Sitting around with a couple of friends at breakfast in Santa Clara, the question of how to spend $100 million on charity came up. As these folks had been working at Google for a few years this was not mere idle speculation. Giving money to U.S. universities was ruled out in advance; they are too rich and too inefficient. Going to the other side of the wealth spectrum helping Africa had also been previously nixed; hundreds of $billions are already being pumped into that continent with negligible results. The rest of the world of possibilities was open for discussion.
My personal suggestion #1 is to support online education. People almost everywhere in the world have computers with Internet access but there is precious little online content that will enable them to improve themselves.
My personal suggestion #2 is to use the money as a seed for a bank-financed real estate development, modeled after towns in Mexico, Peru, and the rest of Latin America. Americans are rich but lonely and not nearly as happy statistically as Mexicans. I think one big reason is that most Americans live in sprawl-land where it is difficult to meet friends and interact with neighbors. There are plenty of 1000-house real estate developments being built right now in the Southwest. Why not build one around a central plaza like a Mexican or Chilean town? Offer very low rent to vital shops such as a supermarket, a hardware store, etc., so that it doesn’t turn into a travesty like Disney’s Celebration near Orlando, Florida. Include one of the “small high schools” that Bill Gates likes to talk about (private, presumably). And then hire sociologists to come in and figure out if people are in fact happier in such a community.
My personal suggestion #3 is to fund open-source software. A tremendous amount of benefit has been delivered to people around the world by free and open-source software. Aside from Web applications it is in fact tough to think of things that can be built by just a handful of people that touch the lives of millions. Yet traditional foundations don’t think software is interesting and the U.S. Government spends its time and effort suing Microsoft instead of paying programmers to improve the GNU tools and Linux.
Who has some better ideas than these?
The great goal of the 21stC should be to create a sustainable alternative to the current culture, that rewards primarily greed and dishonesty. Scaife’s strategy in the 70s (for promoting greed and dishonesty) was to fund thinktanks, so funding progressive thinktanks that imitate their strategy is one option.
I agree about online education– I think just paying freelancers to make useful webpages would be a nice start… but that’s partly because that’s what I like to do. You can pick a topic and build the page as you research it, and crank out a few good pages a week.
I have this halfbaked idea of ‘Net Scouts’ where people progressively master skills like search-engines, css, javascript, perl, etc, getting something like merit badges for each milestone. This could be mostly run by volunteers, so $100M seed would go a long long way.
For the third world, I’ve been seeing the concept that cellphones are the fastest way to bootstrap poor communities into new economy. This is probably profitable enough that it doesn’t need a nonprofit, though.
And of course, getting people better water is the big leverage point for health/mortality, but how $100M could make the biggest dent, I don’t know.
Leverage – find ways to support organizations which are doing good in ways which are replicable and which do not rely on grants or government funds – but are finding ways to bootstrap and self-fund the work they do. Many of these opportunities can be found in the inner cities of America, others might be modeled on successes from abroad (Grameen Bank being just one example).
A key suggestion here – don’t restrict the charity to charities – that is focus on the results and the impact of the funds, and the leverage that the money can provide more than non-profit/for-profit divisions – fund good ideas which result in good.
Focus as well on “non-profits” which celebrate and encourage profit. That is, groups which understand the power of bootstrapping and compounding – of getting more back than is invested (at least in terms of dollars).
$100M is enough to provide a lot of support for a wide range of causes – but I would also suggest focusing either on one specific (or a couple of specific models which you replicate widely. Or perhaps even more impactfully, focus those funds in a specific area – but widely on a variety of causes, focusing on sparking models which could be looked at and replicated by others in other cities (or even by the groups which are funded – if they manage to profitable the expansion to other cities could be self-funded or funded by non-charity sources of funds.
Education and support for entrepeneurs. Birth control.
Economically viable, abundant, efficient, non-polluting energy.
(but maybe $100M isn’t enough)
Some of my leftist friends say thats whats really needed is to to resurrect the Soviet Union, as the threat of a “worker’s paradise” was the real cause of the civil rights movement of the sixties and seventies. If you buy into that the answer is simple – give it all into recreating the Communist Party in the United States.
I second the comment on Scaife, but don’t bother with the think tanks. The reason that he needed to spend a bunch of money on think tanks was to establish a source of ‘credible’ psuedo-intellectual ideas to back up his conservative ideoligical prejudices. The advantage that a progressive has is that the good ideas and the intellectual fire power to support them are all around us, they just need a better forum to reach the public.
Why not establish a progressive competitor to Rupert Murdoch and Fox news? If you’re willing to invest $100M and don’t require a 30% return on investment you could make a huge difference in the world (or at least the US). Look at the impact that FOX news, Rush Limbaugh and co. have on the national discourse. Imagine how welcome a voice would be that was willing to speak the actual truth about the way our nation is being governed. Instead of using pseudo-scientific religous clap-trap and mind-numbing repitition of conservative talking points, use actual science and constantly repeat true statements about the world and our role in it. Be a force for progressive ideas and progressive government.
The marginal difference in harm that George W. Bush’s government does compared to the good that a (hypothetical) Democrat government could do is a huge return on investment. Providing good things for a small number of people in third world hamlets is great and good and all, but look at the harm that George Bush has done to us and to Iraq with $400B of our money and the lives of thousands of americans (and who knows how many Iraqis), and compare that to the good that an Al Gore or John Kerry government would have done with that money and those troops, and your $100M starts to look like pretty small beer. Michael Moore proved that there’s an audience for that truth. Find it. Feed it. Grow it. Make a difference here at home. Go back to setting an example for the rest of the world, and not just scaring the crap out of them.
People are a waste to spend money on. They will merely use it up, build something that last a brief period, and then tear it all down. Better to use the money to alleviate animal suffering. Spay/neuter/veterinary care or altenatively conservation of disappearing habitat.
Start a small project to measure REAL, long term charitable effectives – results, not efficency, and not what % is spend on administration vs. fund raising vs. “services”. There are several measure of efficency for money spend – go for avoiding crooks, but not much about RESULTS.
A few charities can track results, but most have a bunch of hand waving – why ? Most charities are about FEELING you are helping people than results. They are about people wanting to go to heaven instead of results. Far too many people think non-profits mean a non-results corporate culture.
As an examples, look at the increased effectiveness of the Michael Milliken model for medical research VS. the ‘throw money at star researchers who wrote lots of papers 15 years ago’ method. This was detailed in Fortune magazine a few months ago.
I’ll never understand why the American ‘burbs are a maze of houses, with nothing commercial there; all the malls are _in_between_ multiple suburbs. It certainly doesn’t inspire a sense of community.
Looking at possible places to settle down with my Australian fiancee in Australia on our trip there last year, I found the same is true there, pretty depressing. (luckily we found a smaller town with an actual inspiring town centre that will probably be it when we move there next year)
I’d say suburbians will be a lot happier when they can just take a stroll or bike ride down to the local shops (on actual foot and bike paths!) and running into and forging friendships with locals rather than living isolated from even the people next door and needing to load yourself (and kids/dogs/etc) into a car whenever you leave the house. And preferably where your kids can just walk or ride their bikes to the local schools.
Just be careful you don’t market it as a “shiny, happy place”, people will think you are a freak and only hippies will go there. Market it like it is: a place that makes sense.
One third to Space Migration, one third to increasing Intelligence (of all kinds) and one third to LongEvity research.
A broad suggestion would be to take a cue from the MacArthur “genius grants.” That is, find a way to support creative individuals without controlling or managing them. Let them be. Let them create. That’s the broad version.
The narrow version is to support research that particularly violates hidden assumptions from the past. My research started out as an effort to find out “what is wrong with lighting.” You could say fluorescent lighting, but it’s a little broader than that. I was working at a factory that had every kind of questionable lighting, which helped me to frame the question. To frame the question for yourself, watch the video of “Joe versus the volcano,” with Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan. Watch it through, then go back and see the role of lighting in the beginning.
What is wrong with lighting is the belief that light is, or should be, a liquid. A single “quantity” number “should” have overriding importance. This assumption blocks any engineering discussion of optics and color.
Now if you go to my web site, http://www.jimworthey.com , I have made a discovery about the color aspect. It’s as simple as saying that color stimuli add vectorially, but there is a right way to set up the vectors so that you gain the most insight. Many people have contributed, but the big names would be William Thornton, Jozef Cohen, Michael Brill, and I. These are all smart cookies with PhD’s, nothing flaky about the research. None of us ever got financial support specifically for this line of research. It violates some assumption that “real” research in color should keep cranking out new experiments, with theory as a subordinate thing. In this case, it’s hard to explain in the abstract why the research had so many steps. It just took work.
Could this work now blossom into products instead of pure research? Bill Thornton won Inventor of the Year in 1979 for products based on his then-fresh research. More could be done today. But it’s still a lonely little group fighting the hidden assumptions.
The two equalizers in the world are health and education. Make information
available on the net, and on DVDs.
Extend the MIT OpenCourseWare concept to create a full video, DVD-based curriculm
featuring the best teachers, ala the “Feynman lectures”. Make the full
MIT and other university instruction available at every public library.
Thank you, Phil, for making Ars Digita University lectures available.
Make a DVD-based self-help curriculm on health and basic skills available
throughout the world.
Eduation as we are doing it is a very inefficient enterprise. Colleges are closing
down schools of nursing because of “cost considerations”. There has to
be a better way of teaching people what we need them to know.
The real estate issue is simply that there is too much govt control over urban and suburban planning, which reduces people’s freedom in what and where to build. The city centers you like came about as people freely decided to join the community by building in that place. Also OSHA and ADA regulations probably mean that the Chilean town’s curbs are not compliant, and there are not OSHA approved railings on every set of stairs. Narrow, pedestrian friendly streets are no good because police cars/ambulances/fire engines can’t drive through them.
Improving non-profit governance might be a good thing – I have met many good people in non-profits who don’t have the simple mechanics of organizing figured out yet, resulting in wasted time and money and lost opportunities. Hands-on training, more than money, however, might be required.
My personal suggestion: use the money to fight zoning restrictions and other forms of govt interference that often work to frustrate people from building their own homes on their own property.
The factor that most affects how people live is their mode of transportation. In order to change how people live in the U.S. (the maze of suburbs), you need to come up with a form of transportation that people will prefer to the automobile. I would suggest funding working prototypes for personal rapid transportation systems such as http://www.skytran.net .
I’m not sure if you read any of these comments or if you actually have control of or input into the source code of this blog but I wanted to point out a couple of problems with your blog software. If I click on the month of April in your archive, I’m taken to the last post you made in April, not to a page with all the posts you made in April, which would be the ideal output. Okay, so what if I want to view the second to last post you made in April? I have to look at the calendar provided, find the last date you posted on, and click on it. Instead, each post should have links to the page of the last post and the next post made, so I can just click on those like a back or forward button on a web browser. Finally, there’s no preview button for comment posting.
As for your question, I would like to highlight what one poster referred to in passing – microcredit. If you’re looking for a way to actually help those people in Africa, read this great Economist article (subscription necessary, I think) about microcredit and even micro-insurance (http://economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=472432). Here’s another short article (http://economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=3410799).
I think online education is a good idea, whether that’s through creating a market for online education providers or through funding freely accesible textbooks and lectures online. Doing your part for birth control is another valid alternative. It is a great boon to prevent the birth of babies into poverty and cruelty, only for them to grow up and repeat the vicious cycle. Birth control education and cheap contraceptives would do a great deal.
If you’re looking to do something in the first world, why not find a technology business or idea that you feel would do some good and be profitable/self-sustaining and fund it? You’re always bitching about how engineers/researchers don’t make much money; why not fund companies that would provide a valuable service and employ these people? Perhaps you could focus on technologies/ideas that are not funded by existing venture capitalists because they don’t provide promises of extremely fast revenue growth or extremely large profits.
After reviewing my post, I realize I’ve just echoed Ole Eichhorn with one more idea and more details. btw, I agree strenously about not giving any money to universities and I would extend that to not funding grant research.
I think Dallas has found that after they built their subway/train system that where ever there was a train stop, small businesses sprang up around there to service the commuters. Then condos started building around them and bragged about being close to the train stop in their sales literature. It is the automobile that created sprawlland. Having said that I would hate to give up my car. I would like to see national hiking and biking trails connecting cities not just wilderness. I think it would be nice to hike and bike from one city to the next w/o fear of being run over by a Mack truck. Pubs and hostels would spring up where ever there would be a natural stop and rest/camping point. And I agree that online education is an excellent way to advance society so I’m all for that. I also think that every county in the US should have a medical free clinic where people could get certain types of medical care, immunizations etc, w/o jamming up the local hospital emergency room. Controversial, I know because doctors do not want their fees cut. What the world needs outside of the US is promotion of democracy, world trade through the lowering tariffs (controversial, I know but why is the US the only importer of last resort, why do we have the lowest tariffs and others don’t?), and the cushing of Islamofacists especially those preaching hate safely in Saudia Arabia, Pakistan etc. These guys sdhould be fearing for their lives. I got more ideas but they are probably not appropriate for this forum.
Computers for East Europe. The people of East Europe are at an extreme disadvantage when it comes to access to technolgy, but at the same time intelligent enough to grasp it and run with it. They are only hundreds of kilometers from the EU, yet worlds apart, and they will again be at a disadvantage when they do join the EU. East Europe could be the next India with just a bit of a kick, support education programs there, lobby government to de-regulate telco, provide net access, and provide hardware to students. This would have a very large spend/result ratio.
Philanthropy is a way of life. It takes learning and lots of time spent learning and doing. If your friends don’t have the ambition and time to learn how to be philanthropists, their money will be wasted and in the end, they will be frustrated,
The best advice I can give your friends is “Don’t spend anything until you have met enough people that give money and find a way in philanthropy that suites your values and style. Don’t rush to spend your money. Give yourself a full year of learning until you give a cent to anyone.”
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Continuing my first comment. Since your friend come from IT, a good place to start learning is the web site of The Gilbert Center at http://news.gilbert.org/
Philip, your three philanthropy suggestions aren’t bad. However, you
should aim higher. Talk to David Brin, hook him up with these
philanthropically inclined Googlites. Or at the very least, have them
read Brin’s (fabulous, exciting!) idea for the
Eye of the Needle Foundation.
But if they want a shorter one sentence answer, Jason Elsworth above already gave an excellent answer: “Space, Intelligence, Longevity.”
>so that it doesn’t turn into a travesty like Disney’s Celebration near Orlando, Florida
Philip – I would argue that Celebration is far from a “travesty”. The fact is that people are desperate for your suggestion #2 and when one becomes available the laws of supply and demand kick in and the even the smallest home starts selling north of half a million dollars. Your rent subsidy program is but a tweak (and a good one) to what the Disney folks have already put together.
Build it, and I will come 🙂
Roger: I wrote about Celebration in a posting 1.5 years ago. The “convenience” store closes at 9 pm. The nearest supermarkets and bookstores are 20-30 minutes away in various strip malls. There really isn’t anything like a town plaza designed for concerts, little kids riding little bikes, and the rest of the stuff that goes on in a small Latin American town’s plaza.
Philip,
Here’s a specific charity for your Google friends to consider: http://www.concernamerica.org/ My daughter is currently raising money for a specific cause: featured here last year at http://www.directrelief.org/sections/information_center/events/walk_for_reason.html Her goal is only $1500, but when one considers that this amount will pay for the yearly health care of 750 people, it is a huge endeavor! My wife and I are paying to send her to Bolivia this July with the same group as last year to donate her time and energy as well. For more information, email me at dms@impulse.net
Thanks for the chance to mention this, Philip and keep ‘blogging away.
-David
As far as funding technology goes, in addition to space, intelligence and longevity let’s also add funding for developing new energy sources, like this one (as described in this wired.com article,
http://www.wired.com/news/planet/0,2782,67121,00.html ):
“Australian engineer Bryan Roberts wants to build a power station in the sky — a cluster of flying windmills soaring 15,000 feet in the air — but is having trouble raising enough money to get the project off the ground.
After 25 years of research, Roberts has designed a helicopter-like rotorcraft to hoist a wind turbine high into the air, where winds are persistent and strong. The craft, which is powered by its own electricity and can stay aloft for months, feeds electricity to the ground through a cable.
[snip]
A climate scientist says ‘High altitude wind power represents the most concentrated flux of renewable energy found on Earth. Wind energy in the jet stream can reach 100 times the average amount of solar energy on the surface of the Earth per unit area. The kinetic energy in high altitude wind surpasses even the kinetic energy of the Gulf Stream and other ocean currents.’
Roberts, a professor of engineering at the University of Technology, Sydney, believes there is enough energy in high-altitude winds to satisfy the world’s demands. Wind-tunnel data suggests a cluster of 600 flying electric generators, or FEGs, could produce three times as much energy as the United States’ most productive nuclear power plant.”
As far as funding social projects, one that has proven itself time and again is the micro-credit bank (e.g. grameen bank), which can help break the cycle of poverty and at times change the dynamics of an entire community, for the better.
Read about it here:
http://www.grameen-info.org/bank/index.html
For more, Google “grameen”.
And, if you’re moved to give, even if you’re not a Google centi-millionaire, go here:
http://www.grameenfoundation.org/get_involved/donate_online/
Having travelled quite a bit I would say that billg is on the right on the money by financing health care in developing countries. He then tries to get matching funds from Unicef and local governments. He also puts money where there has been progress, eg putting money into india thus maximizing the bang for the buck.
Otherwise I think an open source skype would be worth putting money into. Although I don’t think you would need 100M.
Philip, the $100mil can be used to shore up policies/programmes enabling smart, hardworking (with integrity) people to thrive. As we know it, the world is a much partisan crowd, and good people cannot come forward when great odds are stacked against them. Only the very few with rare incredible amount of energy make it through. Policies where a person who spend his precious energies on improving himself through education, when faced with partisan hoards would be able to subsist without wasting himself.
Philip,
I suggest Google ought to invest in renewable energy as a solution to humanitarian problems beyond the smog of LA. In short, populations stabilize when they have access to about 200 watts of power per person. Providing those two lightbulbs today rather than waiting 100 years will provide global stability as a more sustainable size.
We have spent 100 Billion on Nuclear energy – perhaps 100 million on low-tech non-weaponized electricity is the single best use – not only of google’s money, but of their engineers as well.
Empower Stability. 2 Lightbulbs.
I’d spend the money to fund fab labs (see http://fab.media.mit.edu/). Teaching people how to move bits is good. Teaching them how to move bits to move atoms is better, and more relevant to their lives.
Tallahassee Community College
Internet Banking
Jewelry Factory