Physician, Heal Thyself

A few weeks ago I wrote about several new organizations that seek to provide information on charities to help donors make decisions. One of the organizations, GiveWell, has been
in the press lately because its two founders—one of whom served as Executive Director—promoted GiveWell on various Web sites while posing as neutral third party commenters.

In response to this discovery, the board of GiveWell demoted the Executive Director and fined both him and his co-founder $5,000 of their $65,000 salaries. While I realize that everyone makes mistakes, I am shocked that an organization whose mission is to reveal “the truth” about charities would accept such practices from its management. Perhaps the “slap on the wrist” each received for this behavior would be appropriate in the hedge fund world, but it should be unacceptable in the philanthropic one.

If the founders would go to such extremes to promote their organization—which had recently been featured on CNBC and mentioned in both the Wall Street Journal and New York Times—how can their rating system and opinion of the operations of other organizations be taken seriously? The GiveWell founders have deliberately misled the very people they claim to help. Instead of pointing out the problems with other rating systems, they should be taking a hard look at their own practices.