Request for Feedback: Researching global poverty interventions with the intention of founding a charity.

Hi Denise,

I'm keen for more people to try this. It does seem like there's a real gap here - there's funders who will fund if you meet clear criteria but few people (it seems) explicitly trying to make them. GiveWell has said as much before.

http://blog.givewell.org/2013/03/21/trying-and-failing-to-find-more-funding-gaps-for-delivering-proven-cost-effective-interventions/

We wrote about it on 80,000 Hours here:

https://80000hours.org/career-guide/top-careers/profiles/founding-effective-global-poverty-non-profits/

A few notes:

• GiveWell also maintains a list of interventions they're interested in funding people within: http://www.givewell.org/international/technical/programs/2012-version
• GiveWell sometimes provides startup grants for new charities tackling one of these interventions.
• If I were going to try to do this, I'd start by trying to talk to GiveWell and whether them funding me would ever be possible, and if so, what I'd need to do.
• I think there's two main options: (i) Choose an area where there's several RCTs already but no specialist charity - the ideal (ii) Choose one were the evidence is more speculative and work with academics to do an RCT on it. This is what Development Media International is doing. It's far slower and more expensive though.

More comments:

It's harder than it looks because when interventions are clearly proven, they're often implemented by government's instead. Small charities like SCI need to "get in" when the evidence is emerging but not settled, hoping to accelerate the time when the intervention is fully tested then scaled by governments. This means it's a difficult judgement call about which interventions to focus on. I think this is why usually GiveWell charities have been founded by experts in their areas (with the exception of AMF) - these were the people able to see the gaps and execute them ahead of others. If this is true, then the first step might be to go and get a Masters in development economics.

It also seems like it's very hard to run these types of charities and convince others to give you money. The leaders of all the GiveWell recommended charities usually strike me as extremely able. GiveDirectly were Economics PhDs at MIT and Harvard; Alan Fenwick is an Professor; Rob Mather was a successful consultant, and so on. With the aid of the EA community, it may be easier to succeed than in the past, but I'm not sure.

I'm really interested in any progress you make on this project, so please keep me in the loop. In particular, if you prepare a list of interventions or form a group of people interested in doing this, I'd happily add it to our career profile.

Best,

Ben

Hi all,

we've put this on hold for now.

After talking to GiveWell, they have decided to take it on themselves. :-)

We'll check back when they are done with their research and look whether there's anything we'd still like to add, but this will take at least a few months.

Slow Thoughts:

One of the easiest things would be a charity using already tested effective methods but in different locations. For example GiveDirectly works in Kenya and Uganda, but I don't think they have projects in India and Nigeria where there are larger populations and potentially more chance to scale up and influence policy.

It may also help to have competition for the effective charities rather than just saying there is only one for each cause whether that be cash transfers, malaria, SCI.

Thanks for posting this. I think explicitly asking for critical feedback is very useful.

If the intervention is not currently supported by a large body of research then we want to fund/carry out a randomized controlled trial to test whether it’s worth pursuing this intervention.

RCTs are seriously expensive, would take years to get meaningful data, would need to be replicated as well before you could put much faith in it, and it wouldn't align with the core skillset I'd imagine you'd need to be starting an organisation (so you'd need to outsource it, which would increase the costs even more). As Ryan said, it might be more useful to useful to aim to be recommended by OPP, or search for another kind of EA market inefficiency. Your other ideas of finding supportable but neglected interventions and doing them sounds pretty useful though.

Quick thoughts:

• I think willingness to start new charities to fill identified gaps is important for the ecosystem.
• There are already mechanisms working at each stage of this process. Trying to improve the system at one of these points sounds valuable. I have initial concerns about over-reach in trying to do all of it at once.
• There might be a time-lag of years between step 2 and step 3.

I see two gaps that you might be addressing:

(1) The interventions with the highest potential aren't the ones which get properly evaluated by RCTs (or there isn't enough of this).

(2) The interventions with very good evidence from RCTs aren't implemented by charities or aren't scaled up appropriately.

I'm not certain whether either of these is a genuine gap, but they could be very valuable to address if they are. I'd love to see attention on figuring that out and choosing what to work on accordingly.

I think that many EA's could be interested in volunteering on this type of project especially in step 1 & 2. Although coordinating a large amount of volunteers is likely to be quite time consuming.

My immediate thoughts:

• I'd rather see a charity get recommended by the Open Philanthropy Project than by GiveWell classic. Before deciding, it would seem worthwhile to thoroughly consider the pros and cons of each.
• I think GiveWell and AidGrade already have done a lot of research on effective interventions.

I've been thinking about this for some time, and decided to make an account to post this idea I have. I'd like to hear what the rest of the community thinks before I invest more in this:

Posttraumatic mental illness happens in the ‘developing world’ such as in Jamkhed, a rural community with arguably the best health infrastructure in the ‘rural world’, but effective criminal justice reform](http://www.givewell.org/labs/causes/criminal-justice-reform) is a hard problem and (humanitarian posttraumatic support is complicated by paternalistic traditional practices.

However, evidence-based treatment guidelines are available and though some resources are available for post-conflict conditions, there are no known efforts for provision of post-traumatic services to service communities outside of the West where there are high rates of domestic violence and crime PTSD.

The purpose of Posttraumatic Outreach ('PO') is to start a effective non-profits this gap, starting by piloting the provision of provide cost-effective, widely available psychoeducational material to promote self-directed posttraumatic treatment for rural communities in Jamkhed.

The design of the self-administered TF-CBT handbook is to help victimisable populations vanguard or intervene in their own and the members of their community’s post-traumatic mental health.

If you are interested in getting involved please say so! We will operate independently of any other organisation and are organised solely at this place of posting at the time of writing. I can also be contacted privately on posttraumaticoutreach@gmail.com and at the time of writing, there is no one else working on this.

I am particularly interested in critiques on whether this project is a worthwhile direction of EA efforts relative to other projects, particularly those on impact.io

Thanks! Oh, in case you don't know: Trauma-Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (TF-CBT) for psychopathology

Sorry for not having responded to any of this yet, will take me another couple of days at least.