Good Intentions are Not Enough.
Here's an excellent post on why you should not judge charities by their "administrative costs."
This is a very good and very useful blog.
Excellent blog on how to help poor countries
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Dan Palotta’s blog on the Harvard Business Review site is quite good for this topic, and I recommend his book: Uncharitable.
Shouldn’t administration costs be very low if the charity directly handed out cash? Isn’t that what you economists do for Christmas gifts anyways? Isn’t there implied paternalism in a charity doing something for people but not directly giving money? “If we gave them money they would use it for purposes we don’t like” or “They wouldn’t put the money to the best use”
Why do donors to a charity have such strong opinions about the exact purpose. Why should I want to help a African villager by just preventing malaria or digging a well. I could also give him the money and let him decide what to do best with it.
Of course, this doesn’t work in the extreme cases like Haiti where all infrastructure has broken down. But in places like India with large poverty but reasonably good history of basic infrastructure, governance and markets wouldn’t it be better if charities went around handing out money?
Or do we think that the charities money can get it more bang for the buck due to economies of scale or some kind of superior non-monetary skills?
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