I had a fascinating conversation a couple of days ago with Charlie Bresler, the executive director of The Life You Can Save, a nonprofit which he started with Peter Singer, the godfather of effective altruism. The charity’s purpose is not really to evaluate charities; they mostly outsource that work to GiveWell and ImpactMatters. Rather, the…
Unfucking the world
Month: November 2017
It’s fine if the charitable sector shrinks a little
Ray Madoff’s NYT op-ed, entitled “Congress’s Assault on Charities,” has been garnering praise from luminaries like Ben Soskis and Rob Reich, but I don’t really understand why. If you skimmed the op-ed a little bit too quickly, you could be forgiven for thinking that Madoff is writing mainly about the tax bills in the House…
On helping
Charity comes from a deeply human place: When we see others in trouble, most of us want to help out if we can. It’s not helping which needs to be learned: all those explanations we give our kids as to why the homeless guy on the corner can’t come stay in our house, or the…