One of effective altruism’s biggest givers, crypto-bro Sam Bankman-Fried (often referred to as SBF), may have built his billion-dollar empire on lies and under the cover of goodwill bought by his extreme giving.
Ross Douthat of the New York Times referred to Bankman-Fried’s actions as “playing Robin Hood using proceeds from an over-leveraged Ponzi Scheme.” And he did so from his penthouse of pills and polyamory in the Bahamas. At least he had fun, but now the entire Effective Altruism (EA) movement is under fire.
Just look at these headlines written after SBF’s fall:
Effective Altruism Committed the Sin It Was Supposed to Correct
Effective altruism solved all the…
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Pam Mandel left suburbia for a lifetime of travel when she was only 17. She writes about her early travel days in her new memoir THE SAME RIVER TWICE.
Pam joined Kelsey and Jay to chat about hitchhiking, travel, questioning intentions while doing good, the time she went to the airport to help a refugee, founding a nonprofit, and, of course, jamming in a ukelele rock band.
Buy Pam’s book
Pam’s Uke FAQ
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Kohl Crecelius believes that jobs matter almost more than anything. He has helped lead the modern movement integrating social good and business, as he founded Krochet Kids and KNOWN SUPPLY. Kohl joins Kelsey and Jay to discuss Fair Trade, B-Corps, and how his journey started with crocheting.
Show Notes:
Kohl’s B-crop business – KNOWN SUPPLY
Nonprofit Kohl started with high school buddies – Krochet Kids
What we discussed:
His path to social entrepreneurship
Importance of travel
Aid and cycle of dependency
Rana Plaza factory collapse
Cause washing
Decision to create a nonprofit vs. a cause-oriented for profit
B Corps
Benefit Corporations
Fair Trade
Article: Prepare for the Ultimate Gaslighting…
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I love alien invasion movies. I love the cuts to scenes from around the world where we come together as a species regardless of race, religion, ideology, and nationality, to confront a common enemy. The poor Eiffel Tower, pyramids, Golden Gate Bridge, Sydney Opera House are the first to go. If you find yourself in an Alien Apocalypse movie, steer clear of major landmarks. But when they are shown exploding, they aren’t Egypt’s pyramids, or France’s Eiffel Tower, they are ours. Faced with human extinction, suddenly all that divides us fades away and what connects us is all that matters.
I’ve always felt like peace on earth was just one good alien invasion away.
Is COVID-19 our common…
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Kelsey Nielsen first traveled to Uganda to “love on babies” at an orphanage as a self-described “White Savior.” Then she started to ask questions about privilege and power and how best to help people. She is one of the founders of “No White Saviors” an Instagram account that has turned into a movement.
Our conversation on the Good People podcast went so long that I broke it into two parts. I could’ve asked her more questions. You can listen below or on Apple Podcasts or probably other places too. (I like doing the interviews, but not so much the administrivia a podcast or life requires.)
Part 1
Part 2
Show notes:
No…
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I sent my friend, Rozy, in Nairobi $200. She was able to enroll in college.
$200 = college
I sent my friend Collins in Kenya $15. He sent me a note that he’d be able to eat for the month and focus on his studies.
$15 = a month of food
I’ve spent the last two years working on a book project (Where Am I Giving?) researching how to responsibly give our time, talent, and money to make the largest impact. Our donations can save and improve lives, so we should make them wisely. Sometimes when we donate to effective causes in places like Kenya our gift can make 100 times the impact as it can in the United…
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I went for a three-mile run down my Indiana country road yesterday on December 31st, 2018. It was 60-degrees. That’s not okay normal. It’s a terrifying new normal to which I still can’t adjust. Even though I knew the temperature, I still dressed for a December run.
I ran past a field of unharvested corn, each stalk broken or bent, sewed but not reaped.
I was hot and wished I had worn shorts…in December…in Indiana…while running outside.
The realities of our changing climate are no different than they were a few months ago, but humanity’s understanding of them has made the prognosis even more dire.
We’re now aware that the world is in worse shape than we thought it was.
The…
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According to the Independent Sector, a membership organization of nonprofits, the value of volunteer time is “the average wage of non-management, non-agricultural workers.” So actually the stat is pretty meaningless and simply an average wage of an American worker.
Not every volunteer or volunteer task is equal.
I worked summers at my parents’ wood truss manufacturing plant swinging a hammer, pushing a broom, and cutting and stacking boards. But I am by no means a carpenter. When I built a bookshelf in shop class in high school, the cuts were rounded and it was a rocking bookshelf, which really isn’t a very desirable quality for a bookshelf. My father, on the other hand, can build anything. If Dad…
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Yesterday Nikki Haley, the US Ambassador to the United Nations, announced that the United States was withdrawing from the United Nations Human Rights Council.
George W. Bush thought about doing the same thing. The Obama administration recognized the group wasn’t the most effective, but decided to work from within it.
But putting the politics aside…do you have any idea what the human rights actually are?
I bet you can’t name all 25 articles. I bet you didn’t even know that there aren’t 25 articles but 30. Ha! Got ya! I certainly couldn’t until I looked them up while researching WHERE AM I GIVING? Here’s an excerpt–probably…
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If you’ve shopped at Walgreens recently, no doubt you’ve seen red clown noses for sale. They fight poverty or something, whatever that means.
“60 percent didn’t quite understand what we did,” says Janet Scardino, CEO of Comic Relief USA that partners with Walgreens to sell the noses.
Between the US and the UK, the campaign has raised more than $1.4 billion, which goes to organizations like Save the Children, Feeding America, and the Boys & Girls Club to help children in need.
NPR’s Goats & Soda reported on the campaign: “But how does buying a red foam nose at a drugstore for a buck help the cause? And does this charity with the silly name really do good work? We…
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