vox--2020-12-21--Why Dave Chappelle doesn’t want you to stream Chappelle’s Show

Dave Chappelle has a lot of feelings about how networks have exploited his comedy over the years .
And as 2020 winds down , he ’ s turning his emotion into action .
HBO announced on December 15 that it would soon pull the beloved comedy series Chappelle ’ s Show off HBO Max , in response to Chappelle ’ s own public request last month that fans boycott any streaming platforms hosting the show .
All three seasons of the beloved comedy series , which originally ran from 2003–2006 on Comedy Central , will become unavailable on the platform @ @ @ @ @ @ @ at Variety ’ s FYCFest , HBO ’ s chief content officer Casey Bloys described Chappelle ’ s request that the platform remove the show as “ a very unique and specific and emotional issue.
” “ We had a conversation with Dave , ” Bloys said .
“ So at the end of the year , at the end of this year , December 31st , we ’ re going to honor his request and take the show down.
” HBO is the second network after Netflix to pull Chappelle ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Chappelle , who claims that due to signing an unfair contract when the show first aired , he now receives no royalties from streams of it .
( Those go to the rights holder , Viacom , which owns Comedy Central . )
The subject seems to have been on Chappelle ’ s mind frequently as of late ; he first brought it up during his post-election hosting gig on Saturday Night Live , when he noted “ I didn ’ t get paid for any of it ” — referring to HBO @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to their catalogs — and joked that he ’ d “ got bought and sold ” more than his enslaved ancestors .
On November 24 , not long after the SNL monologue , Chappelle elaborated at length on the decision in an 18-minute-long standup monologue .
In the Instagram TV clip , titled “ Unforgiven ” and captioned , “ This is why , ” Chappelle describes his lifelong history of having his comedy stolen and exploited by others .
Viacom ’ s exploitative contract , he argues , is one such part @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s livelihood away from him is akin to killing him , ” Chappelle said .
Essentially , he argues , Viacom won ’ t pay him royalties for online streams of the show because his original contract didn ’ t make allowances for streaming media — unsurprising , since Chappelle ’ s Show debuted before YouTube even existed , let alone Netflix and HBO Max .
( Vox has reached out to Comedy Central for comment . )
“ I found out that these people were streaming my work and they never @ @ @ @ @ @ @ have to tell me , ” Chappelle said in the video .
He also describes being “ furious ” at Netflix when he learned the platform had streaming rights to the show , and called on his fans to boycott that and any other platform that streamed it .
“ If you are fucking streaming that show , you ’ re fencing stolen goods , ” he told his audience in the Instagram video .
For now , clips of the show are still available on Comedy Central ’ s YouTube channel , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ All Access and Comedy Central ’ s website with subscriptions or cable logins .
Chappelle is by no means the first creative to take umbrage with streaming platforms and royalties .
Comedian Mo ’ Nique , for instance , is pursuing a lawsuit against Netflix over claims that they drastically underpaid her for her standup specials relative to white comedians of similar stature .
Chappelle is also not alone in feeling frustrated by an entertainment company ’ s handling of an older contract .
The hashtag # DisneyMustPay has gained traction on social @ @ @ @ @ @ @ fans angered by Disney ’ s reported refusal to honor the terms of decades-old contracts originally made between Star Wars tie-in writers and LucasFilm , which Disney now owns .
But while many similar complaints may boil down to business , with HBO , Chappelle asserts that the streaming issue is personal .
HBO executives once heard — and mockingly rejected — his initial pitch for Chappelle ’ s Show , according to the comedian .
Comedy Central picked it up , and it went on to garner three Emmy nominations and deliver @ @ @ @ @ @ @ famous ” I ’ m Rick James , bitch ” sketch .
Yet Chappelle won ’ t forget that HBO executives had asked him , “ What do we need you for ?
” “ And here we are , all these years later , and they ’ re streaming the very show that I was pitching to them , ” he said .
“ So I ’ m asking them : What do you need me for ?
” Perhaps the irony in this is that Chappelle has released several successful comedy @ @ @ @ @ @ @ years .
The most recent of these , 2019 ’ s Sticks and Stones , won a Grammy for best comedy album — despite a negative critical reception , due to Chappelle ’ s flippancy toward cancel culture and other progressive cultural codes .
Still , he remains a comedy mainstay , and he hinted in the Instagram clip that he might bring back a new version of his old sketch show .
If he does , we can probably guess where it won ’ t be streaming .

Dave Chappelle has a lot of feelings about how networks have exploited his comedy over the years. And as 2020 winds down, he’s turning his emotion into action.
HBO announced on December 15 that it would soon pull the beloved comedy series Chappelle’s Show off HBO Max, in response to Chappelle’s own public request last month that fans boycott any streaming platforms hosting the show. All three seasons of the beloved comedy series, which originally ran from 2003–2006 on Comedy Central, will become unavailable on the platform after December 31st.
In an appearance at Variety’s FYCFest, HBO’s chief content officer Casey Bloys described Chappelle’s request that the platform remove the show as “a very unique and specific and emotional issue.”
“We had a conversation with Dave,” Bloys said. “So at the end of the year, at the end of this year, December 31st, we’re going to honor his request and take the show down.”
HBO is the second network after Netflix to pull Chappelle’s Show from streaming as a favor to Chappelle, who claims that due to signing an unfair contract when the show first aired, he now receives no royalties from streams of it. (Those go to the rights holder, Viacom, which owns Comedy Central.)
The subject seems to have been on Chappelle’s mind frequently as of late; he first brought it up during his post-election hosting gig on Saturday Night Live, when he noted “I didn’t get paid for any of it” — referring to HBO Max and Netflix recently adding the show to their catalogs — and joked that he’d “got bought and sold” more than his enslaved ancestors.
On November 24, not long after the SNL monologue, Chappelle elaborated at length on the decision in an 18-minute-long standup monologue. In the Instagram TV clip, titled “Unforgiven” and captioned, “This is why,” Chappelle describes his lifelong history of having his comedy stolen and exploited by others. Viacom’s exploitative contract, he argues, is one such part of that.
“Taking a man’s livelihood away from him is akin to killing him,” Chappelle said. Essentially, he argues, Viacom won’t pay him royalties for online streams of the show because his original contract didn’t make allowances for streaming media — unsurprising, since Chappelle’s Show debuted before YouTube even existed, let alone Netflix and HBO Max. (Vox has reached out to Comedy Central for comment.)
“I found out that these people were streaming my work and they never had to ask me or they never have to tell me,” Chappelle said in the video. He also describes being “furious” at Netflix when he learned the platform had streaming rights to the show, and called on his fans to boycott that and any other platform that streamed it.
“If you are fucking streaming that show, you’re fencing stolen goods,” he told his audience in the Instagram video. For now, clips of the show are still available on Comedy Central’s YouTube channel, and full seasons are available on CBS All Access and Comedy Central’s website with subscriptions or cable logins.
Chappelle is by no means the first creative to take umbrage with streaming platforms and royalties. Comedian Mo’Nique, for instance, is pursuing a lawsuit against Netflix over claims that they drastically underpaid her for her standup specials relative to white comedians of similar stature. Chappelle is also not alone in feeling frustrated by an entertainment company’s handling of an older contract. The hashtag #DisneyMustPay has gained traction on social media recently, spread by Star Wars fans angered by Disney’s reported refusal to honor the terms of decades-old contracts originally made between Star Wars tie-in writers and LucasFilm, which Disney now owns.
But while many similar complaints may boil down to business, with HBO, Chappelle asserts that the streaming issue is personal. HBO executives once heard — and mockingly rejected — his initial pitch for Chappelle’s Show, according to the comedian. Comedy Central picked it up, and it went on to garner three Emmy nominations and deliver many iconic comedy moments, like the famous ”I’m Rick James, bitch” sketch.
Yet Chappelle won’t forget that HBO executives had asked him, “What do we need you for?”
“And here we are, all these years later, and they’re streaming the very show that I was pitching to them,” he said. “So I’m asking them: What do you need me for?”
Perhaps the irony in this is that Chappelle has released several successful comedy specials for Netflix over the past few years. The most recent of these, 2019’s Sticks and Stones, won a Grammy for best comedy album — despite a negative critical reception, due to Chappelle’s flippancy toward cancel culture and other progressive cultural codes. Still, he remains a comedy mainstay, and he hinted in the Instagram clip that he might bring back a new version of his old sketch show.
If he does, we can probably guess where it won’t be streaming.


vox--2020-12-21--These are the charities where your money will do the most good

Share All sharing options for : These are the charities where your money will do the most good Giving to charity is great , not just for the recipients but for the givers , too .
But it can be intimidating to know how to pick the best charity , especially when there are thousands of worthy causes to choose from , and especially when the world ’ s in the midst of a massive pandemic and economic calamity that ’ s causing huge pain and suffering at home and abroad .
These past few months , we ’ ve @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to give and how to help address our rolling crises .
This holiday season , I thought it might be helpful to update our annual guide to giving .
Think of this not just as a rundown of charity recommendations , but as a broader guide to thinking about how to give .
Here are a few simple tips for end-of-year giving that can help .
It 's of course possible to research charity options yourself , but it 's probably better to outsource that labor to a careful , methodologically rigorous charity @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and Guidestar by Candid can be useful resources too , but they have traditionally avoided ranking charities or assessing which do the most good for the lowest cost .
Charity Navigator is taking some initial steps to attempt the latter , however . )
GiveWell currently lists nine top charities .
Its recommendation , if you find it hard to choose among the nine , is to donate to the GiveWell Maximum Impact Fund , which goes directly to their top charities based on GiveWell ’ s assessment of where the money is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
“ Basically , it ’ s the best way for a donor to take advantage of our up-to-date research , as we ’ re continually assessing and reprioritizing our top charities ’ needs , ” GiveWell research analyst Catherine Hollander told me .
“ We also think it ’ s a great fit for recurring donors since it allows each future gift to be used to support the highest-value projects we can find at that time.
” • Malaria Consortium , which helps distribute preventative antimalarial medication to children ( a program @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ) • Against Malaria Foundation , which buys and distributes insecticidal bed nets , primarily in sub-Saharan Africa but also in Papua New Guinea • Helen Keller International , which provides technical assistance to , advocates for , and funds vitamin A supplementation programs in sub-Saharan Africa , which reduce child mortality • New Incentives , which offers cash to families in Nigeria conditional on childhood vaccinations • Evidence Action ’ s Deworm the World Initiative , The END Fund , Sightsavers , and SCI Foundation , which all work on deworming programs @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , which directly distributes donations to poor people in Kenya and Uganda , to spend as they see fit .
GiveWell chose those charities based on how much good additional donations would do , not necessarily how good the groups are overall ; in other words , these are organizations that can put new funding to use , rather than sitting on it .
GiveWell takes that factor seriously .
In 2013 , it revoked its recommendation of Against Malaria on the grounds that the charity had not spent enough of the money @ @ @ @ @ @ @ GiveWell judged that Against Malaria once again had room for more funding , and restored it on the recommendation list .
So you can expect Against Malaria , and the other recommended charities , to spend anything you donate effectively and reasonably promptly .
The group also takes disconfirming research seriously .
In 2017 , it recommended Evidence Action ’ s No Lean Season , which offers no-interest loans to farmers in Bangladesh during the “ lean season ” between planting rice and harvesting it ; the loans are conditional on a family @ @ @ @ @ @ @ other area for short-term work .
But a subsequent randomized evaluation found that the program didn ’ t actually spur people to migrate or increase their incomes , and GiveWell and Evidence Action then agreed that it should no longer be a top charity ; Evidence Action stopped soliciting funds for it and later shut it down .
GiveWell 's recommendations rely heavily on both evaluations done by charitable organizations and existing research literature on the kind of intervention the charities are trying to conduct .
For example , its recommendations of SCI @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and Deworm the World are based on research suggesting that providing children with deworming treatments could improve educational , economic , and other outcomes .
Research from the Poverty Action Lab at MIT suggests that giving away insecticidal bednets — as the Against Malaria Foundation does — is vastly more effective than charging even small amounts for them .
And while cash certainly has its limits , hundreds of studies have found largely positive effects for the kind of cash transfers that GiveDirectly distributes .
3 ) If you want to maximize your @ @ @ @ @ @ @ It 's really hard to adequately express how much richer developed nations like the US are than developing ones like Kenya , Uganda , and other countries targeted by GiveWell 's most effective charities .
We still have extreme poverty , in the living-on- $ 2-a-day sense , but it 's comparatively pretty rare and hard to target effectively .
The poorest Americans also have access to health care and education systems that , while obviously inferior compared to rich Americans , are far superior to those of developing countries .
Giving to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , but if you want to get the most bang for your buck in terms of saving lives , reducing illness , or improving overall well-being , you 're going to want to give abroad .
Years ago , GiveWell actually looked into a number of US charities , like the Nurse-Family Partnership program for infants , the KIPP chain of charter schools , and the HOPE job-training program .
It found that all were highly effective but were far more cost-intensive than the best foreign charities .
KIPP and the Nurse-Family Partnership @ @ @ @ @ @ @ served , while deworming programs like SCI 's and Deworm the World 's generally cost between $ 0.25 and $ 1 per child treated .
This is true even as the US is going through a historically brutal pandemic .
The rest of the world is , too , and the disease and lockdowns it sparked have had especially devastating effects on poor countries , to the extent that 2020 was likely the first year in decades when global poverty increased .
The pandemic has also taxed health systems in low-income countries , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ off other diseases like malaria .
Donations to anti-malaria , anti-worm , ( non-Covid ) vaccination , and Vitamin A supplementation programs like the ones recommended by GiveWell can help cushion that blow .
Alternatively , you could consider giving to non-humans .
Animal charities , especially those engaged in corporate pressure campaigns to better the treatment of farm animals , chickens in particular , can be effective in improving animal welfare .
The charity evaluations in this area are much younger and less methodologically rigorous than GiveWell 's , but Animal Charity @ @ @ @ @ @ @ may be effective causes for donations : • The Humane League specializes in corporate campaigns to improve farm standards .
It has achieved big victories in eliminating the culling of baby chicks and getting food service companies like Kroger and Sodexo to only use cage-free eggs , and is now pushing for better standards for chickens raised for their meat .
• The Good Food Institute promotes plant-based and cultured meat alternatives to animal-based foods .
• The Albert Schweitzer Foundation conducts corporate campaigns in Germany and Poland and is unusual in advocating @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and mammals .
• Wild Animal Initiative , which studies the lived experience of animals living in the wild and researches ways to ease their suffering 4 ) If you do give locally , you can still consider impact For years I would advocate to friends that they donate abroad , or to animal-specific charities , since their donation was likelier to have a concrete near-term impact there than in a human-based US charity , given how much money it costs to meaningfully help a resident of a rich country .
But I @ @ @ @ @ @ @ People want to give to their specific communities , or particular causes they ’ re passionate about for personal reasons ( like curing a disease that killed a loved one , for instance ) .
And they often want to use charity as a way to connect with broader trends in the news — by , say , donating to help provide representation for immigrant children on the US-Mexico border .
For years I didn ’ t have much to say to that , other than to add that it ’ s of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and personal causes ; this guide is mostly meant to offer alternate suggestions if you don ’ t have existing philanthropic interests and are curious for ways to help .
But a lot has happened in 2019 and 2020 to make donations of that kind easier .
In 2019 , the group ImpactMatters , co-founded by social entrepreneur Elijah Goldberg and economist Dean Karlan , launched , and attempted to quantify the bang-for-the-buck provided by charities in several sectors .
But whereas GiveWell is pretty opinionated about cause areas — it pushes hard @ @ @ @ @ @ @ improve financial well-being — ImpactMatters isn ’ t .
ImpactMatters has since been acquired by Charity Navigator , which has begun incorporating ImpactMatters ’ methodology into its own charity profiles .
So you can specify that your goal is , say , to provide a night of shelter for a person experiencing homelessness , and Charity Navigator/ImpactMatters will provide you with a menu of nonprofits and their cost-per-night-of-housing .
Fellowship Deliverance Ministries in Georgia , for instance , is estimated to provide a night of shelter for $ 2 per person .
You @ @ @ @ @ @ @ want to give : Here ’ s a list of San Francisco-specific charities that ImpactMatters compiled , for instance .
ImpactMatters is barely over a year old and its incarnation as part of Charity Navigator is even younger .
Its premiere sparked a bit of concern in some corners of the philanthropy world .
Julia Coffman , director of the Center for Evaluation Innovation , had a thoughtful critique on Twitter , arguing that trying to quantify impact like this is “ too reductionist ” and that “ cost-effectiveness in relation to impact @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and structural factors that affect both their clients ’ needs and their ability to deliver services in a cost-effective way.
” That ’ s fair — giving for societal change is really hard to do and even harder to evaluate .
The causal inference behind Charity Navigator and ImpactMatters ’ estimates is also necessarily limited ; they can ’ t run whole experiments to evaluate the cost-effectiveness of every single charity , so instead they build detailed models to try to approximate an estimate of each charity ’ s impact ( here ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ people experiencing homelessness , for instance ) .
These are productive conversations to be having that can inform the future of giving .
In the meantime , for a certain set of donors , Charity Navigator and ImpactMatters offer a useful tool that might point them in the direction of nonprofits they hadn ’ t known about previously , and which are doing good in their specific areas .
Another option is giving to groups like GiveWell , Innovations for Poverty Action , the Life You Can Save , Giving What We Can @ @ @ @ @ @ @ approaches/charities and encourage effective giving .
Suppose that every dollar given to Giving What We Can — which encourages people to pledge to donate at least 10 percent of their income until retirement — results in $ 1.20 in donations to the Against Malaria Foundation .
If that 's the case , then you should give to Giving What We Can until the marginal effect on donations to Against Malaria hits $ 1 or lower .
`` If they can turn a dollar of donations into substantially more than a dollar of increased @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that the best use of my money ? ''
asks Jeff Kaufman , a software developer who with his wife , the fantastic effective altruism activist and organizer Julia Wise , gives about half his income to effective charities and meta-charities .
If you only care about reducing early mortality and giving people more years to live , then you should give all your donations to the Malaria Consortium , Helen Keller International or the Against Malaria Foundation .
Malaria is a frequently fatal disease , and cost-effective interventions to reduce malaria infection @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Similarly , Vitamin A supplementation , like HKI does , is an effective way of reducing child mortality , as is vaccination ( as promoted by New Incentives ) .
But the rest of the charities GiveWell recommends do n't mainly focus on reducing mortality .
Quality of life matters , too .
Parasitic infections hamper children 's development and education , which can have negative consequences lasting decades .
Having increased access to cash may not extend the life of a GiveDirectly recipient , but it does make life considerably more @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of the charities GiveWell recommends are reasonably small , and some big names are absent .
That 's not an accident .
In general , charity effectiveness evaluators are skeptical of large relief organizations , for a number of reasons .
Large organizations tend to be less transparent about where their money goes and also likelier to direct money to disaster relief efforts , which are usually less cost-effective , in general , than public health programs .
`` Overall , our impression is that your donation to these organizations is very hard @ @ @ @ @ @ @ an agenda of extremely diverse programming , driven largely by governments and other very large funders , '' writes GiveWell co-founder Holden Karnofsky .
8 ) Maybe just give money directly to poor people For years , one of my primary charities was GiveDirectly , which is the only cause outside public health to get GiveWell 's top rating , and , to my knowledge , the only charity devoted to unconditional cash transfers .
I gave to them partly because there 's a large body of research on the benefits of cash @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
But I donated to GiveDirectly mostly because I didn ’ t trust myself to know what the world 's poorest people need most .
I 've been profoundly lucky to never experience the kind of extreme poverty that billions of people worldwide have to endure .
I have no idea what I would spend a cash transfer from GiveDirectly on if I were living on less than $ 2 a day in Uganda .
Would I buy a bednet ?
Maybe !
Or maybe I 'd buy an iron roof .
Or @ @ @ @ @ @ @ cattle .
But you know who does have a good sense of the needs of poor people in Uganda ?
Poor people in Uganda .
They have a very good idea of what they need .
Do they sometimes misjudge their spending priorities ?
Certainly ; so do we all .
And bednets and deworming treatments appear to be underpurchased relative to the actual need for them .
But generally , you should only give something other than cash if you are confident you know the recipients ' needs better than they do @ @ @ @ @ @ @ which really do seem underprovided when they 're just put up for sale rather than given away for free — I 'm not confident of that .
So I gave cash .
As the World Bank 's Jishnu Das once put it , `` 'Does giving cash work well ' is a well-defined question only if you are willing to say that 'well ' is something that WE , the donors , want to define for families whom we have never met and whose living circumstances we have probably never spent a day @ @ @ @ @ @ @ . ''
If you 're not willing to say that , then you should strongly consider giving cash .
9 ) Give what you can ( though if you can spare it , pledging to give 10 percent of your income would be fantastic ) One of the hardest problems in philanthropy is deciding how much to donate .
There are some people who argue the correct answer , unless you ’ re near the end of your life , is nothing : you should , on this view , not give to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ save as much of your money as possible and donate it when you die ( my colleague Kelsey Piper explains why this is probably not a good approach ) .
Another approach is to “ earn to give ” : take a high-paying job , typically in finance or tech , and give away a huge share of your earnings , like 40 to 50 percent .
I wrote about people who do this back in 2013 , and I know that many of the people I profiled still earn-to-give ; for them @ @ @ @ @ @ @ sustainable option .
It ’ s a really good career option if you like working in finance and tech , but frankly it ’ s not the best option for most people , and there are a lot of amazing jobs — in scientific research , in the private sector , in direct charity or nonprofit or government work — where the typical person can do more good than they could by using their career as a mechanism through which to generate donation money .
So I suggest a more moderate course .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ We Can pledge , which commits members to donating 10 percent of their annual income to highly effective charities .
That is a totally reasonable number , comparable to alms in many religions , that requires relatively minimal sacrifice relative to what earn-to-give people do .
( Here ’ s an interview I did with Toby Ord , who started the pledge . )
Even if 10 percent is too much for you , though , don ’ t despair .
Giving $ 1 is better than giving $ 0 .
Perhaps the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ into the groove of donating , to make it a habit .
I use direct deposit on my paychecks to make most of my charitable contributions , just so it ’ s extremely automatic and hard for me to avoid doing .
Going from not giving to giving a little , regularly , is a huge positive step .
Sign up for the Future Perfect newsletter .
Twice a week , you ’ ll get a roundup of ideas and solutions for tackling our biggest challenges : improving public health , decreasing human @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , and — to put it simply — getting better at doing good .

Giving to charity is great, not just for the recipients but for the givers, too.
But it can be intimidating to know how to pick the best charity when there are thousands of worthy causes to choose from, and especially when the world is recovering from a massive pandemic and economic shocks that are still causing suffering around the globe.
Yet that suffering makes it all the more clear why giving, and why doing our best to give effectively, is so important. There’s a lot of need out there, and it matters not just whether we give, but how. Effective giving can translate into more lives saved and more lives improved. Even among charities that target the poorest people in developing countries — where charities can typically be most impactful because a dollar goes much further — the most effective charities produce a whopping 100 times more benefit than average charities, according to expert estimates.
So this holiday season, we thought it might be helpful to update our annual guide to giving. Think of this as not only a rundown of charity recommendations but also a broader guide to thinking about how to give. Here are a few simple tips for end-of-year giving that can help.
1) Check in with charity recommenders
It's of course possible to research charity options yourself, but you can save some time by outsourcing that labor to a careful, methodologically rigorous charity recommender like GiveWell. Charity Navigator has started following in GiveWell’s footsteps by evaluating charities based on their ability to do the most good at the lowest cost; GiveWell has a longer track record, but Charity Navigator’s impact scores are worth consulting, too.
GiveWell, which functions somewhat like a grantmaker, currently lists four top charities. Its recommendation, if you find it hard to choose among the four, is to donate to the Top Charities Fund, which goes directly to those top charities based on GiveWell’s assessment of where the money is most helpful given the different groups’ funding needs.
The top charities are:
Malaria Consortium, which helps distribute preventive antimalarial medication to children (a program known as “seasonal malaria chemoprevention”)
Against Malaria Foundation, which buys and distributes insecticidal bed nets, primarily in sub-Saharan Africa but also in Papua New Guinea
Helen Keller Intl, which provides technical assistance to, advocates for, and funds vitamin A supplementation programs in sub-Saharan Africa, which reduce child mortality
New Incentives, which increases uptake of routine immunizations by offering small cash incentives to families in Nigeria when they get their children vaccinated
GiveWell chose those charities based on how much good each additional donation would do, not necessarily how good the groups are overall; in other words, these are organizations that can put new funding to use, rather than sitting on it. Other charities do great work, too, but if they’re already decently funded, they might not do the most good with your extra dollar.
GiveWell also supports novel interventions, but through its All Grants Fund, not its Top Charities Fund. That can mean giving an organization a grant to run a study in order to find out whether a hypothetical future program is feasible. Or, more concretely, it can look like some grants GiveWell made in 2021: It directed $30 million to the Alliance for International Medical Action and International Rescue Committee to work on malnutrition, and $25 million to IRD Global to provide cash transfers in Pakistan to incentivize immunizations.
Last year, GiveWell found itself in the position of having more funding available than extremely cost-effective opportunities to spend it on. So it made the (somewhat controversial) announcement that it would roll $110 million in funds into 2022, instead of distributing those funds to charities right away, in hopes of finding more high-impact opportunities later.
The gambit paid off: Whereas a year ago GiveWell had found $450 million worth of cost-effective opportunities, this year it’s more like $900 million — meaning the size of the pool has roughly doubled. Now, instead of having too much money and too few great causes to spend it on, GiveWell has too many great causes and too little funding to support them all. Specifically, it finds itself around $300 million short.
“There’s this gap, and so we want to raise more, because there’s impact just being left on the table,” Elie Hassenfeld, GiveWell’s CEO, told Vox.
It’s worth noting that GiveWell takes disconfirming research seriously. In 2017, it recommended Evidence Action’s No Lean Season, which offered no-interest loans to farmers in Bangladesh during the “lean season” between planting rice and harvesting it; the loans are conditional on a family member temporarily moving to a city or other area for short-term work. But a subsequent randomized evaluation found that the program didn’t actually spur people to migrate or increase their incomes, and GiveWell and Evidence Action then agreed that it should no longer be a top charity. Evidence Action stopped soliciting funds for it and later shut it down — an unusually scrupulous move for a charity.
(Disclosure: Dylan has been donating to GiveWell since 2010. Because he writes about philanthropy frequently, outsourcing his giving to GiveWell prevents him from donating directly to specific top charities that he may cover in the future, not unlike investing in index funds to avoid conflicts of interest when writing about particular companies. GiveWell is also an advertiser on Vox podcasts.)
2) Pick charities with research-based strategies
GiveWell's recommendations rely heavily on both evaluations done by charitable organizations and existing research literature on the kind of intervention the charities are trying to conduct.
For example, research from the Poverty Action Lab at MIT suggests that giving away insecticidal bed nets — as the Against Malaria Foundation does — is vastly more effective than charging even small amounts for them.
Meanwhile, hundreds of studies have found largely positive effects for the kind of cash transfers that GiveDirectly, one of GiveWell’s grantees, distributes (even if cash has its limits).
3) If you want to maximize your donation’s impact, give to poorer countries
It's really hard to adequately express how much richer developed nations like the US are than developing ones like Kenya, Uganda, and other countries targeted by GiveWell's most effective charities.
The US still has extreme poverty, in the living-on-$2-a-day sense, but it's comparatively pretty rare and hard to target effectively. The poorest Americans also have access to health care and education systems that, while obviously inferior compared to those enjoyed by rich Americans, are still superior to those of developing countries.
Giving to charities domestically is a commendable thing to do, and many people feel it’s right to give first to the communities they live in. But if you want to get the most bang for your buck in terms of saving lives, reducing illness, or improving overall well-being, you're going to want to give to the places with the greatest need and where your additional dollar will do the most good. That means outside the US.
Years ago, GiveWell actually looked into a number of US charities, like the Nurse-Family Partnership program for infants, the KIPP chain of charter schools, and the HOPE job-training program. It found that all were highly effective, but were also far more cost-intensive than the best foreign charities. KIPP and the Nurse-Family Partnership cost more than $10,000 per child served, while a vaccination program like New Incentives in Nigeria costs around $17 per child served.
The Covid-19 pandemic has also taxed health systems in low-income countries, putting pressure on programs designed to fend off other diseases like malaria. Donations to anti-malaria, (non-Covid) vaccination, and vitamin A supplementation programs like the ones recommended by GiveWell can help cushion that blow.
4) If you do give locally, you can still consider impact
Although this guide is mostly meant to offer suggestions if you don’t have existing philanthropic interests and are curious for the most efficient ways to help, many people already do have specific causes: They want to give to their own communities, or to causes they’re passionate about for personal reasons (like curing a disease that killed a loved one, for instance). And they often want to use charity as a way to connect with broader trends in the news — by, say, donating to help refugees coming from Ukraine, Afghanistan, and elsewhere.
It is, of course, admirable to give to your own community and personal causes, and a lot has happened in recent years to make it easier to find effective ways to give domestically. The group Charity Navigator acquired a nonprofit called ImpactMatters in 2020 and began incorporating its estimates of the bang-for-the-buck provided by charities in several different sectors.
So you can specify that your goal is, say, to provide a night of shelter for a person experiencing homelessness, and Charity Navigator will provide you with a menu of nonprofits and their cost per night of housing. Fellowship Deliverance Ministries in Georgia, for instance, is estimated to provide a night of shelter for $2 per person. You can also narrow it down by where you want to give: Here’s a list of Washington, DC-based charities with impact evaluations, for instance.
5) Saving lives isn't everything
If you care mainly about reducing early mortality and giving people more years to live, then you should give all your donations to the Malaria Consortium, Helen Keller Intl, or the Against Malaria Foundation. Malaria is a frequently fatal disease, and cost-effective interventions to reduce malaria infection are a great way to save lives. Similarly, vitamin A supplementation, like Helen Keller does, is an effective way of reducing child mortality, as is vaccination (as promoted by New Incentives).
But extending life isn’t the only thing that matters; improving quality of life matters, too.
It’s extremely hard to weigh these interests against each other: Is it better to make a donation that can save one child’s life, or, with the same amount of money, to lift multiple families out of extreme poverty? There’s no one right answer to that question. How you answer it depends on your philosophical assumptions.
“Philosophical factors can radically alter the cost-effectiveness of life-extending interventions,” writes the Happier Lives Institute, a research center that aims to find evidence-based ways to improve wellbeing worldwide, in a new report. To show this, the researchers crunched the numbers to compare the cost-effectiveness of three different charities in terms of how much they boost subjective wellbeing. Two were life-improving charities: GiveDirectly, which gives cash to poor people in countries like Kenya and Uganda to spend as they see fit, and StrongMinds, which treats depression in African women using group psychotherapy. The third charity, the Against Malaria Foundation, is mainly life-saving.
Their findings? “On the assumptions most favorable to extending lives, AMF is about 30 percent more cost-effective than StrongMinds. On the assumptions least favorable to extending lives, StrongMinds is around 12 times more cost-effective than AMF.”
So when you’re making your donations, it’s worth thinking not only about quantity of life, but also about quality of life. GiveWell asked recipients themselves how they weight each of these, and you can read about the results here.
6) Maybe just give money directly to poor people
For years, one of our primary charities has been GiveDirectly, which gives unconditional cash transfers. (Sigal donated to them in 2022.) We’ve given to them partly because there's a large body of research on the benefits of cash transfers, which we find quite compelling.
But we’ve donated to GiveDirectly mostly because we didn’t trust ourselves to know what the world's poorest people need most. We've been profoundly lucky to never experience the kind of extreme poverty that billions of people worldwide have to endure. We have no idea what we would spend a cash transfer from GiveDirectly on if we were living on less than $2 a day in Uganda. Would we buy a bednet? Maybe! Or maybe we'd buy an iron roof. Or school tuition for loved ones. Or cattle.
But you know who does have a good sense of the needs of poor people in Uganda? Poor people in Uganda. They have a very good idea of what they need. Do they sometimes misjudge their spending priorities? Certainly; as do all of us. And bednets appear to be underpurchased relative to the actual need for them. But generally, you should only give something other than cash if you are confident you know the recipients’ needs better than they do. We weren’t confident of that, so we gave cash.
As the World Bank's Jishnu Das once put it, “‘Does giving cash work well?’ is a well-defined question only if you are willing to say that ‘well’ is something that WE, the donors, want to define for families whom we have never met and whose living circumstances we have probably never spent a day, let alone a lifetime, in.” If you're not willing to say that, then you should strongly consider giving cash.
7) Don’t give to big charities ...
You’ll notice that all of the charities GiveWell recommends are reasonably small, and some big names are absent. That’s not an accident. In general, charity effectiveness evaluators are skeptical of large relief organizations, for a number of reasons.
Large organizations tend to be less transparent about where their money goes and also likelier to direct money to disaster relief efforts, which are usually less cost-effective, in general, than public health programs. “Overall, our impression is that your donation to these organizations is very hard to trace, but will likely supplement an agenda of extremely diverse programming, driven largely by governments and other very large funders,” wrote GiveWell co-founder Holden Karnofsky in a 2011 blog post.
Our colleague Kelsey Piper has explained that by the time a disaster has struck, it’s mostly too late to improve disaster relief work — the immediate response, which includes search-and-rescue and emergency medicine. Investments in improving those capabilities are most effective either before a crisis or well after, during the recovery phase.
8) ... But maybe consider meta-charities
A different option is giving to groups like GiveWell, Innovations for Poverty Action, The Life You Can Save, and Giving What We Can that evaluate development approaches and charities, and encourage effective giving. Suppose that every dollar given to Giving What We Can — which encourages people to pledge to donate at least 10 percent of their income until retirement — results in $1.20 in donations to the Against Malaria Foundation. If that’s the case, then you should give to Giving What We Can until the marginal effect on donations to Against Malaria hits $1 or lower.
“If they can turn a dollar of donations into substantially more than a dollar of increased donations to effective charities, isn’t that the best use of my money?” asks Jeff Kaufman, a software developer who, with his wife Julia Wise, gives about half his income to effective charities and meta-charities.
9) Consider giving to animals
Alternatively, you could consider giving to non-humans. Animal charities, especially those engaged in corporate pressure campaigns to better the treatment of farm animals, chickens in particular, can be effective in improving animal welfare. The charity evaluations in this area are much younger and less methodologically rigorous than GiveWell’s, but Animal Charity Evaluators has named four animal groups that may be effective causes for donations:
Sign up for the Meat/Less newsletter course Want to eat less meat but don’t know where to start? Sign up for Vox’s five-day newsletter full of practical tips — and food for thought — to incorporate more plant-based food into your diet.
10) Give what you can (though if you can spare it, pledging to give 10 percent of your income would be fantastic)
One of the hardest problems in philanthropy is deciding how much to donate.
There are some people who argue the correct answer, unless you’re near the end of your life, is nothing. You should, in this view, not give to charity during your career, and instead save and invest your money, increasing it as much as possible over time. That way you can give more when you die than you would have if giving continuously over the course of your life.
Another approach is to “earn to give”: take a high-paying job, typically in finance or tech, and give away a huge share of your earnings, like 40 to 50 percent. But frankly it’s not the best option for most people, especially if the “earn to give” job is in a morally dubious field. And there are a lot of amazing jobs — in scientific research, in the private sector, in direct charity or nonprofit or government employment — where the typical person can do more good through their work than they could by solely using their career as a mechanism through which to generate donation money.
So we suggest a more moderate course: You can sign the Giving What We Can pledge, which commits members to donating 10 percent of their annual income to highly effective charities, or take a Trial Pledge, which commits members to donating a percentage of their choice — at least 1 percent — to such charities.
Ten percent is a totally reasonable number, comparable to alms in many religions, that requires relatively minimal sacrifice. (Here’s an interview with Toby Ord, who started that pledge.) But even if 10 percent is too much for you, don’t despair. Giving 5 percent or 1 percent is better than giving 0 percent.
Perhaps the most important thing is to just get into the groove of donating, to make it a habit. We use direct deposit on our paychecks to make the most of our charitable contributions, just so it’s extremely automatic and hard for us to avoid doing. Going from not giving to giving a little, regularly, is a huge positive step.
Update, November 29, 2022: This story, originally published in 2020 and updated in 2021, has been updated throughout for 2022.


vox--2020-12-21--A criminal justice expert’s guide to donating effectively right now

One of the most common questions I have been asked in the aftermath of the George Floyd protests against police violence and the broader resurgence in Black Lives Matter activism in 2020 is : “ How can I help ?
” It ’ s a natural question after some of the largest and most persistent acts of civil disobedience in years took place in dozens of cities across the country .
And while the question of what being a good member or ally of movements for racial justice means is vast and beyond the scope of this short article , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ say a bit about a narrower question : Where should a person who worries about the trajectory of criminal justice in America donate money ?
Chloe Cockburn , the program officer for criminal justice reform at the Open Philanthropy Project , has thought harder about that question than just about anyone .
Open Philanthropy is an effort , backed by the nearly $ 14 billion fortune of Cari Tuna and her husband , Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz , to identify the most efficient , highest-bang-for-the-buck philanthropic investments possible regardless of cause area .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ is an important area to invest in , up there with fighting global poverty or preventing mass pandemics , and that reducing mass incarceration in particular should be a high priority .
The sheer size of the American carceral state means that even a 10 percent reduction in the number of people in prison or jail could over time spare millions of people from living under truly abhorrent conditions .
Cockburn put together a very useful set of recommendations for donations in the wake of the George Floyd protests , first on a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in a memo to donors that she shared with me this past summer .
Note that Cockburn does not by any means intend the list below to be exhaustive ; an organization not being listed does not mean that organization is ineffective .
But these are groups for which she , as a professional grant-maker with deep experience in this area , can vouch for as of this writing .
( If you ’ re a large donor interested in talking through these issues , Cockburn also provides tailored recommendations ; you can @ @ @ @ @ @ @ reached back out to her in November , after the initial flare-up of protests in the summer had settled and after many groups either sprouted up or grew substantially , Cockburn offered that the three organizations she thinks “ are highest leverage right now ( taking into account their work , what they ’ re winning , and their budget gaps ) are the National Council for Incarcerated and Formerly Incarcerated Women and Girls , JusticeLA and Real Justice PAC.
” Many of these groups got an influx of attention and money this @ @ @ @ @ @ @ good time to give , since they might be more in need than they were just a few months ago .
For more on those groups , and other high-impact groups Cockburn recommends , keep reading .
The Movement for Black Lives and other national organizations Cockburn is clear that which of the groups on her list is a “ top pick ” will depend on a donor ’ s specific goals : whether they want to just reduce incarceration , build alternatives to incarceration , or elect more progressive prosecutors .
But @ @ @ @ @ @ @ she writes , “ I ’ d say Movement for Black Lives , based on their strategic leadership , commitment to regranting to local efforts , and legitimacy as a movement anchor ” would be a top pick for donations .
M4BL is a network of more than 100 member organizations , each focusing on different aspects of the civil rights and criminal justice reform movements , such as Color of Change , the Black Movement Law Project , the Black Lives Matter Network , and dozens of smaller local and regional groups @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Donations to M4BL through ActBlue are regranted to these member organizations based on need , which allows for greater targeting efficiency .
At a national and regional level , Cockburn also recommends : • Black Voters Matter Fund , which works on mobilizing and turning out Black voters in the South for races on every level from local to federal • Color of Change , a digital organizing group whose campaigns have , among other things , helped boot Pat Buchanan from MSNBC and Bill O ’ Reilly from Fox News following @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for Racial Justice , which organizes white people to do anti-racist advocacy • The National Council for Incarcerated and Formerly Incarcerated Women and Girls , a self-advocacy group organizing female-identified people who ’ ve been through the penal system • Survived and Punished , which organizes survivors of domestic and sexual violence who have been incarcerated or targeted by law enforcement • The Fund for Black Newspapers , which supports small Black newspapers ( like the Atlanta Voice or the Houston Defender , to name two represented on its board ) • The @ @ @ @ @ @ @ organizers in the South and Appalachia What unifies these donations is their role in supporting a broader racial justice movement , as opposed to narrowly fighting for specific outcomes like , say , abolishing bail .
Those specific causes are important too , but as Cockburn and Open Phil have written : State and local groups doing movement-building and organizing work If you want to fund county-level organizing work , donating to national organizations that then regrant is one path .
But Cockburn also recommends a number of smaller local groups that might @ @ @ @ @ @ @ specific cities or regions .
Many of these groups are working on defunding the police and redirecting local money to social services ; if that ’ s a cause you support , these might be attractive groups : • JusticeLA , a coalition in Los Angeles that Cockburn notes has “ scored huge wins in the past year around canceling a multi-billion dollar jail contract ” and is “ currently fighting to reduce the multi-billion dollar police budget ” • The Bread and Roses Community Fund , another coalition but in Philadelphia , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Voice of the Experienced , a Louisiana-based grassroots group led by formerly incarcerated people .
• Southsiders Organized for Unity and Liberation ( SOUL ) , a multi-issue Chicago community organizing group also involved in defunding efforts • Equity and Transformation ( EAT ) , a group working with and for post-incarcerated and marginalized black Chicago residents and workers , often working outside the formal economy • The Crossroads Fund , a foundation that funds a number of grassroots groups across Chicago • The Texas Organizing Project , which is fighting to defund @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , and oust Dallas ’ s police chief after police brutality toward protesters The Black Lives Matter local organizations in Louisville , Kentucky , Chicago , and Los Angeles also fit under this grouping .
Investing in restorative justice and other large-scale transformations “ Defunding the police ” won ’ t accomplish much if that money doesn ’ t go back into investing in alternatives that can contribute to community safety through other means .
Two groups Cockburn recommends that are working on organizing for “ restorative justice , ” an umbrella term @ @ @ @ @ @ @ from crime , violence , and victimization , are : • Life Comes From It , a “ grant-making circle ” that distributes funds to grassroots restorative justice groups , including “ indigenous peacemaking ” groups in Native American communities • Spirit House , a group based in North Carolina that runs a program called “ Harm Free Zone , ” seeking to “ reduc [ e ] and eventually eliminat [ e ] community reliance on law enforcement ” by “ uncovering and restoring intervention practices , existing within distinct communities , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ interpersonal conflict and state violence ” If you identify as a police abolitionist and are interested in more radical approaches to rethinking criminal justice , these might be valuable groups to invest in .
It ’ s not a restorative justice group exactly , but Cockburn also recommends the National Black Food and Justice Alliance .
As the name implies , the group is focused on food justice issues , but takes a very broad view of that mandate as part of a more comprehensive agenda of building Black power over land and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ restorative justice .
Cockburn also recommends a number of groups that are piloting alternatives to traditional policing like “ violence interrupting , ” in which community members seek to intervene and deescalate conflicts before they become violent or deadly : • Community Street Team ( NCST ) is a Newark , New Jersey-based group that employs and trains violence interrupters • The H.E.L.P.E.R Foundation is a Los Angeles County group doing violence prevention and gang intervention work • LIFE Camp Inc. is a New York City-based group providing training , mentorship , and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ violence • National Institute for Criminal Justice Reform is a national organization offering technical assistance , consulting , research , and organizational development for violence prevention practitioners and others in related professions • The Professional Community Intervention Training Institute ( PCITI ) is a training group that instructs , develops , and certifies violence intervention practitioners , based on evidence-based best practices If you ’ re more electorally minded , writes Cockburn , you could consider donating to the campaigns of progressive prosecutors .
District and county attorneys have an incredible amount of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , whether to offer plea bargains , which pleas to offer , which sentences to pursue , and on and on .
Many scholars of criminal justice , like Fordham ’ s John Pfaff , argue that prosecutorial discretion , and in particular a rise in “ tough on crime ” prosecutors , has been the main driver of mass incarceration .
“ Analyzing data from state judiciaries , [ Pfaff ] compared the number of crimes , arrests , and prosecutions from 1994 to 2008 , ” Vox ’ s German Lopez @ @ @ @ @ @ @ violent and property crime fell , and arrests for almost all crimes also fell .
But one thing went up : the number of felony cases filed in court .
Prosecutors were filing more charges even as crime and arrests dropped , throwing more people into the prison system .
Prosecutors were driving mass incarceration.
” One major force fighting mass incarceration in recent years has been the rise of prosecutors explicitly committed to reducing prison populations , including Larry Krasner ( now district attorney of Philadelphia ) , Chesa Boudin ( now @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and Rachael Rollins ( currently district attorney for Suffolk County , Massachusetts , which includes Boston ) .
2021 will be a particularly important year in this respect , as Krasner is up for reelection , as is Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance ( who is not seen as a reformer , is facing multiple challenges , and might not even run again ) .
Cockburn thus recommends a number of groups working on DA campaigns , trying to get more Krasner/Boudin/Rollins-style prosecutors in office where they can seek lower sentences and stop @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Families Party of NY , which works on elections statewide but will likely endorse a progressive candidate for Manhattan DA • Reclaim Philadelphia , which helped elect Krasner in 2017 and will be fighting to reelect him in 2021 • Real Justice PAC , a political action committee that works on district attorney races across the country • Citizen Action of New York , which is working to elect a progressive prosecutor in Albany • Michigan Liberation , a statewide network that is among other initiatives fighting to elect a progressive prosecutor in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ group working on two local DA races currently If this area interests you , you can consult Real Justice PAC or Color of Change ’ s Winning Justice Project ( another prosecutor elections group ) to see if candidates against mass incarceration are running in your city or county .

One of the most common questions I have heard friends ask in the 18 months since the George Floyd protests against police violence is: “How can I help?”
While the question of what being a good member or ally of movements for racial justice means is vast and beyond the scope of this short article, I think it’s possible to say a bit about a narrower question: Where should a person who worries about the trajectory of criminal justice in America donate money?
Chloe Cockburn has thought harder about that question than just about anyone. Until recently, Cockburn was the program officer for criminal justice reform at the Open Philanthropy Project, a foundation-like organization backed by the nearly $14 billion fortune of Cari Tuna and her husband, Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz. It seeks to identify the most efficient philanthropic investments possible regardless of cause area.
More recently, Cockburn and colleagues launched a group called Just Impact Advisors, which will make grants to criminal justice groups and advise donors interested in the issue. It is a continuation and expansion of her work at Open Philanthropy, trying to find the most effective organizations that are reducing the number of people in prisons and jails. It’s currently backed by a $50 million gift from Open Philanthropy. Suffice it to say, Cockburn has a lot of experience making tough choices about where to donate significant sums of money to try to fight mass incarceration.
Cockburn put together a very useful set of recommendations for donations in the wake of the George Floyd protests last year, first on a Twitter thread and then in more detail in a memo to donors that she shared with me last summer. For this year’s giving season, I reached back out to her this month for her updated list of recommendations.
Note that Cockburn does not by any means intend the list below to be exhaustive; an organization not being listed does not mean that organization is ineffective. But these are groups for which she, as a professional grant-maker with deep experience in this area, can vouch for as of this writing. (If you’re a large donor interested in talking through these issues, Cockburn also provides tailored recommendations; you can reach her here.)
Many of these groups got an influx of attention and money in the summer of 2020 — which makes now a good time to give, since they’re now getting less attention and might be in greater need of funding than they were 18 months ago.
State and local groups doing movement-building and organizing work
Most criminal justice policy is made at the state and city level, meaning that state- and city-level organizations are often best situated to change the system. To that end, Cockburn recommends a number of small local groups that might be appealing causes for people in those specific cities or regions.
The Black Lives Matter local organizations in Chicago, Los Angeles, and Louisville, Kentucky, also fit under this grouping.
Investing in restorative justice and other large-scale transformations
One way to reduce incarceration is to invest in alternatives to the traditional prison system. Two groups Cockburn recommends that are working on organizing for “restorative justice,” an umbrella term for non-carceral approaches to preventing and healing from crime, violence, and victimization, are:
Life Comes From It, a “grant-making circle” that distributes funds to grassroots restorative justice groups nationwide, including “indigenous peacemaking” groups in Native American communities. “The fund accepts donations of any size, and grants are often small ($5,000-$25,000), meaning your contributions make a real difference,” Cockburn says. “They are the only practitioner-led national fund providing this type of support to restorative-based solutions.”
Spirit House, a group based in North Carolina that runs a program called Harm Free Zone, which seeks to “reduc[e] and eventually eliminat[e] community reliance on law enforcement” by “uncovering and restoring intervention practices, existing within distinct communities, to prevent or intervene in incidents of interpersonal conflict and state violence”
It’s not a restorative justice group exactly, but Cockburn also recommends the National Black Food and Justice Alliance. As the name implies, the group is focused on food justice issues, but it takes a very broad view of that mandate as part of a more comprehensive agenda of building Black power over land and food production, and pursuing initiatives like restorative justice.
Cockburn also recommends a number of groups that are piloting alternatives to traditional criminal justice systems, like “violence interrupting,” in which community members seek to intervene and deescalate conflicts before they become violent or deadly. Cockburn recommends giving to the Community-Based Public Safety Collective, which grew out of the Newark Community Street Team in Newark, New Jersey, and now supports local groups around the country working on violence interruption and other alternatives. (The effectiveness of violence interrupters is actively debated, and part of what these groups are doing is experimenting with new methods that might be more effective.)
Electing more progressive prosecutors
If you’re more electorally minded, writes Cockburn, you could consider donating to the campaigns of progressive prosecutors. District and county attorneys have an incredible amount of flexibility in deciding whether to bring charges, whether to offer plea bargains, which pleas to offer, which sentences to pursue, and on and on. Many scholars of criminal justice, like Fordham’s John Pfaff, argue that prosecutorial discretion, and in particular a rise in “tough on crime” prosecutors, has been the main driver of mass incarceration.
“Analyzing data from state judiciaries, [Pfaff] compared the number of crimes, arrests, and prosecutions from 1994 to 2008,” Vox’s German Lopez writes. “He found that reported violent and property crime fell, and arrests for almost all crimes also fell. But one thing went up: the number of felony cases filed in court. Prosecutors were filing more charges even as crime and arrests dropped, throwing more people into the prison system. Prosecutors were driving mass incarceration.”
One major force fighting mass incarceration in recent years has been the rise of prosecutors explicitly committed to reducing prison populations, including Larry Krasner (now district attorney of Philadelphia), Kim Foxx (district attorney of Cook County, Illinois, including Chicago), Chesa Boudin (district attorney of San Francisco), and Rachael Rollins (currently district attorney for Suffolk County, Massachusetts, which includes Boston).
Cockburn thus recommends a number of groups working on DA campaigns, trying to get more Krasner/Boudin/Foxx/Rollins-style prosecutors in office where they can seek lower sentences and stop prosecuting low-level offenses:
The Working Families Party, whose state-level affiliate parties work on prosecutors’ races and endorse progressive candidates around the country
Real Justice PAC, a political action committee that works on district attorney races across the country
Action St. Louis, which is working on the reelection effort of progressive St. Louis prosecutor Wesley Bell
If this area interests you, you can consult Real Justice PAC or Color of Change’s Winning Justice Project (another prosecutor elections group) to see if candidates against mass incarceration are running in your city or county.
The Movement for Black Lives and other national organizations
For donors with more national interests, Cockburn recommends giving to the Movement for Black Lives (M4BL), “based on their strategic leadership, commitment to regranting to local efforts, and legitimacy as a movement anchor.”
M4BL is a network of more than 100 member organizations, each focusing on different aspects of the civil rights and criminal justice reform movements, such as Color of Change, the Black Movement Law Project, the Black Lives Matter Network, and dozens of smaller local and regional groups that might otherwise struggle to receive funding. Donations to M4BL through ActBlue are regranted to these member organizations based on need, which allows for greater targeting efficiency.
At a national and regional level, Cockburn also recommends:
What unifies these donations is their role in supporting a broader racial justice movement, as opposed to narrowly fighting for specific outcomes like, say, abolishing bail.
Those specific causes are important too, but as Cockburn and Open Philanthropy have written, “the expansion of what is politically possible cannot be achieved without mobilizing a large base of directly impacted people — for example, people convicted of crimes, people who have spent time in jail and/or prison, crime victims, their families, and their communities. We think that building this constituency must be done from the ground up, hence our attention to county-level organizing work.”
Update: This story was originally published in 2020 and has been updated throughout for 2021.


vox--2020-12-21--How China’s “wolf warrior” diplomats use Twitter to troll Beijing’s enemies

China has a new weapon in its global information warfare arsenal : “ wolf warriors.
” Named after a popular Chinese nationalistic film franchise , “ wolf warriors ” are official government diplomats whose duties go beyond the traditional diplomatic functions of closed-door negotiating and hosting fancy embassy soirees — and into the cutthroat world of Twitter .
Armed with 280 characters and access to a platform that has millions of users worldwide but is blocked for most people in China , they fiercely defend China against its foreign critics , ruthlessly taunt countries and leaders who have displeased the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that serves Beijing ’ s interests .
And oftentimes their efforts have consequences that go far beyond social media and leap into the real world .
Earlier this month , for instance , a Chinese Foreign Ministry official tweeted a fake photo of a grinning Australian soldier holding a knife to an Afghan child ’ s neck .
The image was meant to troll Australia ’ s government over a recently released report on alleged war crimes committed by Australian soldiers in Afghanistan .
The tweet turned the subject of Australian war crimes @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the Australian government to respond and launching the story into global headlines .
All of this might seem childish .
But it ’ s also incredibly effective , according to Jessica Brandt , head of research and policy at the Alliance for Securing Democracy and a senior fellow at the German Marshall Fund .
After that Chinese official ’ s tweet trolling Australia , “ he gained about 75,000 new followers , ” she told me .
“ That was like a 10 percent increase in a week — that ’ s huge @ @ @ @ @ @ @ off.
” Brandt recently co-authored a report on China ’ s wolf warrior diplomats , so I called her up to talk more about the phenomenon : What China is trying to accomplish , how this compares to Russia ’ s online activities , and how liberal democracies can respond .
Our interview , edited for length and clarity , is below .
Explain to me what a “ wolf warrior ” is in China , and why they use Twitter so much .
The term “ wolf warrior ” comes from a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ nationalistic bent .
The moniker has been used to apply to China ’ s more aggressive approach in the information space following the Covid-19 pandemic .
Wolf warriors — actual Chinese diplomats , in this case — have taken to Twitter to shake up that information space and promote the nation ’ s standing in the world .
Trolling is part of it , but not all of it .
Some of what they do is troll the United States on issues of race , taking a page out of Russia ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Floyd ’ s killing , we saw Chinese diplomats on Twitter use hashtags like # ICantBreathe or # BlackLivesMatter over 250 times .
That was in an effort to denigrate the US record on race to deflect from China ’ s own dismal human rights record .
I just recently covered the growing China-Australia spat over a war crimes report , where we saw Zhao Lijan , a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson , tweet a doctored image that sparked a whole diplomatic fight with Australia .
Why would China ’ s government want @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Twitter ?
It ’ s a departure for China , because it ’ s traditionally been more conservative in the information space .
That makes sense , since China was a rising power with a lot to lose in the recent past .
What ’ s important here is to think about when these activities started : They ’ re roughly correlated with the rise of Hong Kong ’ s pro-democracy protests [ in the summer of 2019 ] .
That ’ s really when this behavior accelerated .
And after the coronavirus @ @ @ @ @ @ @ we know , it originated in China — the goal of the wolf warriors was to deflect blame and criticism .
They wanted to sow doubt about what was happening and denigrate democracies , namely those blaming China for not controlling the disease early on .
In the case of the Australia tweet , the goal was to denigrate Australia ’ s human rights record .
Broadly speaking , then , a lot of the online effort is to cast democracies as either feckless , or ineffective , or incompetent , or hypocritical @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s playbook to reach its goals .
Why borrow from what Russia has been doing ?
What we ’ re seeing is a lot of aspects from the Russian playbook , but also some uniquely Chinese aspects to the strategy .
Russia is sort of excellent at denigrating democracy and denting democracy ’ s appeal .
It has a proven track record of aptly highlighting the strengths of an alternative model .
That appeals to China .
One way to do that is to lean on the influence networks of other autocracy-minded @ @ @ @ @ @ @ vast constellation of personalities , pseudo academics , and bloggers to make the regime ’ s case for it .
They ’ re basically influencers .
China is now doing the same thing : It ’ s amplifying the voices of influencers who are motivated by a pro-Beijing , anti-West worldview to push narratives that attack US foreign policy and deny its own human rights record in Xinjiang or Hong Kong .
China is also dabbling in “ whataboustism.
” The wolf warriors are casting doubt on official versions of events , using @ @ @ @ @ @ @ content to attract an audience by being really provocative .
Think of the Australia tweet , for example .
That said , China is doing something that Russia isn ’ t , which is engaging with inauthentic accounts , or at least accounts that are highly suspicious .
It ’ s hard to know if these were created by the government or computer-generated accounts .
But either way , Beijing ’ s diplomats have retweeted these accounts hundreds and hundreds of times , and they ’ re included among the topmost retweeted accounts @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
It ’ s possibly just really sloppy tradecraft , and wolf warriors don ’ t know that they ’ re tweeting bots .
But I think it ’ s hard to build grassroots support for your social media campaign if you don ’ t allow your people on the platform .
It ’ s been really successful .
You talked about that Australian tweet : After Zhao ’ s tweet went out , he gained about 75,000 new followers .
That was like a 10 percent increase in a week — that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ provocation really pays off .
Clearly .
It got Australia ’ s government to respond , it got me to write an explainer for Vox , and it ’ s already featuring as a major part of this conversation .
Absolutely .
There ’ s something brilliant about it , as the tweet got more coverage than the original [ war crimes ] report itself .
This brings me to a question I ’ ve had a lot of trouble answering : What to do when government officials are online trolls ?
On @ @ @ @ @ @ @ make are technically official government statements .
On the other hand , they ’ re trolling — clearly putting out bait and hoping for a reaction .
The inclination to respond to such provocations seems right to me , because , again , they are official statements .
It ’ d be weird to just ignore them .
But that said , it doesn ’ t seem like ignoring the trolling would do much , either .
No one wants to let misinformation , and potentially damaging information at that , go unanswered @ @ @ @ @ @ @ warriors and Russia in general choose these tools because these are asymmetric .
They want to fight the information battle on terms that benefit them .
Democracies , therefore , need to think about this in the context of persistent competition — that ’ s competition between democracies and autocracies , between open systems and closed systems — all in the information , economic , and political domains .
We in the US have been a little bit slow to recognize the full nature of the contest .
So how to deal with @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the terms of our own choosing and not take the bait .
Second , and relatedly , is to compete using open , truthful , trusted information .
It ’ s important to remember that a key idea in a democracy is that there is a truth .
We can know it , and we can use it to govern ourselves .
Autocracies in their own way are kind of brittle .
They ’ re capitalizing on a short-term vulnerability of ours , sure , but they have a long-term vulnerability , which @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a threat .
Big picture , then , we need to remember that polluting the information space hurts us much more than it hurts them .
We should engage in a persistent effort to expose , I think , the failures and false promises of their model , which they ’ re actively promoting as an alternative to ours .
We can do that best by withstanding some blows and returning the favor — at times of our choosing — with our truthful information to expose their problems .

China has a new weapon in its global information warfare arsenal: “wolf warriors.”
Named after a popular Chinese nationalistic film franchise, “wolf warriors” are official government diplomats whose duties go beyond the traditional diplomatic functions of closed-door negotiating and hosting fancy embassy soirees — and into the cutthroat world of Twitter.
Armed with 280 characters and access to a platform that has millions of users worldwide but is blocked for most people in China, they fiercely defend China against its foreign critics, ruthlessly taunt countries and leaders who have displeased the Chinese government, and shamelessly spread misinformation that serves Beijing’s interests.
In other words, they’re professional diplomatic trolls.
And oftentimes their efforts have consequences that go far beyond social media and leap into the real world.
Earlier this month, for instance, a Chinese Foreign Ministry official tweeted a fake photo of a grinning Australian soldier holding a knife to an Afghan child’s neck. The image was meant to troll Australia’s government over a recently released report on alleged war crimes committed by Australian soldiers in Afghanistan.
The tweet turned the subject of Australian war crimes into an international diplomatic spat, forcing the Australian government to respond and launching the story into global headlines.
All of this might seem childish. But it’s also incredibly effective, according to Jessica Brandt, head of research and policy at the Alliance for Securing Democracy and a senior fellow at the German Marshall Fund.
After that Chinese official’s tweet trolling Australia, “he gained about 75,000 new followers,” she told me. “That was like a 10 percent increase in a week — that’s huge. China understands that provocation really pays off.”
Brandt recently co-authored a report on China’s wolf warrior diplomats, so I called her up to talk more about the phenomenon: What China is trying to accomplish, how this compares to Russia’s online activities, and how liberal democracies can respond.
Our interview, edited for length and clarity, is below.
Alex Ward
Explain to me what a “wolf warrior” is in China, and why they use Twitter so much.
Jessica Brandt
The term “wolf warrior” comes from a film franchise in China that has a nationalistic bent. The moniker has been used to apply to China’s more aggressive approach in the information space following the Covid-19 pandemic. Wolf warriors — actual Chinese diplomats, in this case — have taken to Twitter to shake up that information space and promote the nation’s standing in the world.
Alex Ward
Are they basically high-level trolls?
Jessica Brandt
Trolling is part of it, but not all of it.
Some of what they do is troll the United States on issues of race, taking a page out of Russia’s playbook. Over the summer after George Floyd’s killing, we saw Chinese diplomats on Twitter use hashtags like #ICantBreathe or #BlackLivesMatter over 250 times. That was in an effort to denigrate the US record on race to deflect from China’s own dismal human rights record.
Alex Ward
I just recently covered the growing China-Australia spat over a war crimes report, where we saw Zhao Lijan, a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson, tweet a doctored image that sparked a whole diplomatic fight with Australia.
Why would China’s government want to start fights with other nations on Twitter?
Jessica Brandt
It’s a departure for China, because it’s traditionally been more conservative in the information space. That makes sense, since China was a rising power with a lot to lose in the recent past.
What’s important here is to think about when these activities started: They’re roughly correlated with the rise of Hong Kong’s pro-democracy protests [in the summer of 2019]. That’s really when this behavior accelerated.
And after the coronavirus spread around the world — and as we know, it originated in China — the goal of the wolf warriors was to deflect blame and criticism. They wanted to sow doubt about what was happening and denigrate democracies, namely those blaming China for not controlling the disease early on.
In the case of the Australia tweet, the goal was to denigrate Australia’s human rights record. Broadly speaking, then, a lot of the online effort is to cast democracies as either feckless, or ineffective, or incompetent, or hypocritical.
Alex Ward
You mentioned China is using Russia’s playbook to reach its goals. Why borrow from what Russia has been doing?
Jessica Brandt
What we’re seeing is a lot of aspects from the Russian playbook, but also some uniquely Chinese aspects to the strategy.
Russia is sort of excellent at denigrating democracy and denting democracy’s appeal. It has a proven track record of aptly highlighting the strengths of an alternative model. That appeals to China.
One way to do that is to lean on the influence networks of other autocracy-minded people. Russia in particular has a vast constellation of personalities, pseudo academics, and bloggers to make the regime’s case for it. They’re basically influencers.
China is now doing the same thing: It’s amplifying the voices of influencers who are motivated by a pro-Beijing, anti-West worldview to push narratives that attack US foreign policy and deny its own human rights record in Xinjiang or Hong Kong.
China is also dabbling in “whataboustism.” The wolf warriors are casting doubt on official versions of events, using multiple conflicting conspiracy theories while using viral content to attract an audience by being really provocative. Think of the Australia tweet, for example.
That said, China is doing something that Russia isn’t, which is engaging with inauthentic accounts, or at least accounts that are highly suspicious. It’s hard to know if these were created by the government or computer-generated accounts. But either way, Beijing’s diplomats have retweeted these accounts hundreds and hundreds of times, and they’re included among the topmost retweeted accounts. Russia doesn’t do that.
It’s possibly just really sloppy tradecraft, and wolf warriors don’t know that they’re tweeting bots. But I think it’s hard to build grassroots support for your social media campaign if you don’t allow your people on the platform.
Alex Ward
Is China’s strategy working?
Jessica Brandt
It’s been really successful. You talked about that Australian tweet: After Zhao’s tweet went out, he gained about 75,000 new followers. That was like a 10 percent increase in a week — that’s huge. China understands that provocation really pays off.
Alex Ward
Clearly. It got Australia’s government to respond, it got me to write an explainer for Vox, and it’s already featuring as a major part of this conversation.
Jessica Brandt
Absolutely. There’s something brilliant about it, as the tweet got more coverage than the original [war crimes] report itself.
Alex Ward
This brings me to a question I’ve had a lot of trouble answering: What to do when government officials are online trolls? On the one hand, the statements they make are technically official government statements. On the other hand, they’re trolling — clearly putting out bait and hoping for a reaction.
The inclination to respond to such provocations seems right to me, because, again, they are official statements. It’d be weird to just ignore them. But that said, it doesn’t seem like ignoring the trolling would do much, either. No one wants to let misinformation, and potentially damaging information at that, go unanswered.
Jessica Brandt
Fundamentally, China’s wolf warriors and Russia in general choose these tools because these are asymmetric. They want to fight the information battle on terms that benefit them.
Democracies, therefore, need to think about this in the context of persistent competition — that’s competition between democracies and autocracies, between open systems and closed systems — all in the information, economic, and political domains. We in the US have been a little bit slow to recognize the full nature of the contest.
So how to deal with this? First is to respond on the terms of our own choosing and not take the bait. Second, and relatedly, is to compete using open, truthful, trusted information.
It’s important to remember that a key idea in a democracy is that there is a truth. We can know it, and we can use it to govern ourselves. Autocracies in their own way are kind of brittle. They’re capitalizing on a short-term vulnerability of ours, sure, but they have a long-term vulnerability, which is that information in their system is a threat. Big picture, then, we need to remember that polluting the information space hurts us much more than it hurts them.
We should engage in a persistent effort to expose, I think, the failures and false promises of their model, which they’re actively promoting as an alternative to ours. We can do that best by withstanding some blows and returning the favor — at times of our choosing — with our truthful information to expose their problems.