New releases

Microcredit has become one of the most popular ideas in charity. 2005 was named the Year of Microcredit.The microcredit charity Kiva has over 800,000 lenders, the highest possible rating from Charity Navigator, and was endorsed by Oprah… The 2006 Nobel Committee boldly claimed that microcredit “must play a major part” in ending global poverty.

Recently, however, criticism of microfinance has been growing. And that’s a good thing, because it’s far from proven that microfinance, on average, has any positive effects at all.

Paramedics appear to make good, fast decisions based on “gut feeling”: knowing what to do without knowing how you know. Along a similar vein, chess grandmasters are able to identify and decide on the best moves incredibly rapidly, moves which mediocre players may not even spot at all.

But this ability to make astoundingly accurate judgements in the blink of an eye isn’t limited to experts. We all do it every day: when we judge what some else wants from their facial expressions, or catch a ball without doing any complex physics calculation. How are these triumphs of intuition possible?

We’re trying to build the world’s best career advice organisation that helps you make a difference. That’s a big project, and we’re growing fast. If you’d like to help us out, now’s your chance.

The folks at Charity Navigator get a lot of heat from people who care about charity evaluation. Their approach, up till now, has been mostly of the lamentable fundraising is evil variety. Things are about to change.

There’s an easy way to tell a smart dog from a stupid dog. There’s a fence in front of you, and behind it is a delicious juicy bone. You’re starting to salivate just thinking about how amazing it will feel between your teeth. Now you have a choice. If you’re a stupid dog, you’ll run at the fence, stand in front of the bone and start to bark. If you’re a smart dog, you’ll look along the fence, find the gate, run happily through it and devour your prize.

Humans also have a hard time finding the gate. It’s easy to get preoccupied with the bone. It can look so inviting that you don’t take the time to look around, take things in, and choose the best path. Sometimes that path is indirect. It often means getting other people involved. But by spending the time, you can have far more impact…

Net Impact, a US charity, has released a report on attitudes towards ethical careers. The report contains hopeful news for the high-impact career market, but the findings must be treated with caution. The report suggests that current students are more inclined to go into ethical careers, and that they will be happier if they do. Having an impact with their job is very important to current students. 31% of students describe making an impact as essential, compared to only 15% of older generations. This is higher than the percentage of students who say wealth (13%) or prestige (19%) are essential.

Not long ago, there were zero organizations focused on effective altruism. Over the last few years, we’ve seen an explosion of interest in the topic. More and more of us are finding each other to ask not only “How can I help?” but “How can I help better?”

There’s a new organization asking these questions:. The High Impact NetworK, THINK’s goal is to introduce people to ideas and skills that will help them do good more effectively.