What makes charity or aid work well?
John has backed efficient charities since 2008 and from 2014 has stressed listening to the people being helped. Since 2019 he has held that long-term problems need long-term funding and partnerships that strengthen whole health systems, as with Partners In Health in Sierra Leone. Hank stresses community ownership that makes projects last.
Axis: evidence-based, sustainable, locally owned ... well-meaning handouts are enough
Concept: aid effectiveness
Positions by date: 59 records in 59 videos. The position was refined (2011), never reversed, in these records.
John
| date | how | position | video |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2008-04-08 | first on record | John supports efficient charities like Save the Children and Oxfam but objects to guilt-based fundraising ads that make the poor seem a 'them'. | Nerdfighting in Bangladesh 00:00:48 |
| 2012-12-17 | restate | John says good charity meets a complex problem with a complex response, as Save the Children does, and later praises its efficiency (91% to programs). | THE PROJECT FOR AWESOME 2012 IS HERE! Save the Children. 00:01:21 |
| 2013-12-17 | restate | John says children will be better off if Nerdfighteria partners with effective and efficient organizations like Save the Children. | THE PROJECT FOR AWESOME 2013 IS UPON US! 00:02:54 |
| 2014-01-21 | restate | John argues foreign aid is not a waste: small budgets bought tremendous results (polio, malaria, measles, TB); the risk is abandoning success as if it were failure. | Are Poor Countries Doomed? 00:01:45 |
| 2014-07-22 | restate | John says we must look at what charities do and how well they do it, rather than give to feel good or ease guilt. | Ambiguous Victories and Real Progress: Behind the Beautiful Forevers 00:02:11 |
| 2014-07-29 | restate | John says aid works in Ethiopia when organisations help execute Ethiopia's own health strategy rather than impose one, and that donors must listen. | Listen: Thoughts from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia 00:01:37 |
| 2014-08-19 | restate | John argues the real heroes of Ethiopia's health gains are local workers, volunteers and mothers, and that good records are vital to good care. | Baby Names: Thoughts from Rural Ethiopia 00:02:58 |
| 2014-08-26 | restate | John says the work of the llama gift begins when the money is raised, and no program works perfectly. | Food Is Weird: Understanding Agriculture in the Developing World 00:06:14 |
| 2014-09-23 | restate | John argues that listening is how we learn to actually help, rather than imposing our own ideas of what people need. | Looking Away 00:02:05 |
| 2015-09-22 | restate | The MDGs had a lot to do with this progress: not the only factor, but the attention and investment that resulted from them made a huge difference. | Is Poverty Necessary? Looking back at the Millennium Development Goals 00:03:35 |
| 2017-02-14 | restate | John says foreign aid has a reputation for not working but is in fact extremely effective. | Human Life Is Getting Better. Faster Than Ever Before. 00:01:31 |
| 2018-01-23 | restate | John does not say stop responding to emergencies: it is a both-and proposition, respond to emergencies and focus more attention and resources on long-term problems. | On Emergencies 00:02:53 |
| 2018-02-13 | restate | John agrees: breakthrough technologies can transform, and better systems can be disproportionately effective because they keep producing results after funding stops. | What Can't a Billion Dollars Buy? 00:02:50 |
| 2018-08-21 | restate | John admires Partners In Health because it is systems-focused: it does not drop in with solutions but listens to and invests in communities. | SYSTEMS!!!! 00:03:15 |
| 2019-04-09 | restate | Single interventions like a poster campaign or a donated generator often fail because the whole system must change together; isolated investments yield isolated results, investing in systems yields systemic ones. | The Only Psychiatric Hospital in Sierra Leone 00:04:39 |
| 2019-04-23 | restate | Nerdfighteria's project with Partners In Health Sierra Leone will provide ongoing funding to improve the health care system there, because long-term problems need long-term solutions. | untitled 00:02:55 |
| 2019-10-01 | restate | John believes progress will continue if the Ministry of Health, with organizations like PIH, can make long-term investments that address long-term problems. | Why Are Poor Countries Poor? 00:06:54 |
| 2019-10-22 | restate | John says he and Hank are not experts, but learning from experts taught them that lasting change happens best through deep, ongoing, lasting partnerships, hence a long-term commitment of money and attention. | Why We're Donating $6,500,000 00:04:24 |
| 2019-11-26 | restate | John says the charities know better than the brothers where the funding gaps are and unrestricted funds are really important to charities, so the Sierra Leone project stays separate. | old fashioned parts video 00:02:31 |
| 2019-12-03 | restate | John thinks it is really important to understand where the money goes and the good it does. | We Are Cats Now, I Guess? 00:02:04 |
| 2020-01-28 | restate | John says solidarity can be donations but also listening, paying attention, reading annual reports, or telling friends and family about these efforts. | Looking Away (Again) 00:05:45 |
| 2020-03-24 | restate | John says PIH values partnership enough to put it in its name, because in global health, as elsewhere, everyone needs to learn from everyone. | Mental Health Tips from People Who've Been There 00:00:29 |
| 2020-07-21 | restate | There is encouraging news but it is very difficult; any effective healthcare response must include mental health care and real listening and reassurance. | Somebody Once Asked . . . 00:02:26 |
| 2020-11-17 | restate | Too often people or institutions make big promises they fail to keep or short-term investments that are soon abandoned, which never strengthens the system. | Our Biggest Project Yet: A One Year Update 00:04:43 |
| 2021-11-02 | restate | John says money donated now still grows, as more kids surviving to adulthood and more educational opportunities, growth far more transformational than stock appreciation. | enough 00:02:16 |
| 2022-02-08 | restate | In the P4A's first half they raise unrestricted funds for pre-selected charities, this year (2022) Partners In Health and Save the Children, long-time partners, not for a particular project. | How Much Money Vlogbrothers Makes from YouTube (...and where it goes) 00:02:26 |
| 2022-02-22 | restate | John says Farmer was never alone: partnership, built into PIH's name, with hospitals, governments, philanthropists and above all fellow clinicians, was the foundation of his work. | On the Death of My Hero 00:01:56 |
| 2022-04-19 | restate | John says their philanthropy then was about their own helplessness, not grounded in listening to those affected, so their attention moved with the world's: Japan's tsunami, Syrian refugees, Ebola. | How do you cross the Sad Gap? 00:01:27 |
| 2022-07-12 | restate | John says long-term systemic problems need long-term systemic solutions. | Nauseous Puddle Water 00:02:44 |
| 2022-11-15 | restate | John says part of what makes PIH special is that it responds both to acute health crises and to their chronic underlying causes. | 3 Years In: What Happened, Why, and What's Next 00:01:56 |
| 2023-05-02 | restate | Many Sierra Leonean hospitals have special care baby units but few function: staff, training, supplies and maintenance matter, and Koidu's unit thrives because its team has that support. | GOOD NEWS 00:05:21 |
| 2024-03-12 | restate | John says that to really address TB the whole health system must be strengthened so it can search for cases, treat those it finds and prevent future ones. | How We End TB 00:03:50 |
| 2024-03-19 | restate | John believes the only way to end TB is with public-private partnerships like this one; this one is relatively small and much bigger ones are needed. | Our $80,000,000 Bet 00:01:56 |
| 2024-06-18 | restate | John says long-term problems like the systemic impoverishment of Sierra Leone's health care system demand long-term solutions like ongoing funding for it. | The Tea 00:01:56 |
| 2024-11-19 | restate | To do right by the project in a long-term, open-ended way, thousands of people donate every month at pih.org/hankandjohn and dozens more fund a monthly match; John calls this the financial backbone of the maternal and infant care project. | Let's Talk about Money 00:01:00 |
| 2024-11-26 | restate | John says the community is a tiny part of Sierra Leone's progress on maternal deaths; Vicky Reed and her colleagues would be the first to point out that it only works through deep partnership with the government, the main driver of health care quality in the country. | Good News 00:03:26 |
| 2025-01-28 | restate | John says the progress is the result of sustained, ongoing, open-ended funding and collaboration. | This Is Not Normal 00:05:21 |
| 2025-02-11 | restate | John says philanthropy cannot replace USAID's at-scale responses, but supporting global health charities is more important than ever. | What's at Stake 00:04:22 |
| 2025-05-06 | restate | John says PIH is good at providing blueprints governments can expand: mobile x-ray vans and backpack x-ray machines began as PIH-only projects and were taken up by the Ministry of Health. | Health CARE: Thoughts from Lima 00:01:27 |
| 2025-05-13 | restate | John says it also needed the Ministry of Health's support: PIH is not building a parallel health system, and the facility belongs to Sierra Leoneans through their government. | I Have the BEST News 00:03:33 |
| 2025-06-10 | restate | John says private philanthropy simply cannot step up and fill these gaps. | 90,000,000 Lives for $20 00:06:12 |
| 2025-10-28 | restate | John says we know how to eliminate TB from a community: actively search for cases, cure everyone found, and give close contacts preventive therapy. | Elon Cancelled This...Let's Do it Anyway 00:00:29 |
| 2025-11-13 | restate | John says that in high-level talk about the future of aid, we must remember that if it doesn't include batteries, something is deeply wrong with it. | Fighting TB in Kids: A Discussion with Doctors without Borders 00:36:02 |
| 2025-11-25 | restate | John says this is why, in aid, we worry so much about corruption in poor countries and so little about price gouging from rich countries. | Poverty Is Expensive 00:05:21 |
| 2026-02-24 | restate | John says the reluctance to invest in impoverished communities is the main reason maternal and child mortality were so high in Sierra Leone. | Risk Is a Privilege 00:02:55 |
| 2026-04-14 | restate | John is reminded that long-term problems demand long-term solutions: after seven years with Partners In Health and Sierra Leone's Ministry of Health, they are seeing the transformation. | Babies. Babies. Babies. 00:03:24 |
| 2026-04-28 | restate | John says that after seven long years of fundraising and building, the MCOE is the kind of long-term response that transforms not just its patients' lives but its community's. | What I Can't Show You 00:03:24 |
Hank
| date | how | position | video |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2008-12-17 | first on record | Hank holds that DonorsChoose works well because donors fund only proposals that sound like good ideas, which pushes teachers to plan good uses of the money. | Project for Awesome: DonorsChoose.org 00:02:17 |
| 2011-03-21 | refine | Hank holds that good water aid requires a broad community committee so the well is a community asset, sustainable planning, and donor due diligence on the organisation. | Helping Haiti 00:01:38 |
| 2011-04-04 | restate | Hank holds that the village needs not just a well but community infrastructure to keep it a sustainable water source, and previews Water.org's model of creating independence instead of dependence. | Thoughts from The Well 00:03:08 |
| 2011-12-17 | restate | Hank holds that the well works because it is a community-owned asset users pay a fair price for, funding maintenance so it lasts decades under community control. | We Built a Well in Haiti 00:00:58 |
| 2017-12-15 | restate | Delivering health care, water or food where they are lacking used to be work that didn't get done; Save the Children and Last Mile Health now do it, training and employing local people as community health workers. | Why Big Solutions Fail 00:01:53 |
| 2019-10-25 | restate | Hank says 'best' is a trap: if you ask whether something is the best possible use of money you will never do anything. | Unscripted and Unhinged 00:01:12 |
| 2019-12-06 | restate | Hank says we need to support the master puzzle-solvers who understand each problem's unique shape, like the people at Partners In Health and Save the Children, the P4A's first-half charities. | It is Much Easier to Destroy than Create 00:02:36 |
| 2021-02-12 | restate | Hank says some people saw these problems and systems, judged them not good enough, and have worked for decades on systems that make them sustainably better. | Doing Better 00:02:15 |
| 2022-02-25 | restate | Hank says both organizations have proven good at looking at long-term crises and staying focused on them so the world can get better. | When You Can't Fix Everything… 00:00:56 |
| 2023-02-17 | restate | Hank says both organizations help people with the least by building strong foundations for communities, and that evidence and experience show people given resources and a foundation will build. | COUNTDOWN TO THE PROJECT FOR AWESOME 00:02:33 |
| 2024-02-16 | restate | Hank says they work with Partners In Health because it sees crises where others see the status quo and stays focused on huge problems, news or not, by strengthening health systems. | How Much Does it Cost to be a Nerdfighter 00:05:05 |
| 2025-10-31 | restate | Hank says PIH and the Ministry of Health work with the community to make it last: employing local women in construction, training health workers, building sustainable infrastructure. | We Did It… 00:07:43 |