From today onward, for as long as I post to PosiPeople I will dedicate each post to one of the most effective entrepreneurs I am able to find providing direct-services to the poor and needy.

At times I will highlight organizations based simply on a recommendation from an individual who’s opinion I highly respect, other times I will base my reasons for highlighting an entrepreneur on overwhelming evidence. Whether my post is highly subjective or objective - each program will embody natural, timeless principles like: liberty, opportunity, faith, character, hope, personal responsibility and charity.

Charity has largely and falsely come to mean: the mindless giving of money. I hope to help restore it to its original and truer meaning. If you can imagine what an all wise, loving mother feels for her child, you then have a good idea of what charity is. It isn’t something you give, it is something you posses.

In my old line of work as a manufacturing engineer it was almost unforgivable to make the same mistake twice. Nothing destroyed our image of competence faster than repeating a gross error. Continually giving money away without making a conscious effort to place that money where it will have the greatest positive impact is synonymous with making the same mistake over and over again. If an individual is not confident that their money is being given to the most effective organizations within the areas they care about, then they should stop giving until they are.

There is a significant amount of organization-level research that exists, but it is scattered across the world wide web, and I imagine even more so across personal computers and intranets. In order to identify the most effective entrepreneurs providing direct services to the poor and needy I will need to begin identifying and aggregating links to all the third-party organizations providing rigorous organization-level evaluations on organization effectiveness. Both those organizations who make their evaluations public and those that don’t.

Here’s the beginning of a list :
www.cachildwelfareclearinghouse.org
ies.ed.gov/ncee/wwc
www.wsipp.wa.gov
www.calvinedwardscompany.com
www.genevaglobal.com
newprofit.org
www.ashoka.org

The more in-depth, professional evaluations we can amass, the more confident we can be that we have truly identified the most effective organizations serving the poor and needy. I hope you will add more links in your comments.

I will highlight the first high performing organization next week.