Third World War,
basically the fact that they're able to resist him. So
for me, it was incredibly personal. And so I'm all
in on the Zelenski camp.
Speaker 5 (45:10):
Nate Silver, do you give money away? I'm having to reevaluate.
I mean, the short answers I haven't.
Speaker 1 (45:17):
Uh huh.
Speaker 3 (45:17):
Does either saying on a show that you haven't given
money away, or hearing Maria talk about giving money away,
like honestly, does it you think it makes it any
more likely that you'll give money away.
Speaker 1 (45:28):
Do you think it's going to have any effect on you.
Speaker 5 (45:29):
I'm generally not a person who is governed by guilt.
Speaker 1 (45:33):
Ah, that's I mean, I think I should.
Speaker 5 (45:36):
There's like a lot of long term financial planning that
gets put off. I mean, these are discussions that you know,
my household we've had and so we're we're aware of
this question and what we want to do with our
money in the long term, member thinking about it actively,
but kind of things get short circuited during I mean clearly,
(45:57):
I think that you know, in some abstract sense, you
are being selfish. If you're not you have a comfortable life,
then you are being selfish to not give. But it's
easy to make excuses.
Speaker 3 (46:08):
I appreciate your hown So Nate, does that make you
a knit and Maria the DJ in I never would
have guessed, well, but I am.
Speaker 1 (46:17):
I think Maria is also.
Speaker 5 (46:18):
I am generous in those other ways yea, and things
like tips with things like you know, picking up checks,
even a fairly expensive meals or something for my friends.
And so maybe psychologically that feels more satisfying than the
abstract charitable giving.
Speaker 3 (46:33):
Yes, I mean that is an interesting tension, right, like
it feels better to buy lunch for your friend than
to send the money off to somebody thousands of miles away,
even though obviously the marginal benefit of that whatever one
hundred bucks, fifty bucks, any any bucks, is clearly greater
if you send it off thousands.
Speaker 5 (46:50):
Jacob in the York, fifty bucks would be great.
Speaker 1 (46:54):
I was trying to be I was trying to be
a man of the people. And when are we getting dinner?
Speaker 6 (46:59):
I totally agree, and yeah, And I also just want
to want to add a little bit to say that
I think that in this particular case, like role models
really do matter when it comes to charitable giving tendencies,
so psychologically speaking. And one of the things that has
made me actually kind of give more than I have
(47:22):
in the past is my parents, who don't have a
lot of money and you know, our single income because
my mom no longer works, and they give a recurring
donation every single month to causes that they believe strongly in,
including Ukraine. And when I think about it, I'm like,
you can't afford to do this, and yet they do it,
(47:44):
and that you know it I won't say guilts me
into but like it may, it makes me realize that,
like you know, it is important when you are donating
to causes where it actually makes a difference. Nate and
I talked a lot on our podcast about kind of
donating to political campaigns, and you know, don't donate to
(48:05):
the presidential campaign because they don't need the money. But I,
you know, I think that that's kind of that's what
we're talking about at the end. Where do you donate
in a way that your money actually makes an impact
right now? And it doesn't have to be millions of dollars,
right you can leave I hope I have millions to
leave at the end of my life to good causes,
but you know, there are causes where even a few
(48:27):
hundred dollars actually can make a huge difference.
Speaker 5 (48:30):
But I guess because there probably is some pleasure from it, right,
you kind of recognize the efemeral nature of money and
it's kind of more an emotional reaction.
Speaker 1 (48:37):
And then when.
Speaker 5 (48:40):
I mean thinking about charity, it's kind of the more
rational part of your brain.
Speaker 1 (48:44):
Right you can make.
Speaker 5 (48:44):
Excuses along lines of well, maybe just give it away
at the end of my life. And I pay a
lot of taxes, and you know, figuring out where to
give is a discussion to have with your partner, and
that can get you know, we'd have disagreements about that,
and so it's different than the kind of oh, it's
get a nice bottle of wine and I'll I'll pick
up dinner to night because I know you had a
rough tournament series or something like that.
Speaker 1 (49:05):
Huh. I never thought of you as such an amoe.
Speaker 3 (49:10):
So so I'm curious in particular, So this, this show
is about giving away money fundamentally, and you know, we
can talk about you know, maximizing ev and what charities
are good, but there's also just this more general idea
of pro social behavior. Spending money on your friends is
part of this. And so I'm curious, what's your favorite
djen dropping a bunch of money on their friends on charity,
(49:33):
on anything story.
Speaker 6 (49:35):
Yeah, well, this isn't This isn't d Jenny, but I
think it's something that is quite important. The poker community
actually does give a shit ton of money to charity.
You know, those aren't the fun D Jenny stories, but
but that's I think, you know, I think it's important
to note that poker players actually are on top of this,
and there are a lot of poker players giving millions
(49:57):
to charity and matching charitable donations.
Speaker 1 (50:01):
Thanks you, guys, it was a delight to talk to you.
Speaker 5 (50:03):
Thank you, thank you.
Speaker 3 (50:07):
So just before we in the show, I want to
just mention one last thing. There was a moment in
that last conversation when Nate was talking about the reasons
he hasn't given money. You know how giving money to
charity has tied up with all these other household financial
planning decisions, et cetera, et cetera. And I thought back
to that thing that Lori Santo said at the beginning
(50:28):
of the show about friction. You know how friction and
not knowing how to give or who to give to
winds up being this huge barrier. And I thought about
how Ellie Hassenfeld has spent all this time trying to
find charities that are very clearly doing good that you
can just give money to and feel good about. So
to close out the show today and to fight against
(50:49):
friction in my own life, I'm going to go right
now to that website that Laurie was talking about giving
multiplier dot org slash.
Speaker 1 (50:59):
Happiness Lab, and I'm going to give fifty bucks. Is
it the perfect amount of money? I don't know. I'm
just gonna do it right now.
Speaker 3 (51:15):
Thanks very much to Nate Silver and Maria Konakova, the
host of Risky Business, Ellie Hassenfeld of GiveWell, and to
Lrie Santos, the host of The Happiness Lab, who got
me thinking about giving Tuesday in the first place. Today's
show was produced by Lucy Sullivan and Isabelle Carter, edited
by Sarah Nix, and engineered by Jake Gorsky. Special thanks
(51:37):
to Ryan Dilly, Farah Daygrunge and Owen Miller. I'm Jacob
Goldstein and I host the Pushkin Show What's Your Problem?
Speaker 1 (51:44):
Thanks for listening.
Pushkin.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
Hello Tim Harford here. It's a giving time of year,
the kind of giving that means wrapping paper and shiny bows, certainly,
but people also give to good causes. At least we
hope they're good causes, but how can we be sure
they're the best causes. In this special episode, Jacob Goldstein,
the host of Pushkin's What's Your Problem, is trying to
(00:41):
help us figure out how to get the most good
out of our donations. He starts off talking with Dr
Lorrie Santos of the Happiness Lab about the good that
giving does for the donors. I'll be back again soon
with another episode of cautionary tales, but while you wait,
I hope you enjoy this extra conversation.
Speaker 3 (01:03):
I'm Jacob Goldstein. I host a Pushkin podcast called What's
Your Problem? And I am here rare talking to you
right now because today is the day before Giving Tuesday.
Giving Tuesday, as you may already know, is the Tuesday
after Thanksgiving, and it's supposed to be the day we
give money to charity.
Speaker 1 (01:23):
And I'm gonna be honest with you. In my middle aged.
Speaker 3 (01:26):
Somewhat calcified heart, I cringe a little bit every time
I hear the phrase giving Tuesday. I think Giving Tuesday
is not a real thing. It's not a real day.
It's just something somebody made up a few years ago.
But that cynicism is not helping anybody. In fact, as
it turns out, it isn't even helping me. I know
(01:48):
this to be true because over the past decade or so,
research has made two things really clear. One, giving money
away makes us feel better than we think.
Speaker 1 (01:59):
It will make us feel.
Speaker 3 (02:01):
In other words, we underestimate the benefit to ourselves of
giving money to others.
Speaker 1 (02:06):
That's thing one thin.
Speaker 3 (02:08):
Two is this, there are charities that are proven, proven
by really robust evidence, to do a tremendous amount of
good with the money.
Speaker 1 (02:16):
We give them.
Speaker 3 (02:18):
So today I and my colleagues at Pushkin are leaning
into Giving Tuesday. We are putting out this special Giving
Tuesday show to get into this evidence, to really understand
why giving money makes us happy, why we don't do
it more, and who we should give money to.
Speaker 1 (02:35):
To start out on the show, I'm going to talk
with Lori Santos.
Speaker 3 (02:39):
Laurie's a Yale psychologist who hosts a Pushkin show called
The Happiness Lab. And Lauria and I are going to
talk about the evidence that shows that giving makes us happy,
and then the obvious puzzle that follows from that evidence.
If giving makes us so happy, why don't we give more?
Later on the show, I'll talk with Ellie Hassenfeld. Ellie
is the co founder and CEO of give Well, and
(03:01):
he has spent nearly two decades scouring the world studying
the research to try to figure out which charities do
the most good with every dollar. And then finally I'll
talk with Maria Konikova and Nate Silver. Maria and Nate
are a pair of writers who host a Pushkin podcast
called Risky Business.
Speaker 1 (03:20):
But they're also both professional poker players. They are people whose.
Speaker 3 (03:24):
Livelihoods depend on making optimal bets. So I'll be talking
to them about how they bring that thinking to their
charitable given. Lorie Santos tell me why I am not
giving enough money to charity?
Speaker 4 (03:43):
Well, it's probably because your mind is leading you astray, right,
I mean, you're like a smart person, right. You probably
think through what would be the pros and cons of
giving a charity. You probably do some simulations in your
head about how it would feel for you, and you
know how the recipients of that money would feel. And
there's just tons of psychological evidence showing that when we
do those simulations, we get them really really wrong.
Speaker 1 (04:06):
Huh.
Speaker 3 (04:07):
We don't know what makes us happy with giving money,
as with everything, as with everything.
Speaker 4 (04:11):
Yeah, I mean, in some ways, the giving money part
shouldn't be surprising. You know, I have a whole podcast
about how we get happiness wrong all the time. But
this one's really insidious because it means that we're like
leaving opportunities not just to make ourselves happier kind of
on the table, but we're also leaving opportunities to just
do good in the world and do good in society
on the table too. So in some ways it's like
even sadder.
Speaker 3 (04:32):
Yeah, Like people talk about win when this is like lose, lose.
It's right, I feel worse and everybody feels worse.
Speaker 4 (04:37):
And it's another case where we could be building the pie.
Speaker 2 (04:40):
Right.
Speaker 4 (04:40):
You know, say I have you know, ten bucks sitting
around in my pocket. Right, it could spend it in
a way that makes me happy, or I could donate
it to a good cause. Right, I probably feel better.
The research would show spending at ten dollars on a
good charity, then I would feel kind of blowing it
on myself. But now the money is going to increase
happiness in other people, right, presumably somebody who really needed
(05:01):
that money. And so we're losing these opportunities to grow
the pie. And we really just need to understand this
bias better so that we can be happy.
Speaker 3 (05:10):
So you learn it to the research that shows that
giving money away makes us happier. Tell me more about that, Like,
what is the academic work that's been done on this subject.
Speaker 4 (05:18):
Yeah, well there's tons of studies now, you know. One
of my favorite is a really straightforward one. It comes
out of the lab of Elizabeth Dunn and her colleagues
at the University of British Columbia, and their method is
really straightforward. They walk up to some person on the
street and they say, hey, do you want to be
in a psych study? I think the person kind of
begrudging all he's like, okay, fine, But then it starts
out it's an awesome psych study because Liz and her
(05:38):
colleagues just hand you twenty bucks and she're like cool.
The key though, is that she tells you how to
spend that money. She either says hey, by the end
of the day, do something nice for yourself with this money.
Treat yourself, you know it's something you wouldn't have expected.
Or by the end of the day, do something nice
with this money for somebody else. Right, you could donate
it to charity, you could buy your friend a latte. Right,
it doesn't matter, but it has to be for somebody else.
(06:00):
And then the key is that she calls participants later
that day and even in some cases later in the week,
and what she finds is that people tend to feel
happier when they donate the money to somebody else or
do something nice for somebody else with the money, more
so than they feel when they spent the equivalent amount
of money on themselves. And the study I love because
it's just so straightforward. It's just suggests that you know
(06:23):
what we predict will happen, right, And Liz has actually
done these studies where she asks a different group of participants, Hey,
imagine you're in the study where I walked up to
you on the street and gave you twenty bucks. Would
you be happier spending that on yourself or somebody else?
And like robustly people say, oh, I'd be happier spending
on myself, right, because I get something out of the deal.
But what she finds is that we're just our prediction
is just totally wrong. When we spend on others, we're happier.
Speaker 3 (06:46):
So I feel like there's a subtlety there in the
spending on others group, right, Like it is in some
ways more intuitive to me that, like, whatever, buying lunch
for my friend would make me happy because my friend
would be so happy, and we'd be happy together, and
the thing would be happening in this very you know, social,
(07:06):
real physical way, Like I get that one.
Speaker 1 (07:10):
It seems less.
Speaker 3 (07:11):
Obvious to me that, like giving twenty bucks to a
charity helping people in Sub Saharan Africa would make me happy,
even though clearly, intellectually, analytically, I know that the twenty
bucks going to Sub Saharan Africa is going to do
more to increase abstract human happiness than buying lunch for
my friend who could have bought lunch for herself.
Speaker 1 (07:31):
So like, how does that piece of it work? How
do we think about that piece of it?
Speaker 4 (07:36):
You are onto an important point, which is that there
are better and worse ways to give to charity, right,
in terms of like boosting our own happiness and sort
of feeling the impact from that. We are a lot
happier if we can see the impact of our work, right,
But even when we don't see the impact of our work,
the act of donating winds up making us feel better
than we think. Again, I share the intuition that you have, Jacob, right, Like,
(07:58):
I know these studies. I can kind of quote the
stats and I still don't have the intuition that it works.
But the results really just suggest that we feel better
than we assume we will.
Speaker 1 (08:08):
Why do you think we get it wrong?
Speaker 3 (08:09):
I mean, I know we get everything wrong, But why
do you think we get this wrong?
Speaker 4 (08:12):
Yeah, I mean we get everything wrong right our minds.
I wish I wish we could just like update like
mind two point zero would be so much better. I
think there's some there's some reasons that we get this
one wrong. One is sort of when we're doing an
active kindness, what we focus on as opposed to what
the recipient will focus on. Right, I'm sort of focused
on whether or not my gift is kind of in
some sense competent, Like am I doing the right thing?
(08:34):
Am I picking the right charity? Maybe an in more
local acts of kindness. Am I doing it the right way? Right?
Speaker 1 (08:41):
Yeah? I don't want to be awkward.
Speaker 3 (08:42):
I don't want to be rude or make this person
feel some sense of obligation or reciprocity that might not
work for them.
Speaker 1 (08:49):
You overthinking it. You're saying we're overthinking it.
Speaker 4 (08:51):
But in terms of the overthinking, that's not what's happening.
On the other side. You think of the recipient of
a compliment, right, If you know, if someone walks up
to you in the streets like, hey, you know love
those glasses. They really see you, Jacob, like nicely done.
Speaker 1 (09:03):
You're not thinking you you're not mean it, and I
like it.
Speaker 4 (09:06):
But you're not thinking of like did they right? Did
they use the right adjective? Was it cool glasses or stylish?
You're just like, oh my gosh, I'm surprised, and I
have this incredible warm feeling. And so this is part
of the disconnect, is that when we're making the decision
to do something nice, we're overthinking. We're caught up in
if we're doing it right and so on. But the recipients,
they don't feel any of that. They're just like, oh
(09:28):
my gosh, I feel amazing, And so we kind of
mispredict what they're paying attention to when they react, and
that means their reactions are often a lot more positive
than we expect. And then we're like, oh, I guess,
I guess it was nice to do that kind thing
for somebody.
Speaker 3 (09:42):
It's the broader lesson of like everybody's just thinking about
themselves all the time. We're thinking about ourselves as givers,
and am I the optimal giver?
Speaker 1 (09:49):
Am I giving in the optimal way? But the recipients
aren't thinking about you. They're just thinking about.
Speaker 4 (09:54):
Them Yeah, And we get so caught up in the
awkwardness of it. Right, you know how many compliments have
you not given just because you're like, oh, I don't
want to do it wrong or seem weird and some
of Nick Eppley's a professor at the University of Chicago's data.
He finds that about a third of the compliments we
think in our heads, we don't actually tell the people
around us, right, which, when you think compliments usually are
(10:15):
received really well and make people's day, it's like a
lot of positivity that's just like stuck inside people's heads
that we're not giving out.
Speaker 3 (10:22):
Friction seems like another interesting piece, right, there's like you're
in your own head too much, and the other core
piece is like, ah, I don't know. I'm just some
guy in the world. How do I figure out who
to give to? And like I feel like that one
is underrated in the world in general, right, Like we
just we're like water, we just flow to the easiest rounde.
I mean, how do you see that playing out in
(10:42):
charity more generally, in giving more generally?
Speaker 4 (10:46):
Yeah, I mean I think that friction is a huge thing, right.
I Mean a good friend of mine just had a
baby with his wife, and my instagraction was like, oh
my gosh, I should do something nice for them. Maybe
I'll get them some food or some onesies or something.
But I was like, do I just show up at
their house? Like do they have any dietary restrictions that
I'm forgetting about?
Speaker 1 (11:03):
Is this weird?
Speaker 4 (11:04):
Like all again, all this overthinking in my head. But
another good friend of ours was like, I'm setting up
a meal train. Here's the day. You click on this link.
It's super easy, right, what you're gonna, you know, give
him if it's a lasa or whatever, Here's how you
drop it. Off, she just made it really easy for
me to do the nice thing that I was thinking
about doing. Anyway, I needed somebody to make that friction
(11:25):
go away for me to help. And so I think
there's so many cases of this in terms of what
we could do to do nice things for others, whether
that's with a charitable donation or even just like you know,
asking a friend if they need some support, checking in
on the people we care about, sharing compliments, and so on.
The friction kind of gets in the way, and I
think this is the idea, is that we can overcome
(11:46):
the friction by kind of reducing how much work it
is for us to do the nice thing. Right, Sometimes
the nice thing is just texting a friend, or you're
already there, you know, like you know, in the subway,
and you compliment somebody who's walking by. Right, these are
the kinds of things that we can do quickly, and
if we do them enough, then there's a second way
that we can reduce friction, which is that it just
kind of becomes a habit. Right, if we just get
(12:08):
in the habit of doing this over and over again,
doing more and more nice things, then all of a sudden,
it just becomes easier because so much that we know
about human psychology, even though we're kind of you know,
in the crappy beta version, shows that when we do
something over and over again, it just becomes easier to
do that same thing. And so one of the Giving
Tuesday practices that I talk about in my show The
(12:28):
Happiness Lab is just hey, practice doing nice things and
it will make it easier. You'll kind of experience less
friction over time, just because like it's just the thing
you do when you see somebody you know at work
who you know is wearing something nice or they do
something great in a team meeting. You'll just get good
at expressing compliments, expressing gratitude. It'll just become second nature
to you.
Speaker 3 (12:48):
So you have this project through your show, the Happiness Lab,
of giving money away, like built on this premise that
we're talking about that not only would recipients be better
if people gave more, but the givers themselves would be
better if people gave more. You have this project that
you do every year for Giving Tuesday, which is coming up.
Speaker 1 (13:09):
Tell me about that project.
Speaker 4 (13:11):
Yeah, So the site that we've worked with is this
group called giving Multiplier dot org and their goal is
to fight a different kind of thing that can go
wrong when we think about donating to charities, which is
that many of us really do want to be kind
of competent about it. We want our money to go
to really good causes in the world, but we also
kind of fall prey to the causes that feel really
(13:32):
close to my heart, right you know, like I might
want to give to my local food bank, which is great,
you know, it's good to do that, but that ten
bucks I give to my local food bank, it might
not have as much impact as you know, giving to
somebody maybe an extreme poverty right in like Sub Saharan Africa.
You know, I haven't really analyzed is my local food
bank doing the best with the money and so on
(13:53):
and so giving multiplier dot Org has this has this
really nice combination of they say, Okay, you really feel
compelled to give to your food bank, but what if
you gave just part of that ten bucks to one
of these so called super effective charities. Right They've done
the research. They're like the dollar that you give from
that ten bucks to the super effective charity is going
to go even further. And so they kind of allow
(14:13):
you to make this distinction between your your heart and
what you kind of really feel locally, the kind of
thing that make you feel good because you can see
the impact in your community versus what's doing the best
work out there and giving. Multiplier dot Org this year
has picked a really great super effective charity which is
called Give Directly. This is this group that just gives
(14:33):
these unconditional cash transfers like no strings attached, like cast
bonus to people living in extreme poverty.
Speaker 3 (14:40):
And there's a there's a happiness lab. You are l right,
shout it out, Shout it from the rooftops.
Speaker 1 (14:45):
What is it?
Speaker 4 (14:46):
It's giving Multiplier dot org slash Happiness Lab super easy.
Speaker 1 (14:50):
Go right now.
Speaker 3 (14:51):
Phones are open, operators are standing by, you know.
Speaker 4 (14:55):
And one of the things we've seen is that a
lot of our listeners will donate five bucks, three bucks
in some cases. But those kinds of donations really add up,
and especially if part of your donation is going to
one of these super effective charities, like that dollar is
going a really long way.
Speaker 3 (15:11):
Yeah, I'll say, And I know, like analyzing super effective
charities ends up being about like randomized controlled trials, which
is great, like real evidence. But I will say that
I actually for a story I did ten years ago
or so. I went to Kenya to a village where
Give Directly was giving money and I saw how profound
(15:32):
the impact is. I mean, it's people get one thousand
dollars at least at that time, no strings attached, and
like I talk to a guy who bought a motorcycle
so that he could start a motorcycle taxi business. Right,
So it's not just like they buy food and then
the money runs out. It's people have no capital, They
have no money, and so getting one thousand dollars allows
them to make these investments that can change their lives forever.
Speaker 4 (15:56):
Yeah, we saw that last year where we really focused
on GiveDirectly in particular and one community specifically. So we
worked with this community, Kebobo in Rwanda, which is a
tiny village just on the outside of Kigali, the capital.
But they just like all, most of the people in
the community live off less than a dollar a day,
and just like you're saying, they just lack so many
of the basic conveniences that we take for granted. Right,
(16:18):
they have to hike two hours to get access to
water and then the water comes back and it's like,
are you going to drink some water? Are you going
to give your kid a shower? Right, there's no access
to schools and these kinds of things. And last year,
Happiness Lab listeners were able to generate over one hundred
thousand dollars for this community in particular, and so, just
like you're saying, give directly, was able to give each
person in the community one thousand dollars unconditional cash transfer,
(16:41):
and the money went to things like motorbikes like you mentioned,
fixing roofs, buying mattresses. Right, most of the people in
Kebobo were sleeping on the floor. They just didn't have
access to a mattress. But some people did these really
creative things that One of the things I didn't expect
is that one of the couples that got the cash
transfer bought a pub, which you might think, like, ah,
they got a pub, a puppet.
Speaker 1 (17:02):
Like a bar like a I love that.
Speaker 4 (17:04):
But the bar like wound up employing people in the community.
It became this commun hub where people could get together
with each other at night, and it's generated more income
for them. So now they're turning kind of the side
of their pub that they put together into a little
mini grocery store, which is one of the first spots
that people can buy food in town so that they
don't have to leave town. And so it's like if
(17:24):
you leave it up to people's ingenuity, they kind of
come up with these interesting things.
Speaker 1 (17:28):
Yeah, I mean there's a really simple idea.
Speaker 3 (17:31):
Like the reason I wanted to do that story all
those years ago is like people know what they need, right,
Like they know if they need food or a motorcycle
or a roof, they just don't have the money, yes, right,
So like if you give them the money, they can
buy what they need.
Speaker 1 (17:47):
That's the great thing about money.
Speaker 4 (17:49):
Yeah, And this is something we forget with gifts in general.
I think this comes up in charity, but there's also
a work you know, giving Tuesdays sort of the prelude
to other holidays and gift giving moments coming up. And
it's just something we get wrong all the time, Like
we want to be able to come up with the
creative gift for somebody. But one of the best ways
to figure out the best gift is to just ask
people what do you want? And if you buy someone
(18:10):
that thing, they're going to be happy because that was
what they wanted.
Speaker 3 (18:14):
Yeah, it goes back to the like we're thinking about ourselves, right,
even when we're giving gifts this notionally you know, other
focused thing, we're actually like, oh am I a good gift?
Speaker 1 (18:24):
Giver? Am I a good It's just ego.
Speaker 3 (18:27):
It's just we're just screwing ourselves with our ego as always. Yeah,
it was great to talk with you, Laurie.
Speaker 1 (18:34):
It was truly a delightful conversation. Thank you.
Speaker 4 (18:37):
This is super Thanks for sharing the love on Giving Tuesday.
Speaker 3 (18:42):
Larie Santos is a professor of psychology at Yale and
the host of the Happiness Lab. They have a whole
episode on the psychology of generosity coming out this week.
We'll be back in a minute with my conversation with
Ellie Hassenfeld, who spent nearly two decades scouring the planet
to find the most effective ways to spend money.
Speaker 1 (18:59):
On other people.
Speaker 3 (19:18):
Okay, so, Laurie Santos explained convincingly that giving away money
makes us feel good. So now the question is who
do we give the money to? That is basically the
question that Ellie Hasn'tfeld asked himself almost twenty years ago.
It's a question that led him to co found give
Well where he's now the CEO, and it's a question that,
(19:39):
in some really interesting ways, as you will hear, has
started to change the way charities themselves think about what
they do. To start, I asked Ellie how he came
to found GiveWell in the first place.
Speaker 1 (19:56):
Back in two thousand and six, I was a couple
of years out of college working at a hedge fund,
and a friend, Holding Karnowski, and I wanted to give
to charity, and at the time, we were trying to
give a few thousand bucks away and we wanted to
find charitable organizations that were getting a lot of bang
for their buck. And when we went looking online for information,
(20:16):
we just couldn't find great information about what charities do
and how well it works. We heard a lot about
the overhead ratio, how much did they spend on administration
versus programs, but nothing that said this is what they're
doing and this is how many people they'll help with
their programs. We spent months trying to answer this question.
(20:36):
The two of us got a little bit obsessed with it,
and eventually, after about a year of working on this project,
left our jobs to start give Well as a full
time project, and the idea was to create the resource
that we had been looking for as donors well.
Speaker 3 (20:50):
And there is this interesting sort of broader idea in
the charity world, right in the philanthropic world, which is
what are they measuring? You Know, you can have a
charity that builds schools, and they might tell you how
many schools they build, but presumably you're not actually giving
money to build the school, right, You're giving money so
(21:11):
that children get a better education. And so I'm curious,
I mean, as you started to look deeper at the time,
as you founded give well, like what was just the
basic landscape of measurement within the charity Worldlike.
Speaker 1 (21:27):
It's just really hard to get information about the outcomes
that we cared about that I think donors ultimately do
care about. And those outcomes would be things like do
you save children's lives if you are providing funds for
health programs, if you're trying to reduce poverty? Do you
increase people's incomes so that they can buy more of
(21:48):
the kinds of things that they want? And I would
say that by and large this information was not available.
When we were calling up organizations and asking them for information,
they were often shocked that anyone would be even asking
a question like this, because it was just in two
thousand and six, two thousand and seven, it was completely
(22:09):
unusual that someone would be wondering about, like, what is
the program actually accomplishing? What is the impact that it's
having on the world? Huh?
Speaker 3 (22:17):
I mean, is it almost a rude question? Is it
almost like, Look, we're spending our lives helping these people,
We're giving them cows, we're building clinics, Like who are you?
Speaker 1 (22:27):
What are you asking about? Why where do you come
off asking these questions? I think it's definitely an odd
question to ask something that I say a lot internally.
I can well, now is that you know, we're the
people who react skeptically to organizations saying we're just trying
to help people around the world, and we say, well,
how do you know? And can you prove it? And
(22:49):
you know that's not a socially normal thing to do,
but I think it's necessary because gosh, it's so hard
to have an impact on people around the world, and
asking those questions helps get better information so we can
ensure that funding goes to the best place. So you
do have this.
Speaker 3 (23:05):
Short list of pop charities that seems kind of like
the center of what you do in some way. Right,
you've looked at all of these charities in the world,
then you've landed on this very small number. Briefly, what
are they? Yeah, so you know, these top charities account
for about two thirds of the funds we direct. There
are four of them.
Speaker 1 (23:24):
One is the Against Malaria Foundation, which delivers malaria nets
in Africa. The second one is called Malaria Consortium and
we support their Seasonal Malaria Chemo Prevention program. That's a
preventative malaria program giving medicine to young children. The third one,
and these are in no particular order, but the third
one is Helen Keller Internationals Vitamin A Supplementation Program. This
(23:46):
is a program that gives a small amount of vitamin
A to children under the age of five and it
is shown in numerous studies to reduce child mortality. And
then finally, New Incentives, which is the organization that provides
conditional cast trans or small cash transfers to encourage immunization.
You know, the top charities reflect you know, roughly two
(24:08):
thirds of the funds that we direct, and we see
them as the you know, really the tried and true,
Like if you're a donor, and you want to have
a lot of impact, and you want to have confidence
in that impact. These are organizations that we have followed
for many years and we have a lot of confidence
in because they are there's a lot of evidence that
supports their impact.
Speaker 3 (24:28):
So how do you get from sort of generally being
interested in charity and in you know, research driven outcomes
to specifically focusing on saving the lives of children in
the developing world.
Speaker 1 (24:43):
Yeah, I mean, so, at its core, GiveWell is about
finding outstanding programs that we can support with the aim
of getting having the most impact with the funds that
we direct. And when we started, we didn't know where
we were going to find those programs, so we were
looking at health programs focused on low income countries, but
(25:07):
also social program focused on New York City where we
lived at the time, so job training programs, education programs,
et cetera. And after our first year of work where
we were focused on both US social programs and also
global programs, we looked at the data and just saw
how big the difference was in what a dollar could
(25:29):
accomplish overseas versus at home. And just to make it concrete,
you know, we estimate roughly, but I think it's the
right ballpark that five thousand or so dollars will avert
the death of a young child in a low income country.
That's about what it costs to put a child through
school for a couple of years in a New York
(25:53):
City charter school. And so that differential really showed us
that the opportunities to use money to have a big
impactor over on the world where we're stronger overseas, and
it drove us. It drove us to focus our efforts there.
We're finding the the groups that are, I think, like
importantly like not sure that their own programs are working,
(26:17):
and so want to ensure that they're gathering the data
so that they know where the programs are effective, where
they're struggling, so that they can make changes to run
those programs more effectively.
Speaker 3 (26:28):
Yeah, I mean, so that's an interesting idea, right, Like
that idea of the groups themselves being unsure. It requires
a sense of what is what is the real endpoint?
Speaker 1 (26:42):
Right?
Speaker 3 (26:42):
I think quite often and reasonably, like things are clearly
helpful if you whatever, give someone a cow and you
know training on how to take care of that cow,
like pretty clearly that person is going to be better
off than if you hadn't done it, and so it
might not be obvious to say, oh, we need to measure, well,
how much does it cost to give them the cow?
Speaker 1 (27:03):
How much better off are they? Are?
Speaker 3 (27:05):
There things we could change that would be even more helpful,
Like most people clearly don't do that, right, Most people
in their jobs in many domains are not constantly measuring
and trying to optimize.
Speaker 1 (27:16):
Yeah, I mean, I just think the stakes are so
high that it's just absolutely critical that there is a
recognition that failure can happen and we have to do
the best we can. Billions of dollars go to health
aid every year and the stakes are quite literally life
and death. And so therefore the difference between some of
(27:37):
the best programs that can very roughly say, avert the
death of a young child for approximately five to ten
thousand dollars, and then other programs which could have very
limited impact, I think in the worst case, even cause harm.
The measurement in that feedback loop to say this, we
want to see whether it's working, we want to see
(27:59):
the extent to which it's working, and we want to
learn from what we've done so that we can do better.
That's true for the organizations we work with, that's true
for us as an organization. You know, we're trying to
follow the same project of learning from our own track
record in history to make better decisions in the future
and hopefully help people even more. The groups that we
work with most, and I think the kinds of people
(28:21):
who are most drawn to what we're doing, whether it's
donors or practitioners, are people who's I think their interest,
the idea that they have that we have is to
try to find the way to use charitable dollars to
accomplish as much good as possible. And if that idea
is preventing HIV and young children, then great. And if
(28:43):
we can do better, if we can distribute oral rehydration
solution to prevent deaths from diarrhea, or if we can
encourage additional testing and treatment to prevent cases of tuberculosis
and children, what I ultimately care about. The thing that's
important to me is just helping children. And I'm not
drawn to the specific cause or disease as much as
(29:04):
the outcome, which is trying to enable more people to
live long, healthy lives.
Speaker 3 (29:09):
I feel like, you know, traditionally philanthropy was largely about
making donors feel good, and maybe it still is to
some degree, the nature of human nature being what it is.
But it seems like the growth of give well and
of sort of research driven philanthropy more generally has coincided
(29:33):
with the long boom of Silicon Valley, right. And it
strikes me that the kind of people who get rich
in tech are more numerically driven, are more metrics oriented
perhaps than earlier generations of rich people, and that that
might be sort of part of what is going on,
(29:54):
part of the wind at your back, part of the
rise of research driven philanthropy.
Speaker 1 (29:59):
You buy that. I think there's a kind of person
in tech and also in parts of finance. Those are
the two sectors from which we draw most of our
donors who have I think, the perspective that they take
on the world as one we know that there's a
lot we can be wrong about. We know there can
(30:19):
be big differences in the investments we make or the
decisions we make as a company leader. We also know
that we can be wrong and we want to learn
about how to do it better. And I do think
we see that coming out of those industries, and it's
a big part of what has helped us grow to
the size that we are today.
Speaker 3 (30:40):
So you were mentioning that when you first started out
and you were calling up charities and saying, what evidence
do you have that you're actually helping people basically, and
they would say.
Speaker 1 (30:51):
How dare you? Who are you?
Speaker 3 (30:53):
Why are you asking me this? I'm spending my life
helping people. What do they say now when.
Speaker 1 (30:59):
You call them up? Has that changed? Very practically? It's
changed for us because when I was calling people up
almost twenty years ago, I was offering them a thousand
bucks and you know, now how we have a lot
of funding to give, and so that does make them
more responsive. Oh, that's interesting. So there's a sort of pull.
Speaker 3 (31:15):
So basically, because you're directing hundreds of millions of dollars
a year, organizations have an incentive to be more research based.
Speaker 1 (31:22):
Yeah, I mean very fundamentally. You know, there's a there's
a problem, so to speak, in the charitable market where
the person deciding to open their wallet is not the
person who's ultimately receiving the service. So there's a disconnect
between the recipient and the giver. Where in the consumer
market that we're used to, you know, I purchase my
(31:44):
laptop and then I also use it and see how
good it is. Yeah, and so I think, and.
Speaker 3 (31:47):
If it sucks you, you that company goes out of dens.
Speaker 1 (31:51):
But that's not how it works security. If you're great
at fundraising from donors but terrible at delivering a program
no one might ever know. And so very I think
just concretely give well has helped support the literal in
a very small way, the creation of an incentive to
operate in a way that is focused on demonstrating impact,
(32:12):
because the dollars that we have to give, the dollars
that we have to influence, are going after that evidence
of strong impact. And I should say, of course, we
are just part of a larger and I think ever
growing ecosystem. You see this in the academics who launched
the randomized control trial movement in economics, organizations like Evidence Action,
(32:37):
the Clinton Health Access Initiative, give directly. I mean this,
it's a large and growing group of institutions, even beyond
the scope of just give well, that are operating in
a way that is explicitly aiming to deliver great results
and demonstrate that those results are coming to fruition. And
I think that is just a massive change from where
we were twenty years ago.
Speaker 3 (32:59):
So you mentioned give directly, and as it happens the
there's a sort of charitable giving project out of one
of the shows at Pushkin that gives money to give
direct basically, and I'm curious about give well, sort of
ongoing evaluation of give directly, Like what do you think?
What do you think of give directly as work in
a quantitative professional way? Yeah, I think, like, extremely, extremely
(33:22):
highly of them. I've personally been a gift directly donor
for many years, you know, continue to give to them
last year and will this year because I really love
what they do. I think it's just so critical to say,
you know, with some of our giving, let's make sure
that we're just supporting people to purchase, you know, what
they most.
Speaker 1 (33:42):
Want still to come.
Speaker 3 (33:45):
On the show, Ellie talks about some of the most
surprising things he's seen in his nearly two decades in
the charity world. What do you make of the fact
that five thousand dollars can save a child's life?
Speaker 1 (34:09):
I think it is just an illustration of on some
level how unjust our world is, you know, potentially, how
I think all of us, myself included, don't perhaps don't
really take it seriously as we should, the kind of
impact that we can have overseas. But fundamentally, you know,
I think it shows that something is very broken in
(34:32):
our system for allocating resources globally, because it's very hard
to accept that it's possible to save someone's life for
five thousand dollars.
Speaker 3 (34:43):
Yeah, I mean with all the money, even with all
the money that people give away, Like why don't people
give enough money to buy bed nets for kids so
they don't get malaria?
Speaker 1 (34:56):
Right, Like, there's some amount of money. The more money.
Speaker 3 (34:58):
People give, the less valuable each marginal net would be, right, Like,
why haven't people given enough money to these programs to
sort of of give away all the bed nets that
you need to give away and give away all the
malaria medicine that you'd need to give away to stop
kids from dying of malaria, at least in these high
(35:19):
intensity malaria areas where it's obvious that kids are going
to die of malaria every year.
Speaker 1 (35:24):
I think, first of all, it's just worth noting how
much progress we have made globally in the last twenty
five years. The US government has given huge amounts to
a program called PEPFAR focused on HIV. The President's Malaria
Initiative focused on malaria and has been instrumental in the
creation of the Global Fund, which focuses on HTB and malaria,
(35:47):
and GAVI, which focuses on immanizations. So since the year
two thousand, the amount of funding going to global health
problems has gone up a huge amount. It has plateaued
more recently, but it's gone up a huge amount, and
we see a massive reduction in child mortality. So we're
doing a lot better today than we were in the
recent past. And then like, fundamentally, I don't know why
(36:11):
people don't give more or even give more to these charities, right,
It's it's more a question of direction. It's not even
why don't people give more money.
Speaker 3 (36:22):
It's like, if it's really that easy to save a
kid's life, like we want that number to go up, right,
like the cheaper it is to save a kid's life.
I mean, it's kind of you cuts both ways. Right
on the one end, it's like, well, great, we know
a thing that is helpful. But on the other hand, like, well,
let's buy all the bed bets.
Speaker 1 (36:40):
So it's not so easy do you know what I'm saying? Uh? Completely,
And and yeah, I think that you know, give Well
raises about three hundred million dollars a year. A Give
Well that was raising a billion dollars a year would
the marginal dollars would be much less less cost effective, right,
because we would have gone much further.
Speaker 3 (36:58):
Weirdly, you want to get to a place where it's
more expensive to save a child's life, Like, the more
expensive it is, the less inequality there is in the world,
the more kids lives we're saving.
Speaker 1 (37:08):
Exactly exactly, you know. And then I think I Give
Well itself is an institution that has raised much more
money over the last fifteen years than was raised previously
and is going and I think it reflects more people giving.
Why aren't people giving more to these programs? I think
because the honestly, the suffering and the poverty of say,
(37:31):
the poorest parts of Sub Saharan Africa is something that
we are largely blind to in our day to day lives.
It's not you know, we cover natural disasters when they occur,
but no one is covering literally the daily catastrophe of
child deaths due to infectious disease in sub Saharan Africa.
(37:54):
You know, very roughly one thousand children die every day
of malaria. We know how to prevent it, and that's
not covered because it's well, I guess it's I don't
know exactly why. That's a question for you, not for me,
but it's not covered. And I think that on some
level we're able to live as if it's not really
there in that motivating force to get people to see
(38:16):
it and then act isn't isn't happening.
Speaker 3 (38:20):
You've been doing this now for fifteen years ish. If
you go back to when you started, what's been surprising
to you? What has happened in a way you would
not have expected.
Speaker 1 (38:36):
I was really surprised when we started at how strange
our questions seem to the organizations that we were going to,
the question of how effective are your programs? How much
are you accomplishing, and how do you know? Seems like
a really an obvious question. Those are really surprising to me.
(38:59):
How much we've grown. When we started this, I think
we thought that we were just we were a couple
of guys who had this idiosyncratic interest in an approach
to charitable giving. And when we talk to people who
worked in philanthropy. They they reacted like we were nuts,
that no one would ever be into this. This is
(39:21):
not what donors go to gala's and donors like stories
and their names on buildings, and wow, it's shocking. You know,
people are people are normal. People are just giving three
hundred million dollars a year to help people around the world,
and they're buying large anonymous they're not getting their names
on buildings, and they're just you know, following along, trying
(39:41):
to make as big a difference as they can in
people's lives. So they'll never meet. And you know, on
some level that maybe that makes sense, but that's also
really surprising.
Speaker 3 (39:50):
It seems like the happy surprise, the happy surprise. I
appreciate you time very much. It was great to talk
with you. Yeah, that was great to be here.
Speaker 1 (39:57):
Thanks so much.
Speaker 3 (39:58):
Jacob Ellie Hasenfeld is the co founder and CEO of
Gift Well. Last conversation on the show is with Nate
Silver and Maria on a Cova. Nate is a statistician,
Maria's a psychologist. They are both writers and together they
host a podcast.
Speaker 1 (40:16):
Called Risky Business.
Speaker 3 (40:18):
They are also both professional poker players, and that's really
why I wanted to talk to them about charitable giving.
One of the things they do on their show is
they talk about bringing a poker mindset to the decision
making of everyday life, and so I wanted to hear
from them how professional gamblers think about giving money away. So, like,
(40:40):
the core idea of the show is making better decisions
using this expected value framework right in like one sentence,
what's expected value?
Speaker 5 (40:50):
Expected value is the net benefit you expect to get
averaged over all the uncertain outcomes. Now, I guess with
charitable giving, maybe it's more deterministic where we know, for example,
that mosquito nets in Africa have a high return on
investment they say lives and prevent male area at a
(41:13):
relative of low costs. It's not like a random element
there exactly, although there are always some implementation issues, But
really it's a framework about utility.
Speaker 6 (41:22):
And I was just jump in a little bit to
say that, you know, we have the economic definition of
expected value, and then when you look at behavioral economics
and the way that people actually make decisions, you realize
that there's a lot of psychology involved as well, and
so calculating expected value is not as straightforward as just
(41:44):
kind of doing these dollar calculations, because you know, how
do you put a dollar amount on how good you
feel after a decision or how bad you feel, or
the regret that you might feel when you don't take
a decision. And when we're looking at kind of the
broader picture of expected value, you do have to try
to quantify that a little bit and try to account
(42:04):
for all of those different psychological factors that come into
play as well.
Speaker 3 (42:08):
One of my favorite things about your show is when
you talk about the culture of professional poker players. Basically,
you're both professional poker players, and you live in this
universe where people treat money really differently. Right, And there
are these two terms that come up a lot on
the show, two kinds of people knits and djens. What's
(42:30):
a knit?
Speaker 6 (42:31):
I'll leave this one to you, Nate.
Speaker 5 (42:34):
A knit is basically George Costanzo, right. It's like a
neurotic risk of verse cheap, but more someone who is
so neurotic that they aren't taking plus ev bets. Right.
They're too conservative for their own good when it comes
to playing poker hands, for example, and have a low
(42:57):
openness to experience perhaps and can be annoying they're the
ones who want to itemize the bill when the checks.
Speaker 3 (43:05):
Wait, I didn't eat the app. I shouldn't have to
pay for one third of the app. That's the naty behavior.
Speaker 5 (43:10):
It, Yeah, Whereas a djen is someone who likes to gamble,
is risk tolerant, maybe to their own detriment, is freewheeling
with money and splashes around.
Speaker 3 (43:22):
Yes, and DGEN is short for degenerate gambler, but in
a loving way, right, that's my favorite. Yeah, So in
your experience, who is more generous a degenerate knit djen?
Speaker 1 (43:34):
Absolutely? Oh, yeah, for sure.
Speaker 6 (43:36):
I don't think it's even close.
Speaker 1 (43:38):
You guys give to charity.
Speaker 6 (43:42):
I give to charitable causes that I believe in. So
for instance, I gave a lot of money to Ukraine
when Russia invaded, And that is how kind of I
calculate my charitable giving. I understand that mosquito nets in
Africa are incredibly important. I have not given to malaria
because that is not something that you know, I feel
(44:04):
strongly about. There are other people feel strongly about that.
So for me part of it, you know, I I
have given to educational causes. You know, I give to
things that I have a connection with and that I
feel also are underfunded.
Speaker 3 (44:17):
Mari you mentioned given to Ukraine, and I mean I
know you a little bit, I know your your life
story seems connected to that, right, tell me about your
connection to helping Ukraine defend itself against Russia.
Speaker 2 (44:28):
Yeah.
Speaker 6 (44:29):
So my dad is Ukrainian and my mom is from Moscow,
and I was born in Moscow and then came to
the United States when I was four years old and
have always been very anti the autocratic tendencies of Russia,
very anti Putin And I think you know when Putin
(44:50):
invent invaded Ukraine. To me, that was a no brainer.
I think at this point Ukraine is one of the
only things standing between us and the Third World War,
basically the fact that they're able to resist him. So
for me, it was incredibly personal. And so I'm all
in on the Zelenski camp.
Speaker 5 (45:10):
Nate Silver, do you give money away? I'm having to reevaluate.
I mean, the short answers I haven't.
Speaker 1 (45:17):
Uh huh.
Speaker 3 (45:17):
Does either saying on a show that you haven't given
money away, or hearing Maria talk about giving money away,
like honestly, does it you think it makes it any
more likely that you'll give money away.
Speaker 1 (45:28):
Do you think it's going to have any effect on you.
Speaker 5 (45:29):
I'm generally not a person who is governed by guilt.
Speaker 1 (45:33):
Ah, that's I mean, I think I should.
Speaker 5 (45:36):
There's like a lot of long term financial planning that
gets put off. I mean, these are discussions that you know,
my household we've had and so we're we're aware of
this question and what we want to do with our
money in the long term, member thinking about it actively,
but kind of things get short circuited during I mean clearly,
(45:57):
I think that you know, in some abstract sense, you
are being selfish. If you're not you have a comfortable life,
then you are being selfish to not give. But it's
easy to make excuses.
Speaker 3 (46:08):
I appreciate your hown So Nate, does that make you
a knit and Maria the DJ in I never would
have guessed, well, but I am.
Speaker 1 (46:17):
I think Maria is also.
Speaker 5 (46:18):
I am generous in those other ways yea, and things
like tips with things like you know, picking up checks,
even a fairly expensive meals or something for my friends.
And so maybe psychologically that feels more satisfying than the
abstract charitable giving.
Speaker 3 (46:33):
Yes, I mean that is an interesting tension, right, like
it feels better to buy lunch for your friend than
to send the money off to somebody thousands of miles away,
even though obviously the marginal benefit of that whatever one
hundred bucks, fifty bucks, any any bucks, is clearly greater
if you send it off thousands.
Speaker 5 (46:50):
Jacob in the York, fifty bucks would be great.
Speaker 1 (46:54):
I was trying to be I was trying to be
a man of the people. And when are we getting dinner?
Speaker 6 (46:59):
I totally agree, and yeah, And I also just want
to want to add a little bit to say that
I think that in this particular case, like role models
really do matter when it comes to charitable giving tendencies,
so psychologically speaking. And one of the things that has
made me actually kind of give more than I have
(47:22):
in the past is my parents, who don't have a
lot of money and you know, our single income because
my mom no longer works, and they give a recurring
donation every single month to causes that they believe strongly in,
including Ukraine. And when I think about it, I'm like,
you can't afford to do this, and yet they do it,
(47:44):
and that you know it I won't say guilts me
into but like it may, it makes me realize that,
like you know, it is important when you are donating
to causes where it actually makes a difference. Nate and
I talked a lot on our podcast about kind of
donating to political campaigns, and you know, don't donate to
(48:05):
the presidential campaign because they don't need the money. But I,
you know, I think that that's kind of that's what
we're talking about at the end. Where do you donate
in a way that your money actually makes an impact
right now? And it doesn't have to be millions of dollars,
right you can leave I hope I have millions to
leave at the end of my life to good causes,
but you know, there are causes where even a few
(48:27):
hundred dollars actually can make a huge difference.
Speaker 5 (48:30):
But I guess because there probably is some pleasure from it, right,
you kind of recognize the efemeral nature of money and
it's kind of more an emotional reaction.
Speaker 1 (48:37):
And then when.
Speaker 5 (48:40):
I mean thinking about charity, it's kind of the more
rational part of your brain.
Speaker 1 (48:44):
Right you can make.
Speaker 5 (48:44):
Excuses along lines of well, maybe just give it away
at the end of my life. And I pay a
lot of taxes, and you know, figuring out where to
give is a discussion to have with your partner, and
that can get you know, we'd have disagreements about that,
and so it's different than the kind of oh, it's
get a nice bottle of wine and I'll I'll pick
up dinner to night because I know you had a
rough tournament series or something like that.
Speaker 1 (49:05):
Huh. I never thought of you as such an amoe.
Speaker 3 (49:10):
So so I'm curious in particular, So this, this show
is about giving away money fundamentally, and you know, we
can talk about you know, maximizing ev and what charities
are good, but there's also just this more general idea
of pro social behavior. Spending money on your friends is
part of this. And so I'm curious, what's your favorite
djen dropping a bunch of money on their friends on charity,
(49:33):
on anything story.
Speaker 6 (49:35):
Yeah, well, this isn't This isn't d Jenny, but I
think it's something that is quite important. The poker community
actually does give a shit ton of money to charity.
You know, those aren't the fun D Jenny stories, but
but that's I think, you know, I think it's important
to note that poker players actually are on top of this,
and there are a lot of poker players giving millions
(49:57):
to charity and matching charitable donations.
Speaker 1 (50:01):
Thanks you, guys, it was a delight to talk to you.
Speaker 5 (50:03):
Thank you, thank you.
Speaker 3 (50:07):
So just before we in the show, I want to
just mention one last thing. There was a moment in
that last conversation when Nate was talking about the reasons
he hasn't given money. You know how giving money to
charity has tied up with all these other household financial
planning decisions, et cetera, et cetera. And I thought back
to that thing that Lori Santo said at the beginning
(50:28):
of the show about friction. You know how friction and
not knowing how to give or who to give to
winds up being this huge barrier. And I thought about
how Ellie Hassenfeld has spent all this time trying to
find charities that are very clearly doing good that you
can just give money to and feel good about. So
to close out the show today and to fight against
(50:49):
friction in my own life, I'm going to go right
now to that website that Laurie was talking about giving
multiplier dot org slash.
Speaker 1 (50:59):
Happiness Lab, and I'm going to give fifty bucks. Is
it the perfect amount of money? I don't know. I'm
just gonna do it right now.
Speaker 3 (51:15):
Thanks very much to Nate Silver and Maria Konakova, the
host of Risky Business, Ellie Hassenfeld of GiveWell, and to
Lrie Santos, the host of The Happiness Lab, who got
me thinking about giving Tuesday in the first place. Today's
show was produced by Lucy Sullivan and Isabelle Carter, edited
by Sarah Nix, and engineered by Jake Gorsky. Special thanks
(51:37):
to Ryan Dilly, Farah Daygrunge and Owen Miller. I'm Jacob
Goldstein and I host the Pushkin Show What's Your Problem?
Speaker 1 (51:44):
Thanks for listening.
Host
Tim Harford
Popular Podcasts
Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang
Ding dong! Join your culture consultants, Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang, on an unforgettable journey into the beating heart of CULTURE. Alongside sizzling special guests, they GET INTO the hottest pop-culture moments of the day and the formative cultural experiences that turned them into Culturistas. Produced by the Big Money Players Network and iHeartRadio.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
This is Gavin Newsom
I’m Gavin Newsom. And, it’s time to have a conversation. It’s time to have honest discussions with people that agree AND disagree with us. It's time to answer the hard questions and be open to criticism, and debate without demeaning or dehumanizing one other. I will be doing just that on my new podcast – inviting people on who I deeply disagree with to talk about the most pressing issues of the day and inviting listeners from around the country to join the conversation. THIS is Gavin Newsom.