All of them cost a lot — but they all cost about the same or less than the recent round of Republican tax cuts. All five are more ambitious than any cash proposals during the 2016 primary, or any other Democratic primary I can remember. And in a head-to-head matchup of all five, two plans (surprisingly) stood out as doing the most to reduce poverty at the least cost: bills from Cory Booker and Kamala Harris subsidizing rent for low-income households.

(Emphasis mine.)

The journalist worked with researchers at Columbia to do a bunch of interesting analyses. The bills have somewhat different goals (e.g., some are targeted at fixing childhood poverty specifically) and cost different amounts. But the article looks at how many people in poverty and in deep poverty would be helped by each proposal, as well as the approximate return on investment (holding cost steady). In all analyses, subsidizing the rent of people paying over 30% of their income to rent is highly effective.

As a Bay Area resident, I think a lot about how hard it is to live here unless you’re fortunate enough to have a very high household income. And I know we’re not the only US housing market that’s tough for renters. Still, I didn’t realize that subsidizing rents nationwide would have such a high impact on US poverty.

Also, an important note: most of plans are not mutually exclusive! Several could be combined, and some of the same folks are sponsoring multiple bills.

Cancer research

In A Practical Guide To The Best Medical Research Charities, the Glaucoma Research Foundation has some good tips about donating to health research in general, and about some good specific organizations (you’ll never guess who they recommend for eye research ;) ).  For cancer research, they make the following recommendation:

The Cancer Research Institute easily wins the award for the best cancer research charity. CRI net over $25 million in funding during 2016, and uses 87% of those funds to support immunotherapy research.

CRI is a great charity because—aside from supporting many scientists with funds—they also run a clinical accelerator program which gets the best ideas from the laboratory into the clinic as fast as possible. In total, CRI has funded over 120 clinical trials and invested over $344 million over the course of its existence.

Consumer Reports concurs with this recommendation, based on high ratings from BBB Wise Giving Alliance, Charity Navigator and Charity Watch.

Cardiovascular research

The Glaucoma Research Foundation also has a recommendation here, with examples of demonstrated impact:

The Cardiovascular Research Foundation wins the best cardiovascular disease award because of its thirty year history of making fundamental contributions to critical research. The CRF has played a role in a few major advancements in cardiovascular medicine, including:

• Drug-eluting stents
• Transcatheter aortic valve replacements (TAVR)
• Bioresorbable stents

With proven impact over time, the CRF is an excellent research charity to consider donating to.

Unlike the Cancer Research Institute, I didn’t immediately find other coverage/analysis of this foundation — in part because it’s a private foundation and thus not covered by tools like Charity Navigator.  But it’s encouraging to see evidence of efficacy over time.

Neurodegenerative disease research

One of the universally acknowledged best research charities in this area is the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research.  It’s rated very highly by Giving Alliance, Charity Navigator and Charity Watch.  And as GenEngNews notes:

A notable beacon of efficiency is the Michael J. Fox Foundation, which gives no less than 82.6% of its total revenues as research grants and awards. Significantly, only two other disease foundations listed spent more than half of the money they took in on research.

Forbes recommends Cure Alzheimer’s Fund, aka CureAlz (another 4-star charity, according to Charity Navigator):

Since its founding, CureAlz has contributed more than $83,000,000 to research. One research breakthrough funded by the organization is the ground-breaking “Alzheimerâ€s in a Dish” study. The 2014 study was conducted by Drs. Rudy Tanzi and Doo Yeon Kim and focused on how to grow human brain cells that exhibit the hallmarks of Alzheimerâ€s pathology in a form mimicking that of a brain. The results allowed for a more thorough testing of drugs to determine whether they should be considered for clinical trials.

Research is the sole mission of the organization. According to the organizationâ€s website, fully 100% of funds raised go directly to research; the Board of Directors covers all overhead expenses. CureAlz†goal is to stop Alzheimerâ€s disease through early prediction, prevention, and effective intervention leading to a cure.

healthgrades has an article about charities that support MS research that has some promising candidates, though some also address other causes (I’ve made some formatting and minor content edits for clarity):

American Autoimmune Related Diseases Association (AARDA) is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit charitable organization thatâ€s dedicated to eradicating more than 100 autoimmune diseases, including MS. AARDA is focused on alleviating the suffering and the financial impact of autoimmunity. More than 92% of all AARDA contributions are used for research, education, and patient services, which is possible because the AARDA is primarily staffed by volunteers. [From the AARDA site: Some of more well-known autoimmune diseases are lupus, type 1 diabetes, scleroderma, celiac, multiple sclerosis, Crohnâ€s disease, autoimmune hepatitis, rheumatoid arthritis, Graves†disease, myasthenia gravis, myositis, antiphospholipid syndrome (APS), Sjogrenâ€s syndrome, uveitis, vasculitis, relapsing polychondritis, and demyelinating neuropathies.] [4/4 stars on Charity Navigator]

The Race to Erase MS Foundation is dedicated to treating and ultimately curing MS. Itâ€s core focus is raising funds for its Center Without Walls program, a nationwide collaboration of the nationâ€s top seven MS research centers, which include Harvard, Yale, Cedars Sinai, University of Southern California, Oregon Health Science University, UC San Francisco, and Johns Hopkins…. For every dollar donated to The Race to Erase MS Foundation, 71% funds MS research. [3/4 stars on Charity Navigator]

The Myelin Repair Foundation supports research that focuses on myelin repair for all neurological diseases, including MS. Since 2004, the Myelin Repair Foundation has raised $60 million to support its myelin repair research program. Using myelin repair for MS as a demonstration, the Foundation is introducing a new comprehensive system for medical research and drug development, known as the Accelerated Research Collaboration Model (ARC). The Foundationâ€s overall goal for ARC is to shorten the time new medicines can take to get to market and reach the patients who desperately need them. [Not rated on Charity Navigator]

It seems that the autoimmune and myelin repair approaches are mostly complementary, from what small amount of reading I’ve done.

Healthgrades and glaucoma.org also recommend:

The National Multiple Sclerosis Society is an excellent medical research charity that also happens to be one of the largest in the US. NMSS is the best because of its expensive corporate and public sponsorship programs and cornucopia of grant programs which fund research.

NMSS pulled in over $110 million in funding during 2015, of which it spent nearly $100 million on programs. NMSS disburses its funds to train future scientists, too—a great addition to a portfolio of research grants.

Interestingly, given that last paragraph, NMSS only gets a rating of 3/4 from Charity Navigator.  CN claims they spend 23% of expenses on overhead, worse than all the previously mentioned charities (which are all on the high-efficiency end of charities).  I’m not sure how they ended up with such a different percentage from that cited in the GRF article.  And overhead is by no means the only/main factor useful for measuring effectiveness, as I’ve discussed before, but it’s worth noting.

Other medical research

I haven’t looked into these at all, but here are a few more that were given high ratings by BBB Wise Giving Alliance, Charity Navigator and Charity Watch:

• Lupus Research Alliance
• Hearing Health Foundation
• National Hemophilia Foundation

Glaucoma Research Foundation also endorses:

• The Bill and Melinda Gates†Foundation Global Health Division
• The Cystic Fibrosis Foundation
• The Crohnâ€s and Colitis Foundation
• Glaucoma Research Foundation (shockingly!)

However, the more optional leave is for men, the less likely they are to take it. In part because of the economic disadvantage, due to the current wage gap.

The episode spends part of its time on an org called 80,000 Hours, which has done a lot of research on the latter question. I’m looking forward to digging into their site (and podcast, apparently) more!

• Vox’s Today, Explained podcast had an excellent recent episode in the wake of the latest California mass shooting entitled The simplest way to fix our gun laws. on what California is doing wrong (and right), and what Massachusetts is doing better.  Both states have among the strictest gun control in the US and among the lowest per capita rate of gun deaths, but California doesn’t enforce some of its laws as much as it should.  Massachusetts makes you do a test/interview in order to get a license to own a gun, which seems to help a lot.
• Gimlet’s Science Vs. podcast had a recent two parter on guns, the second of which addressed gun control — among other things, looking into the effects of massive changes to gun policy in Australia and the UK.  They concluded that better background checks would have some impact, but not a lot — many gun buyers don’t have a criminal record and/or don’t buy from an official dealer.  Expanding mental health checks also wouldn’t catch too many more shooters, and it’s nigh impossible to predict who will be violent.  Gun buybacks on a small scale are insufficient to combat deaths; comprehensive national laws are more effective.  Forcing owners to register with the government seems to help as well.
• The NY Times looked at What Explains Mass Shootings [and more], and concludes it’s the sheer number of guns that explains the rate of gun violence in the US (as opposed to factors like mental health, immigration, racial diversity, or violent video game consumption).  The fact that Americans have 42% of the world’s guns but only 4% of the population leads to a high rate of lethal crimes per capita:

…the United States is not actually more prone to crime than other developed countries, according to a landmark 1999 study by Franklin E. Zimring and Gordon Hawkins of the University of California, Berkeley.

Rather, they found, in data that has since been repeatedly confirmed, that American crime is simply more lethal. A New Yorker is just as likely to be robbed as a Londoner, for instance, but the New Yorker is 54 times more likely to be killed in the process.

• A couple years back (following another California mass shooting), FiveThirtyEight found that mass shootings are indeed on the increase in the US; it’s not just an increase in media coverage.

A few points worth noting: mass shootings, while the primary focus of some of the above links and a lot of media attention, are a tiny fraction of gun deaths.  The much bigger category of homicide rates overall, as well as most types of crime, have dropped substantially in the US over the past couple decades.  However, as noted above, crimes like robberies are more likely to turn lethal when firearms are involved.

Far more frequent even than homicides – suicides make up 63% of gun deaths.  Waiting periods for guns reduce suicide rates.

Mass shootings are not limited to the US.  Which country has the worst rate of shootings/fatalities depends on what exactly you count (but the US has the largest number of mass shootings by a lot, and the rate is on the rise).

Police shootings deserve a separate post, but in 2015 they made up 3% of US firearm deaths, and 10% of the victims were unarmed.

And, if you really want to, you can dig through my hodgepodge of notes & stats on gun deaths that I keep meaning to turn into a bigger post (last substantially updated in 2015).

I’ve selected three causes, and top charities for each cause.  If you’re interested in donating to these charities, some friends and I pooled our money, and we are going to match your donation, doubling your impact (links go to fundraising pages):

• Direct Relief  (Focus: disaster relief & preparedness)
• ACLU Foundation (Focus: civil rights & civil liberties)
• Innovations for Poverty Action (Focus: international aid & foundational research — this is where your dollar will go the farthest to change the most lives)

The above links go to fundraising pages at Crowdrise, a site endorsed by these three charities for raising funds.  At each of the above links, I’ve explained my choices of charities in detail, including the risks, benefits, and alternatives to donating.

So far I’ve found donors willing to match up to $2000 for each charity — and if we meet that goal, perhaps I can get more.  If we prove that this works, there are other potential matching donors may be willing to jump in and increase that amount.

I’ve also updated my recommendations spreadsheet that I started earlier this year. It contains my rankings for 26 charities I’ve researched (for a wider set of causes), and it contains notes about why I ranked the charities the way I did. So if you have different priorities than I do, you should hopefully be able to create your own ranking accordingly.

You can also read my thinking and recommendations from past years, much of which still holds.

A friend wrote on how to be more politically involved without burnout:

1. I know donating money doesn’t feel like doing a lot, but it’s often the most effective and efficient way you can help people or push for change. Setting up automatic monthly donations to your organizations of choice is extremely helpful because it allows them to plan effectively over the longer term rather than trying to figure out what to do with a sudden windfall or figure out how to make up an unexpected shortage. Check whether your employer has a matching program for extra leverage!

2. I looked at my weekly schedule and found a few places I reliably have time to make phone calls and do research (to figure out what I need to be making phone calls about and be sure I have enough background information)….

3. I am trying out a few local volunteer opportunities, and I’ll see what sticks in the long term.  If [the first thing I try] doesn’t seem sustainable for me I’ll look for a different opportunity. When you are considering volunteer opportunities, look for things you will enjoy. Do you like talking to people? Do you enjoy manual labor? Would you like your volunteering better if you brought some friends with you, if you worked alone, or if you got to meet lots of new people?

4. Connecting with an organized group is a fantastic way to avoid reduplicating a lot of effort. I’m using the spreadsheet at https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/174f0WBSVNSdcQ5_S6rWPGB3pNCsruyyM_ZRQ6QUhGmo/htmlview?usp=sharing&sle=true# to guide my calling efforts and short-circuit my dithering about how to rank the many important issues I could be working on….

6. Don’t think too hard about where to put your efforts. There are lots of different things you could be advocating for, donating to, or helping with. You don’t have to find the very best one! It’s really easy for me to get caught up in trying to figure out what the very most important issue is, and how I specifically can be the very most effective helper I can, but every minute devoted to trying to figure out what to do is a minute you aren’t actually doing the thing. Pick a set time to research — “I am going to find and compare organizations working to help people register to vote for the special elections in North Carolina for 30 minutes” — and then go from there. ( http://nc-democracy.org/give/ — they’re currently organizing, so they know money will help and they’ll be contacting me later in the month or in February to let me know what else I can do from out of state)…

More good advice at the link.  And I like that a lot of the advice also applies well to any cause (burnout is always an issue), which also giving concrete examples and resources for people who share the author’s causes.  Also, I miiiight be the kind of person frequently subject to analysis paralysis. ;)  So the last point is well taken.

Do Something, courtesy of Crooked Media, also has a bunch of resources with specific suggestions for actions.  Most very specifically are related to electing more Democrats and/or fighting Trump.  If those are your causes, check their links out.  (To be clear about my own biases: I am mostly aligned with those causes, but try to keep this blog less partisan and more focused on effective solutions to specific issues.)  I’ve bookmarked the Indivisible Guide to dive into more later.  The subtitle is “Former congressional staffers reveal best practices for making Congress listen” — it looks like it’s got a lot of broadly applicable advice for getting things done within the US political system.

IPA just shared in the Washington Post some of the brighter spots from their last year of research, as well as some takeaways for future giving, in an article entitled, Why 2016 was actually one of the best years on record.  I’m quoting it very extensively here so I can add my own bolding, but it’s worth clicking through and reading the whole thing, particularly if you’re interested in more relevant studies and details:

Between 1990 and 2013 (the last year for which there is good data), the number of people living in extreme poverty dropped by more than half, from 1.85 billion to 770 million. As the University of Oxfordâ€s Max Roser recently put it, the top headline every day for the past two decades should have been: “Number of people in extreme poverty fell by 130,000 since yesterday.” At the same time, child mortality has dropped by nearly half, while literacy, vaccinations and the number of people living in democracy have all increased.

….Here are four things weâ€ve learned in 2016:

First, give the poor cash. Studies in Kenya and elsewhere show that the simplest way to help is also quite effective…. More and more research shows that when the poor come into a windfall, they spend it on productive things — sending their children to school, fixing the roof thatâ€s letting in the harsh weather or investing in a business….

Second, innovative health-care delivery can dramatically improve outcomes…. [In Uganda, NGOs have tried training women who do Avon-style door-to-door sales to also] perform basic health checks for children to look for symptoms that warrant getting the child to a clinic. One randomized evaluation released this year concluded that taking this health care to peopleâ€s homes reduced child mortality (for those younger than 5) by an astounding 27 percent and infant mortality (less than a year old) by 33 percent.

Third, access to mobile money may lift people out of poverty in large numbers.…. Research from this year shows that as [Kenya mobile money system] M-Pesa became more available in a local area, households became less poor — particularly households run by women. The study estimates that 185,000 women changed professions from subsistence agriculture to business and retail and that 194,000 households were lifted out of extreme poverty.

Finally, mobile phone technologies are leapfrogging the reach of traditional telecom infrastructure, and text message reminders are proving to be effective at helping people follow through on things they want to do. One study found that they helped the poor save money. [Others found they can help patients finish taking antimalarial drugs, help educate girls about reproductive health, and reduce student dropout rate.]

The size of the impacts in the cited studies are very impressive, as are the overall numbers for the past ~2 decades.  (It’s a bit silly for the headline to imply that 2016 is one of the best years on record in terms of poverty reduction, though, given that we won’t be able to get good data for a bit — but these are definitely some great research results that will presumably steepen the decline of poverty going forward.)  I’m also encouraged, as someone who hears a lot of well-intentioned suggestions from the tech sector about how tech can take on problems like poverty, to hear that some mobile solutions are actually substantially effective in this problem space.

I did a lot of research on where I should donate this year that I didn’t end up using – that is, I decided in the end to donate to the same orgs I’ve donated to in the past.  Why?  Because getting on even more organizations’ mailing lists is a pain, and I’ve decided that I’m going to donate anonymously via a donor-advised fund in the future so that I can avoid the mailing lists.  But that means I have to set it up first. :P

The good news, though, is that my donation research mega-spreadsheet should still be applicable in ~10-11 months when I am next donating.  And for everything subjective, I tried to document everything I was thinking along the way so that others (and future me) can adjust the conclusions according to taste or according to anything that’s changed.  I’ll reshare it on various social networks when it’s “giving season” again.

Notes and caveats:

1. You may not agree with the list of charities I’ve evaluated so far (in which case I’d love to hear what you think I left out — though please see my To Evaluate and Didn’t Make the Cut tabs).
2. You may also not agree with my criteria or weighting (heck, I’m not sure I agree with those :) ), and I’d love to hear your thoughts and feedback on that as well!  I’ve tried to clearly document my thoughts, in any case, so that if your priorities are different, you can change your rankings accordingly.
3. I scored and ranked the organizations (to be taken with a large grain of salt! mostly it’s not the rankings but the other info that’s useful), but I’m not quite sure how I’m going to use this info to allocate funds.  Some charities that score really well in terms of excellence might not actually get the most money… I’m still pondering how score and amount should relate. And still considering what other factors should perhaps be going into my rankings.

So long as their owners donâ€t throw them away, [tote bags’] negative impact remains minimized, at least—they might yet be used 327 times. Ecologically speaking, the best practice for tote bags might be one of two extremes: use them all the time, or not at all.

I personally don’t ever invest in buying new totes… I carry around a bunch of tote bags in my trunk that I got at conferences, conventions, or other events where they were giving them away free — they were generally not intended for groceries (and say a funny assortment of things like Grace Hopper, NSF, or Sherlock Seattle :) ), but they serve that purpose fine. I realize this is not an option all shoppers will have access to, but it’s a thought for those of you with spare totes sitting around from similar events.

The Atlantic article also points out that this is far from the only case where the desired goal of helping the environment leads people to do things that are actually less effective — or where people analyze only the small picture and not the whole ecosystem:

This low-grade, unfocused mania for averting impending ecological disaster seems to be more harmful than helpful, which is a problem throughout popular environmentalism. Meat eaters decry the water usage demands of almond groves. Conscientiously piled garbage overflows from public trashcans to rot in the street. Studies show that Kenya-grown roses flown to England have a lower carbon footprint than those grown and shipped from Holland, that itâ€s less ecologically damaging for Americans east of the Mississippi to import wine from France than from California. Biodegradable plastics proliferate as single-use containers and utensils, greenly filling the demand for disposable goods rather than questioning it. Fuel economy and emissions standards for cars and trucks are considered, barely, but not those of oil tankers, container ships, military escapades, which can produce tens of millions of times the amount of carbon.

With that in mind, I wondered whether or not consumer plastic use (including plastic bags) actually constitutes a very large portion of plastic use overall.  Maybe corporate plastic (re)use renders individual actions relatively small impact?

However,  I took a quick peek at some data that seems to indicate otherwise.  Looking at European plastic data (which was easiest to find), it appears that packaging — which I believe includes plastic bags — is the largest market sector, with household use over twice the rate of commercial and industrial use:

Sources: Plastics Europe, 2014; Plastics recycling: challenges and opportunities, Hopewell et al, 2009

So yes, our individual choices around plastic reuse and recycling could potentially (in aggregate) have substantial impact on plastic waste overall, although I don’t know how big a chunk of this is plastic bags specifically (I suspect a smallish percentage, just because there is so much plastic packaging out there, and most of it is a lot bulkier than the bags).

It looks like — in Europe, anyway – less plastic is ending up in the landfill (or, the oceans…? not sure if/how litter was counted) over time:

Source: Plastics Europe, 2014 — note that plastics manufacturers wrote this and I haven’t fact checked it

It also looks like one of the most effective ways to encourage plastic recycling is to implement a national ban on plastic in landfills:

(Same source)

Note that some of what is not recycled can’t be recycled (wrong type of plastic).  But it looks like they’re achieving ~25-30% recycling rates in some countries.  However, it appears in the US that we have a lot of room for improvement, as the plastic recovery rate (which includes recycling and energy recovery — combustion with energy recapture) is 8.8% overall, and 10-20% for the most easily recyclable types of plastic:

Source, EPA, 2015

With the caveat that these numbers are not necessarily directly comparable with the European ones above, as they may have somewhat different methodologies, it appears as if European countries in general are doing a better job on average of keeping plastic out of landfills (through recycling and/or energy recovery) than the US.  Much of that seems to be through regulation, though I didn’t dig further to see how if I could find stats on how much impact consumer recycling has.

Anyway, takeway for now: plastic bags are actually better for the environment than some options, including tote bags, unless you actually reuse tote bags — or paper bags — a bunch.  But it’s also worth trying to reuse/recycle plastic when possible, because consumer plastic use is actually a large portion of plastic use overall.

Edit, taken from my comment below: I think most of my blog readers probably have the resources to conscientiously reuse cotton/other biodegradable bags, or to avoid bags when possible, and should do so [because of the risk of plastic bag litter on land and at sea]. However, this still leaves a ton of potential plastic usage in other areas — plastic containers, trash bags, pet litter bags, etc). But we have a big enough impact as consumers that it is worth acting on an individual level, rather than just lobbying for industry regulations.