Daily Good is a program where volunteers sign up to vote on the level of impact that various burdens have on our society. With just 30 seconds per day – volunteers contribute by answering three questions about a burden that is the focus of one or more non-profit profit programs. The volunteers' answers are then added to a database to create a score called a burden weight. We use burden weights to measure how much a burden is perceived to negatively impact society. Once enough data is collected to have a statistically significant result, we publish the weight for each burden. Using our impact calculator donors (and charities) can then use these weights to help them understand how much of an impact is made each time a particular burden is averted or resolved by a charity’s program. By measuring the weights of burdens we can normalize the manner in which we compare two burdens, thereby giving us the ability to compare the impact of two (or more) charities even if the programs are focused on producing very different outcomes. 

Currently, there is no universally accepted measurement for charitable impact. When donors make a strategic decision about where to deploy charitable resources, they typically rely on stats and data that communicate outputs rather than impact. For example, a soup kitchen might communicate the number of meals served – but this does not measure how much the meals have increased the quality and/or quantity of life for the beneficiaries. Communicating outputs instead of impact is also problematic for donors that want to compare organizations that focus on different burdens.

Having a database of burden weights empowers donors and charities to measure impact in a manner that is consistent with the collective perspective of society.  This data can empower the non-profit sector to prioritize impact over outcomes, learn from other charities with higher impact, and optimize program strategies in a more effective manner.  
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There is a tremendous disparity between the impact of the average charity compared to the top charities, and this is in part because of the lack of data to communicate impact in a consistently comparable manner. Though we have not yet collected enough data to confirm our hypothesis, we estimate that the non-profit sector is currently operating at a fraction of its potential impact. 

Program Implementation - Beta
The Daily Good Program will be administered starting 2/1/2021 via a daily survey that is delivered to volunteers via a mobile app or email. Participants will be asked to answer three questions about a single burden. Questions are standardized, using a combination of one Standard Gamble (SG), one Time-Trade-Off (TTO), and one Visual Analog Scale (VAS) format to gather information from each volunteer in a consistent manner.
 
A general overview of each burden, along with symptoms will be delivered to the volunteers as a primer to the questions. We recognize that these overviews and symptom descriptions may be subject to criticism by experts as there may not be a standard consensus for defining these burdens in each field. Our initial plan to address critiques is to publish the descriptions and symptoms along with burden weights for transparency. We also plan to adjust these descriptions over time if any of the descriptions are deemed inadequate. If any material edit is made to the burden description we plan to restart the process of collecting burden weight data for that particular burden and archive the inadequate results. 

The program will be a run in a “beta” phase for the first several months. During the beta phase we aim to gather general feedback from volunteers, compare answers for each burden, determine consistency (or lack thereof) from the various question structures, and gather initial feedback on the credibility of the results relative to any established weights for burdens published by other sources. 

Initially we will aim to collect data from at least 100 unique volunteers as a sample size threshold for publishing a burden’s weight, however we anticipate that this threshold may increase depending on the variability of the results. 

At the individual volunteer level, burden weights will represent personal preferences with regards to the weight of each burden. For some donors cataloging these results to help them prioritize their own decision making could offer value when it comes to deploying charitable resources. However, our primary aim with this program is to deliver a broader set of data that reflects society's collective perspective about each burden’s impact by publishing the results of an adequate sample size. 

Our long-term goal is to provide a public database which not only makes burden weights easily accessible, but also to use the information to begin to measure and compare charitable impact using a standardized metric of $/QALY (cost per quality adjusted life-year). Additional information about how we calculate $/QALY can be found in our Giving Guide and individuals may also use our impact calculator to begin measuring impact immediately.
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Potential Impact
A loose, but arguably conservative, estimate is that top-tier charities are at least 10x more effective than the average charity in the U.S. Our vision is that the nonprofit sector will achieve 10x greater impact without increasing charitable giving norms. 

Volunteers interested in singing up for the Daily Good program may do so here.

Questions about the Daily Good program or our Impact Project can be directed to our team by emailing support@effectivegive.org 

Much of the work that we focus on at Effective Give is inspired by a growing movement called Effective Altruism. I first stumbled into this community in 2013 after reading The Life You Could Save written by Peter Singer – a moral philosopher and Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University. Singer is not the founder of the EA movement, but he was, and continues to be, an influential supporter of the core tenants of Effective Altruism. I can still clearly recall a moral dilemma from the first chapter of the book that functioned as a trailhead to the journey of exploring how we can help better the world.

On your way to work, you pass a small pond. On hot days, children sometimes play in the pond, which is only about knee-deep. The weather’s cool today, though, and the hour is early, so you are surprised to see a child splashing about in the pond. As you get closer, you see that it is a very young child, just a toddler, who is flailing about, unable to stay upright or walk out of the pond. You look for the parents or babysitter, but there is no one else around. The child is unable to keep his head above the water for more than a few seconds at a time. If you don’t wade in and pull him out, he seems likely to drown. Wading in is easy and safe, but you will ruin the new shoes you bought only a few days ago, and get your suit wet and muddy. By the time you hand the child over to someone responsible for him, and change your clothes, you’ll be late for work. What should you do? – Peter Singer, The Life You Can Save

I am sure that your response is as simple as it seemed to be for me the first time I read this passage. Who cares about the shoes, the suit, or being late for work – given the opportunity we are jumping in to help the child. Then Singer hits us with a ton of bricks…

10 million children under the age of 5 were dying per year for causes related to poverty. An overwhelming number of these deaths are completely preventable with low-cost interventions that are readily available in most developed nations. While this data has improved marginally since the publishing of Singer’s book, we are still facing these very tragic statistics globally. A point that Singer goes on to make is that nearly all of us could save the lives of others with fairly little effort or sacrifice. In answering the hypothetical dilemma—where we can see the child drowning—most of us state that we are willing to help, but contrasted with reality, most are not taking the necessary steps needed to save the proverbial drowning child.

At the time I was reading Singer’s book I was an active donor, fundraiser, volunteer, and was in the process of launching a non-profit. However, I was not yet thinking about philanthropy in the context of optimizing impact. I was not very strategic, and I was generally responding to the most obvious opportunities. I was reactive. I always felt that my heart was in the right place, but never realized until reading more about Effective Altruism that my head needed to be there as well. There is no doubt that many would-be beneficiaries missed out because I was not yet focusing my volunteer and fundraising efforts with adequate intention.

Truly effective philanthropy requires a balance of both the head and the heart. We must be both empathetic and strategic. That is the foundation of Effective Altruism.

Effective Altruism is a philosophy and social movement that advocates using evidence and reasoning to determine the most effective ways to benefit others.1 It is concerned with helping the proverbial drowning child and challenges us to think about the responsibility that we each have be good stewards of our resources for the purpose of contributing to the greater good. We should care about Effective Altruism for the same reasons that we care to make any positive impact. Effective Altruism provides a framework for us to do good, better. It provides us with the opportunity to do the most with both our head and heart to relieve the suffering of others. I have jokingly used an analogy to introduce Effective Altruism to people in the past – Effective Altruism is what Mother Teresa and Albert Einstein would have named their child – something that marries compassion and intellect to produce something truly beautiful.  

While we are still working to collect enough data to substantiate our hypothesis, it is our estimation that the U.S. Non-Profit sector is operating at a fraction of its potential in terms of impact. Through better data, greater accountability, and additional resources that help donors measure and optimize impact we can work to close this gap within our lifetime.