Currently there's a lot of media and aid-organizaton attention to the drought on Africa's Horn (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Horn_ ... ca_drought).

Can such "urgent" interventions (like water and food to the people hit by the drought) be as cost-effective, or even more cost effective than top GWWC recommendations? (http://www.givingwhatwecan.org/resource ... rities.php)

The Swedish Red Cross (http://redcross.se/teman/torka-ostra-afrika/ge-en-gava/
claims that 1 month of food can be supplied for about a dollar, based on
calculations from the 2011 Kenya drought (they didn't disclose any
sources). If true, that seems very cost-effective, assuming that there'
people who dont get relief-food will die and that the drought will have
an expected lenght of say 6 months. Also, it would still be a candidate
for top-effectiveness, even if it would be an order of magnitude off.

Some caveats otomh. First, perhaps UN and people who do non-optimal
philanthropy will supply all the needed food. Second, one can't use the
useful method of automatic transferrals for donors. (But perhaps there
are/or one could create charities which save up funds for this type of
occasion. And there's also the GWWC pledge for members) Third, perhaps
earmarked donations will have a similar effect as general donations to
the organizations doing the urgent aid work (due to them transferring
money internally).

Also, GiveWell (http://www.givewell.org/international/disaster-relief) are skeptical about disaster relief. However, the discussion in that post focuses on the problems of relief for disasters causing physical damage (eg earthquakes), not droughts, which seem importantly different (eg it seems the aid isn't only relatively effective during the first hours or days, but for much longer since starvation takes time to kill people).

Some GiveWell comparisons of disaster relief organizations: http://www.givewell.org/international/disaster-relief

Seems the drought should have an expected lenght far less than 6 months, according to wikipedia rains are expected in September http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Horn_ ... ca_drought

GWWC will be researching cost-effectiveness of disaster relief in September and I wouldn't be surprised if sometimes it's in the top tiers of cost-effectiveness.

That raises my credence somewhat in the effectiveness of this intervention. A main reason for my current (relative) skepticism is that GWWC and other optimal philthropy people haven't recommended it.

It seems likely that drought relief is cost-effective in saving lives in the short term. The same goes for alleviating malaria and other tropical diseases. But there are potential differences. Distributing food could save a lot of lives without improving quality of life much. If addressing malaria and tropical diseases has a bigger impact on quality of life, it could improve productivity and permit education in a way that providing food for sustenance would not. Put differently, health interventions could have more collateral benefits than starvation interventions.

This is a scientific question that has a solution, it just won't be easy to come by...

Disaster relief efforts often prompt offers of donation matching, so a) if it's unexpectedly close, that might push the decision over the edge, and b) if you're thinking about donating to disaster relief, you might poll your friends and see if any of them are working for a company making such an offer, and if so and they're willing, give your donation money to the friend and have them make (and take credit for) the formal donation.

I'm the one who'll be doing the Giving What We Can research on disaster relief. Any suggestions, pointers or contacts are welcome!

I was supposed to start by finding the 'biggest' recent natural disasters. The editors at my workplace, New Internationalist magazine, pointed me to the Red Cross's World Disasters Report ( http://www.ifrc.org/en/publications-and ... rs-report/ ). I emailed to ask (1) if they could put it online and (2) if I could speak to someone involved in it. They've obliged on (1); no word on (2) so far.

The tables at the back of the report, covering *all* natural disasters they measured, looked useful for a GWWC-style quantitative approach. I've extracted tables for the following (in each case broken down for Africa, Asia, Africa+Asia, and the world - I figured disasters in poorer regions like Africa and Asia were better candidates for cost-effective intervention). I can share these as Google docs with anyone interested:

Numbers of disasters per disaster type
Types that killed most in total
People killed per disaster
Types that ‘affected’ most in total
Thousands affected per disaster

My broad conclusion from these tables are that earthquakes/tsunamis kill far more in Africa and Asia per disaster than any other type of disaster. But they ‘affect’ the least number of people per disaster. Droughts/food insecurity affect far more in Africa and Asia per disaster than any other type of disaster, distantly followed by extreme temperatures and floods (both largely Asian phenomena). Presumably the number affected determines the severity of the crisis that charities can actually alleviate, so I think famines should be the main cases to focus on, followed by extreme temperatures and floods. Next, I'll probably try to find the worst recent cases of these, and the costs and benefits of charities' responses to them.

I've read GiveWell's pages on disaster relief of course. Their particular concerns with spending on Haiti in particular are that charities were very untransparent on what they even spent their money on, and that they "have found no information allowing us to attribute particular good or bad outcomes to particular disaster relief organizations, and no method we consider reliable for assessing the quality of their work in general". I did find http://www.unocha.org/issues-in-depth/h ... year-later which lists some successes, though it’s unclear who they’re attributable to. I've tracked down some contacts at Oxfam I'm asking about their projects.

I am getting the feeling Givewell overemphasise the importance of transparency. Their report on SCI is very frustrating given GWWC's endorsement of it - it doesn't really say anything about expected effect, only the level of uncertainty. It would be really helpful if they could put together some kind of process of guesstimating the typical efficiency of charities with low transparency (and looking for specific patterns among them).

Don't think that helps your project, though...

Jesper Östman & Tog - maybe join in the discussion on the GWWC forum here?

Is it possible for non-pledgers to view the forum? I'm not getting the option to register...

Not at the moment, no, sorry!

GiveWell has written up a post on the current famine:

http://blog.givewell.org/2011/07/25/som ... donations/

Quote: "if you’re looking to make your donation immediately, we provisionally recommend giving to Doctors Without Borders (MSF)."

That's a nicely written article. Surely worth a read

yboris wrote:GiveWell has written up a post on the current famine:

http://blog.givewell.org/2011/07/25/som ... donations/

Quote: "if you’re looking to make your donation immediately, we provisionally recommend giving to Doctors Without Borders (MSF)."

My sincerest apologies for the very late response, but I thought this conversation deserved a little more attention. I happen to do a lot of volunteer work (in the Indianapolis, IN area), so I'm all about giving. . . to charity, through donated time, etc. etc. I've heard lots about the 2011 drought/famine, but I never knew how I could help out! I mean, there's always monetary donations, but I'm always fearful that my money isn't going to the places it's really needed. Is there perhaps an organization where people can ship/donate gently used or new appliances or goods? Despite the damages from the drought, I've heard that the water supply that IS available isn't very clean. Do people use a refrigerator water filter there for their water? Perhaps it's one of the many things people need? DO PM me with more info as I'd like to help.

Hi FromHilleviWithLove, you can find my condensed notes on my research on disaster relief for GWWC - referred to above - at http://wikicharities.org/index.php?titl ... ter_relief *. As you can see, I didn't find any charities I could be confident would do as much good with donations as GWWC's top charities.

* I've just opened that wiki to the public btw, so do create an account and edit it if you have any research on cost-effective charities to add, and share it with anyone you know who does.