> many of the most effective aid organizations, all of which are absolutely off-the-charts obnoxious about fundraising

This doesn't seem to jive much with what's reported by charity evaluators like GiveWell, or with what kinds of charitable organizations get grants from more traditional but still high-impact philanthropies like the B&MGF.

It's quite plausible that too much emphasis on fund raising among the general public distorts incentives within these charities and makes them less likely to be highly effective on average. If so, we're better off when the job of publicly raising charitable donations is spun off to separate organizations, such as GiveWell or more generally the EA movement itself.

Fundraising expenses are a huge problem with large charities, but it doesn't follow that fundraising annoyingness is a huge problem. It's not a customer service problem with donors; it's a "using too much of proceeds on fundraising" problem.

If an organization believes spending a marginal dollar of money on their programs is the best way to improve the world, then spending $10 to get $11 in donations allows them to spend an extra dollar on it. It's rational and even morally required. (The only potential negative being the extent that winning a contribution crowds out funding from other causes.)

More generally, people overly emphasize low administrative expenses as a sign of quality. You need overhead to effectively administrate and evaluate programs.

I don't want to get tangled up in abstractions here. To a decent first approximation, every large charity well-reviewed by Charity Navigator (or the like) fundraises from past donors aggressively. It would be a red flag if they weren't annoying previous donors. Empirically, the idea of "never giving money to organizations that ask for money" is likely to steer you away from the most effective aid organizations.

> seem to jive

jibe. yes, words change and evolve, but I only mention it because to jive has another meaning, to BS somebody.

I agree with your overall point about "I won't give to groups who tell me they need money" is a pretty high bar to set. However, GP's comment is in keeping with something I've come to think, which is organizations will re-form themselves around your donations (I give large amounts because I can afford them) and they'll befriend you, and it beomes a difficult situation to extricate yourself from. I tend to do one-time gifts and then move on.

>jibe

Or gibe. The problem is jibe has negative connotations, whereas 'to jive with' seems to me to be a metaphor to works, (I assume it's used in the dancing sense?).

I don't know of the meaning of the phrase has changed somewhat, 'to jibe with' suggests a sarcastic undertone to me, but in modern usage, no sarcasm is intended so maybe jive is the correct term for the current usage of the term 'to jX with'

Jibing is a nautical term, referring to a sailing boat turning through the wind so that the boom flips from one side of the boat to the other.

I have no idea how it acquired the perjorative meaning of making unpleasant remarks.

It looks interesting: "jibe" in the pejorative sense is both an (understandable) alternate spelling of "gibe", and also probably shares a root with "gibe" --- both probably stem from a word that means "rough handling", "kick", or "rear up".

If it works for those orgs, then those orgs don't need his money anyway.

> because it works

apparently not!

I suppose the argument could be that the charities who aren't savvy enough to play ball are the ones who could use the attention. Small, hyperlocal charities might not have the resources for a dedicated marketer in the first place, and even if they're less "effective" from a global optimization perspective, most people probably get greater utility from donating to local causes.

This is precisely my reasoning. The larger charities don't need me. Also, this is a way, in large part, to give back to my local community -- the people who supported (and support) my business efforts.

There are many ways to measure impact. I choose to measure it locally.

True, that's the point. It's a necessary self-protective stance. Before I adopted that rule (and the secrecy rule), giving money resulted in me being hounded incessantly for money from every other group under the sun. I think I got it worse than many because I tend to give large amounts. It was a nightmare.

I'll never make that mistake again.

Another writer I like, discussing exactly this problem, referred to it as "the quantum unit of sacrifice". It is annoying. Very annoying! But like, that's all it is.

It was more than just annoying. It cost me time and energy.

I distinctly remember signing up to give £5 a month to a charity on the condition that if they ever contacted me again asking me for more money I'd immediately cancel my Direct Debit. They didn't even get their second payment.

Honestly, the £5 a month you were giving them is probably less than the cost of special casing you in their largely automated donor marketing systems so this is a net win to both of you.

Yeah. By contrast if OP had donated 100K I would be interested in the outcome...

If you can't unsubscribe it is spam and illegal.

And yet it's worth it for them to have people canvassing door-to-door for those £5 a month donations with a <10% conversion rate. I guess the difference is that those people don't get paid, and the administrators do.

EDIT: Unless they literally don't care about the base rate donators at all. They only exist so that some of them will get converted into higher rate donators later.

The first point was:

I always give to a local group who directly helps people and who is typically overlooked for charitable giving. I get to know the group pretty well first.

So maybe they are specifically looking for grass roots organisations that do good work but are less able to find raise.

Not a problem. There are lots of trees in the forest. Those folks can go their merry way, while some of the rest of us have different goals, personal as well as noble.

And who's to say 'most effective'. I used to think Red Cross was one of those, until they got caught driving around randomly during Katrina was it? Doing nothing, but spreading their brand. Or so I recall. If I got that wrong I apologize, but my point is bigger means less transparent. For instance, those big effective organizations are spending a butt-ton on fundraising.

Nobody who has paid attention to aid organizations over the last 2 decades believed the Red Cross was effective, just for what it's worth. The Red Cross is practically the entire motivation for sites like Charity Navigator.