Third Wave of Philanthropy & Effective Altruism

Nan Ransohoff's "Third Wave of Philanthropy" essay is still making waves, 😆 now featured in Fortune, The New York Times, and the The Economist. It got me thinking about Silicon Valley's tendency towards "effective altruism" and fundraising from these newly minted AI millionaires.

"Effective altruism" is a social and philosophical movement that uses logic and evidence to find the best ways to help others. People in this movement use data to make their donations do the most good possible.

Not so bad in theory, but in practice, this type of donation can stand in contradiction to community-directed interventions that are sometimes not the easiest to quantify, but are often the most impactful.

Hopefully, the sector stands to gain a lot of 🤑 💰💸 influx with these new donors, but we have to understand their giving psychology.

Effective altruism is only a part of the giving equation. The other part is community insight — the leaders who know what their communities need.

We stand to gain a lot as a society if we combine our long-standing expertise with their desire to create value and achieve measurable impact.

On the other hand, this could become problematic if these donors decide to create their own nonprofits to see through their effective altruism principles, leaving community-led organizations out of the picture altogether.

So if this third wave of philanthropy actually shores up (couldn't help a pun!) a bunch of money for the social good, we need to understand the effective altruism psychology of the new wealth class, while sticking to our long-standing principles of community-led solutions.