Philanthropy For Hackers

An anonymous reader writes: Sean Parker, co-founder of Napster and the first president of Facebook, was part of a generation of geeks who rode the dot-com boom to financial success. Over the past two decades, that population has dramatically increased, and former hackers are carving out spots as leaders of industry. In the Wall Street Journal, Parker has posted advice for how the hacker elite can approach philanthropy. He points out that they're already bringing a level of strategy and efficacy to charity work that hasn't been seen before. "These budding philanthropists want metrics and analytic tools comparable to the dashboards, like Mixpanel, that power their software products. They want to interact directly with the scientists, field workers and academics whose ideas power the philanthropic world but who have traditionally been hidden away in a backroom somewhere, shielded from their beneficiaries by so-called development officers." One thing he advises is keeping away from large charity organizations, which largely exist to keep themselves going. He also suggests getting actively involved with the political process, even if such organizations are often distasteful.

Comments

Large charities

[Mostly a lurker]

In general, I think the point about large charities being mostly about sustaining themselves is correct. However, they have connections that can often make them the only (albeit imperfect) organizations that can mobilize relief after major disasters. Further, some specific large charities provide unique services that smaller organizations, however well run, cannot replicate. An example is the Red Cross and their monitoring of prisoners of war. I also greatly respect one or two large charities. Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders) does tremendous work, such as fighting the ebola outbreak for months before the WHO did anything effective.. Generalizations can have limited validity, but must not be taken too far

Re:Large charities

[tlhIngan]

Then there are charities which do things worldwide and have naturally high overheads. Orbis International, aka "flying eye hospital" is one of them. Basically they fly a donated DC-10 (from FedEx, I believe, one of their old planes and they remain one of their biggest sponsors) to poor parts of the world, and treat all manner of diseases that affect eyesight, for free.

Flying a DC-10 isn't cheap, and operating one isn't either. But they do it because this lets them have a controlled operating room and recovery area. These are places where if there is a hospital, it isn't set up to do eye surgery, so they bring the hospital to them with a minimum level of technology and cleanliness.

So yeah, they have huge overheads, but for all those children and adults they help, it literally is a life changer to go from barely seeing to opening a new dimension to life. It also means instead of living their days out on the street begging they could actually be productive members of society, and be able to attend school Or even a father with failing eyesight can have his vision restored and resume working. (They're not about eyeglasses, but more about cataracts, glaucoma, cancer, and other complex eye diseases).

If you want your dollar to have the most impact on people, give locally - the food bank is generally an excellent place who have the connections that literally stretch every dollar (while they get lots of in food donations, they need money to buy the staples that aren't often donated - fresh produce, for example). But there are a few charities where yes, more money goes into running them, but that's because they need to do bigger things - MSF, Orbis, etc.

an interesting similar article

[itsthebin]

Inspired to make a meaningful donation, I wondered: What is the best charitable cause in the world, and was it crazy to think I could find it?

http://www.theatlantic.com/bus...