Just thought I would throw out a vague idea that has been rattling around in my head for a year or two.

On this thread on the MetaFilter community website, which I sometimes frequent, a poster asks the collective for help in tracking down a cheap bicycle in NYC. The poster has signed up for a charitable program under which they undertake to buy an underprivileged kid a present for Xmas, and the kid has asked for a bike. Rather than just giving the OP directions on where to find a bike, the community immediately rallies round to give donations, and the poster ends up with over $260, enabling them to get a great mountain bike, bell, with $ left over to spare. This page inspired other similar giving efforts from the community.

Obviously what strikes me about this as a utilitarian is how tragically inefficient these fairly intelligent people's giving instincts are... scores of them rally round to give $10, $20 or more so one NY kid can get a slightly better bike than she would have otherwise got... money that could save a life on the other side of the world. But obviously people are tickled by the fact that there's a direct, personal, connection to a known individual; they don't care that the individual isn't really getting all that much utility from their gift; it's that they (a) know there's an impact on (b) a specific person.

This makes me think.. would it be possible to set up a website for international aid that offers this ability to make a known impact on a real person? I know that child sponsorship exists; and sites like Kiva for small businesspeople; but I'm thinking of a charity website where small individual donations are directly deposited into an account of a family or child. The aim would be to create a connection akin to the little girl in NYC and her bicycle. I guess the main objection to this would be the massive overheads in scraping all that information from poor communities and uploading it. (The other thing that concerns me about this is to what extent a new charity would increase the pie of giving or just cannibalize donations from other overseas aid entities).

Kiva does this with microcredit.

I suspect this would get people to donate who otherwise wouldn't. Also, once they start donating, they're more likely to donate to other charities.

This is really important for getting donations from the general population. At my high school, we wanted to raise money for the local animal shelter. To personalize it, we posted sad, incredibly cute pictures of the animals, gave them names, and asked people to donate "to save Spot." Needless to say, we got far more donations than we've previously had.

Heh, I was about to say that the most effective charities don't really seem to have $s going to directly identifiable people and animals, but it hadn't occurred to me that you could just make them up