How can we find the most impactful charities? We spoke to a researcher

Interview with Corentin Biteau, Monday 24/06, Reading time: 6 min

In a world of many and varied associations, how do you identify the ones that really make a significant difference? I was lucky enough to interview Corentin, a researcher with a passion for finding high-impact organizations. Here’s his background and thoughts on this crucial subject:

What prompted you to start looking for high-impact charities?

My path to this research began with personal reflection. As an IT engineer in a large company, I didn’t feel I had the power to help others. This realization emerged during a meal with colleagues, when we discussed a lecture by Peter Singer. He put forward the following comparison: If you were buying a luxury car, and someone showed you how many starving people you could save with that money, would you change your mind? I was deeply moved by this comparison and I wondered whether there really were charities that were actually capable of saving people from starvation.

So I asked myself: are there any organizations that are really making a difference and could be trusted ? I discovered that independent evaluators had already done extensive research, involving hundreds of hours of work, to identify such organizations. This gave me confidence that I could make a significant impact by supporting the right causes. I decided to get more involved, notably by taking the 10% pledge, a public commitment to donate a portion of my income.

Are there charity evaluators in France ?

In France alone, there are over a million associations. The charity sector as a whole has made incredible progress, but the associations themselves don’t have the same degree of effectiveness. For a long time, I made donations without really thinking about these differences in impact. I’ve even supported organizations which, on reflection, have a negative impact.

International evaluators exist and analyse different methods to recommend high-impact organisations, but in France, no similar work had been done to provide insight for people wishing to give. Altruisme Efficace France, a French organisation, asked me to fill this gap by carrying out a study and interviewing organisations about their evidence of impact, as well as various experts.

How would you define the impact of a charity ?

When I talk about impact, I think in terms of comparison between actions, some have a large and some have a minimal impact. What interests me is having the greatest positive impact by comparing different ways of doing things.

There’s an interesting framework for assessing the impact of actions, which looks at an intervention according to its scale (how many people are affected ?), its neglected nature (are there already a lot of people working on it ?) and its potential for improvement (can we make significant progress ?).

Once these problems have been identified, there are recognized indicators that enable us to compare the effectiveness of interventions within each field. In the field of health, the years of healthy life added by an intervention are evaluated. For example, if an intervention enables a child who was going to die at the age of 5 to live a full life, this represents many years of healthy life saved. For the climate, we often measure tons of CO2 avoided. For animal suffering, we consider the number of animals benefiting from better living conditions.

The notion of ‘counterfactuality’ seems important in your research. Can you explain it?

The counterfactual is to ask yourself this question: what would happen if an action wasn’t carried out ? One example I remember is of someone who was working on entrepreneurship projects in Ireland. He had been doing this work for years, and at one point, while he was reading, he asked himself, “Would someone else do my work if I didn’t ?” He realized that yes, someone else would do his job in an equivalent way. The book fell out of his hands. So he decided it would be more useful to concentrate on something no one else would do. That’s why he decided to found a charity.

In terms of my own career path, if I had continued to work as an IT specialist, my position could easily have been filled by someone else. However, by devoting my time and skills to identifying and promoting high-impact associations, I’m working on an issue that very few others have addressed, despite a pressing need.

In fact, even if I’d stayed in IT but continued to donate part of my salary to effective associations, the counterfactual impact of these donations would be potentially very high. Indeed, without these donations, these associations wouldn’t be able to carry out as many good deeds; each additional donation improves the impact of the interventions!