I have worked in the nonprofit industry for 10 years. People with money have no moral obligation to give me money. The way the organizations I work with spend the money is about what you would expect for a business with no real economic incentive to be efficient or solve the advertised problem. Lots of politics, lots of waste, lots of egos.
I will never steward your life savings to improve the world as well as you would have stewarded it yourself. If you have resources and want to "give back" find ways to give back to the people and community around you. You can't outsource your goodness to some else.
There are good organizations out there of course. If you are in a position to give a large gift to a nonprofit, please do your research and use the principals of effective philanthropy.
> I will never steward your life savings to improve the world as well as you would have stewarded it yourself
You're too humble. Did you say you have a job working with people who have giant egos and politicking? If I ever won it big, my idea of philanthropy is to give random people on the street $100 for no reason, except I have agoraphobia and can't leave the house. Is that really the best use of $50mm if I won the lottery? I don't have the attention span to do better than that, plus the effective altruism people I've met in person are all douchebags.
Do you really think you'd not do a better job than just anybody that reads your comment? especially having seen some of the waste up front
If someone wanted to donate, which are the top organizations you'd recommend and which are the top ones you'd avoid given your knowledge on efficiency and grifting?
GiveWell and other "Effective Altruist" organizations are generally the most widely-trusted source for these recommendations. If you're OK with their starting principles and assumptions (which you should familiarize yourself with!) they seem pretty solid overall.
As other commenter mentioned, EA is a useful framework for thinking about giving (what is my dollar really buying and is that a step change in something like foundational research). But don't give to the mainstream EA causes, they already are sitting on billions. Find small groups of people doing speculative stuff and fund them for exploratory research.
> But don't give to the mainstream EA causes, they already are sitting on billions.
I have to partially disagree with this, because EA organizations do select causes with a decent amount of "room" for more funding. It hardly matters that they're getting billions, your money will still easily contribute 100× or plausibly 1000× to society-wide benefit compared to just spending it on yourself. Of course some people might be aware of some kind of neglected opportunity with even larger returns, but that's surely not that typical. And efforts like the Open Philanthropy Project exist to focus on higher-variance causes than what GiveWell deals with, that for this reason might not appeal to mainstream donors.
This is a common misconception. The only reason e.g. Against Malaria has a 'funding gap' is because the EA funds don't want to fill it out of fear of 'crowding out' individual donors which is a sketchy proposition.
This may have been true for some time in the past, but it seems that new funding opportunities/causes have cropped up which are competitive with AMF, so that the EA funds are once again constrained by the overall amount of funding.
You can also review OpenPhil's grant database and see that they don't really fund moon shots. They fund shovel ready, track record approved low-variance plays mostly.
To add to the other good comments, I think the best strategy is to find a really small organization with a laser focus, just a few million in run rate and less than a few dozen key staff. A small number of focused and passionate people can move mountains, just like in a startup. One you have vetted them, give them just enough to reach their next level of effectiveness, but with lots of strings and accountability. Think like a VC, is this team capable of getting the job done? Can their work be scaled with more capital?
There are good giant charities, but you're too small a fish for them. The "membership" programs at most charities are just lead gen pipelines for major gifts and breaking even on marketing cost is pretty normal no matter what the little expenses pie charts say. If you are wealthy enough that the CEO of MSF is talking to you then you then disregard what I just said and consult your staff who runs your personal foundation.
I will never steward your life savings to improve the world as well as you would have stewarded it yourself. If you have resources and want to "give back" find ways to give back to the people and community around you. You can't outsource your goodness to some else.
There are good organizations out there of course. If you are in a position to give a large gift to a nonprofit, please do your research and use the principals of effective philanthropy.