As part of the Slate's special on philanthropy the executive director of Google.org, Larry Brilliant, wrote a very good explanation of the thought process behind Google's philanthropic funding decisions. Because most of this post will be a negative critique of his reasoning, I want to start by saying I appreciated Brilliant's view, and think that he did a great job explaining what must have been an agonizingly difficult process. He also manages to defend Google's ultimate funding decisions very well, and even makes their programs sound exciting.
Now, the criticism:
Brilliant discusses the eternal question of which charity to choose, when there is so much need in the world and limited resources. According to Brilliant, to answer this question Google turned to advice attributed to Mahatma Ghandi:
“Gandhi was once asked, ‘How can I know that the decisions I am making are the best I can make?’ He answered: ‘I will give you a talisman. Whenever you are in doubt, or when the self becomes too much with you, apply the following test. Recall the face of the poorest and the weakest man whom you may have seen, and ask yourself if the step you contemplate is going to be of any use to him. Will he gain anything by it?'”
This seems like pretty good advice. But as a guiding principle I think it has two fairly obvious weaknesses.
First, why this assumption that the poorest and weakest should benefit? Surely there people living in poverty and risk that deserve help, but are still above the very poorest people in the world. For example, according to the International Food Policy Research Institute there are $162 million people in the world living on less than 50 cents a day. These are probably the very poorest, very weakest people on Earth. But there are also approximately a billion people living on less than $1 a day. My guess is that from Google's perspective those two groups are lumped together, and perhaps they should be. But I think drawing that line is a tricky business.
The second weakness to Ghandi's advice is the requirement that our hypothetical poor man should gain “anything” by it. I agree that a poverty reduction program that doesn't help the poor is a bad program, but the poor can gain from a lot of things. The trick is optimizing those benefits. Ghandi's advice sets an awfully low bar.
Maybe that's Ghandi's point. Maybe the bar should be set low, so that the time and effort philanthropists spend considering how to help doesn't stop them from actually helping. That makes a lot of sense, but it makes more sense with the small amounts of money that I can give than the large amounts of money that Google plans to spend.
