wirehead-wannabe:
theunitofcaring:
so this post is absolutely not like “don’t help Nepal, guys”, and I’m not trying to make you cynical about international aid. International aid is great. It has done an indescribable amount of good around the world. But donate thoughtfully!
After the earthquake in Haiti, somewhere between $9-13 billion was donated to relief efforts. How was it spent? We don’t know. Charities lost track of some of it. Some of it was spent on efforts that weren’t needed. A lot of it was not received and processed until after emergency relief efforts were well underway. A lot of it is still sitting in the bank accounts of big American charities.
There are a few big problems with donating to disaster relief. First, it doesn’t get spent on relief. Charities don’t always know exactly what is needed. They can either barge ahead full speed and perhaps arrive with food when people are short on medical aid, with water to areas that are flooded and really need water purification systems, or, worse, with plans for redevelopment that don’t match the needs of the community.
Or they can wait, but then the money sits in a bank account for years while consultations are happening, and the donors who thought they’d be supporting immediate relief efforts lose out.
The second problem is that people are so generous. $9 billion dollars? Even the wisest, most efficient organization in the world couldn’t effectively spend those volumes of money. Nepal relief will likely raise about as much. That means that money stops being what is needed - a hospital might need doctors, but even $9 billion dollars can’t buy more doctors than the community actually has.
The third problem is that those vast pools of money promote unsustainable behavior. Drowning in $9 billion dollars they’ve promised to spend, they build new hospitals and schools and expensive infrastructure for the relief program. Then the story drops off the headlines and people stop giving, and now there’s all this expensive stuff that no one can afford to maintain.
Because of this, lots of charities have stopped ‘earmarking’ donations for relief efforts. They’ll accept your donations, they’ll advertise “Nepal needs donations!” but then they’ll spend it anywhere in the world, wherever they feel it’s most desperately needed, not necessarily in Nepal. You might be thinking “well, if my money can do more good elsewhere, then good, I’m glad it’s being spent in the way that matters most!” If you are thinking this, I applaud you. You are awesome. You are my favorite human being. More people should think about charity like you. It’s okay for us to be spurred to generosity by one tragedy, but then act in generous ways towards everyone, and there are other problems, getting less attention, that are just as urgent. Maybe it’s okay that your money might not be spent in Nepal.
But if you just want your money to be spent in the way that matters most, that’s probably not by adding it to the $9 billion pool of money that disaster relief organizations are getting. The most effective way to help the global poor remains distributing mosquito nets, treating intestinal parasites, or literally just giving them money. If you’re comfortable giving to an organization that’s advertising that it’ll do good in Nepal, but then will actually do good wherever it’s needed most, then reward other international development charities for being honest! Make your money actually do good wherever it’s needed most.
Okay, you say, but I actually just want my money to go to Nepal.
In that case I recommend you look into GiveWell’s top-rated charity in Nepal, Possible (formerly Nyana Health). They run hospitals in rural Nepal, employing Nepalese doctors and nurses. They publish tons of statistics on their results so other hospitals can learn from their model. And while the American Red Cross had a budget of $700 million, Possible has a budget of around $1 million, so your money will be a much bigger drop in a much smaller bucket. Since their team is already established and has been working in Nepal for a decade, they’re likelier to know what’s needed on the ground than big American charities.
Also, consider a monthly donation of a small amount rather than a big one-time contribution! That means your donation won’t be part of the problem where lots of money floods in, the media stops covering the crisis, donors forget about it, and the organizations on the ground are left in a position they can’t sustain.
While I KNOW that what you’re saying is right, my emotional reaction to this is that donating to hospitals in rural areas isn’t what I feel the desire to donate too. My gut wants to donate to the people in large rural areas whose homes just collapsed. It’s the immediate fall from relative comfort to abject poverty that gets at me, rather than the day to day realities of someone who has already been living in poverty. Maintenance of ongoing difficulties and preparedness for disasters in the future that may never happen are precisely not what gets me (and presumably others) hyped to donate. I have no idea how to fix this problem.
Most of the lifesaving work in a disaster is already finished by the end of the preceding decades.