[SpicyLemonZest]

Most people doing big donations aren't particularly interested in effectiveness. The Susan G. Komen foundation, still the largest breast cancer charity in the US, had a big controversy about this around the time that Effective Altruism started to get big. According to their annual reports (https://www.komen.org/wp-content/uploads/fy19-20-annual-repo...), if you go to their site and donate $100 towards their promise of "ending breast cancer":

* $5 goes towards breast cancer research. (IIUC, cancer researchers are somewhat skeptical of the idea that cancer could be "ended" as such, but that's a minor quibble.)

* $8 goes towards treatment and screening. Not exactly what was promised, but still saving lives, so close enough.

* $14 goes towards administering the Susan G. Komen foundation.

* $22 goes towards raising funds for the Susan G. Komen foundation.

* $51 goes towards "education". They say this includes patient support services, not just telling people about the Susan G. Komen foundation, but don't offer a further breakdown.

And my understanding is that, in non-EA philanthropic circles, this breakdown isn't considered particularly egregious. At least they're doing something! An ineffective charity would be something like One Laptop per Child, which raised money and press attention from a fake crank-powered laptop and accomplished nothing of note before technological innovation outpaced them.

[jstarfish]

In the absence of any substantive allegations of misappropriation, be fair to OLPC. They had the challenge of engineering and logistics for a tangible product, not vagaries like "education."

To my neighbor, SJK's efforts yielded as much as OLPC's vaporware. As a career nurse, she's well-educated about the breast cancer she has, that she will soon die from because she can't afford to treat it.

SJK amounts to little more than a goddamn fortune-teller. Not one cent of that $8 has bought her a single extra minute of life.

[SpicyLemonZest]

Yeah, I should be clear, I don't mean to be particularly hard on OLPC. They tried to do a cool-sounding thing, it didn't happen to work out despite real efforts towards it, and as far as tech demos go the crank laptop wasn't egregious. But Susan G Komen isn't really being dishonest either - those numbers are from a nicely designed pie chart in their 2020 annual report! They're just responding to the donor demand for cool events and soaring rhetoric that makes them feel like part of a movement. People who are interested in effectiveness instead donate to organizations like the Breast Cancer Research Foundation, which puts over 70% of donor money into research grants.