{
  "name": "journal",
  "description": "Journal entries with their review status.",
  "license": "CC BY 4.0. Cite “Charitology (charitology.org)”.",
  "generated": "2026-10-26",
  "data": [
    {
      "id": "depth-without-a-ladder",
      "path": "/record/journal/depth-without-a-ladder/",
      "title": "Depth without a ladder: a protocol for describing where work acts",
      "author": "Charitology editorial project (AI-assisted draft)",
      "date": "2026-10-25",
      "summary": "A reproducible proposal for classifying activities across relief, repair, prevention, structure and source without turning description into a rating.",
      "volume": 0,
      "issue": 2,
      "review": "draft",
      "body": "**Article type: proposed method. Peer review: not completed.** This paper makes no claim that the depth framework predicts impact. Its purpose is to make that hypothesis testable and its classifications reproducible.\n\n## The unit is an activity\n\nAn organization can operate a shelter, campaign for housing rules and convene a coordination network. Assigning one depth to the entire organization erases those differences. Begin with an activity, a period and a stated outcome. Keep its money and volunteer time in separate fields unless a defensible conversion is explicitly supplied.\n\nRecord a short mechanism: “If this activity happens, what changes, for whom, through which step?” A statement such as “addresses root causes” is not enough. Name the recurring mechanism being changed. The source categories proposed by [Humanity’s Checklist](https://humanityschecklist.org/) are hypotheses that may help generate questions; invoking one does not demonstrate causality.\n\n## A proposed coding rule\n\nUse **0 relief** when the activity reduces an immediate burden; **1 repair** when it restores a damaged capacity; **2 prevention** when it reduces recurrence or exposure; **3 structure** when it changes a durable rule, institution or allocation; and **4 source** when it tests a proposed upstream mechanism that feeds several problems. These are Charitology’s definitions. They are not ordinal grades of merit.\n\nAn activity can span levels. Record a primary level only when the evidence for its mechanism supports that choice. Otherwise use multiple labels or “unclassified.” Do not allocate equal percentages merely because several labels apply. Budget shares require a stated allocation rule and evidence.\n\n## An illustrative coding exercise\n\nConsider a fictional water program. Delivering emergency water is relief. Restoring a broken pump can be repair. Scheduled maintenance may prevent outages. A change to accountable utility governance can act on structure. A coordination experiment connecting previously disconnected maintainers may test a source hypothesis.\n\nThe example does not establish which intervention works, what it costs or which deserves funding. Emergency delivery could be essential while an institutional reform fails. The coding tells us what to investigate, not which activity wins.\n\n## Independent coding and disagreement\n\nGive two coders the same public materials, definitions and period. Each records the claimed mechanism, supporting source, depth label, uncertainty and alternative interpretation before seeing the other’s answer. Compare the raw assignments before resolving disagreements. Publish the original codes and the adjudication separately.\n\nDisagreements can reveal a vague definition, missing activity-level information or an actual causal dispute. Do not hide them by averaging labels. A project described as level 2 by one coder and level 4 by another is not thereby level 3.\n\n## Denominators and unknowns\n\nA census should publish total eligible activities, activities with usable records, money covered and money unclassified. An observed zero is different from an absent record. “No source work found in this sample” is different from “no source work exists.” Funding shares across different years, geographic scopes or accounting definitions cannot be added without reconciliation.\n\nThe [Gap Map](/record/gap-map/) provides a local worksheet for making this accounting explicit. Its user-entered scenarios are not a global census.\n\n## Tests that could reject the method\n\nA useful test could find that coders cannot apply the definitions consistently, that activities span levels too often for the categories to be informative or that a different set of categories captures mechanisms more clearly. A further study could test whether depth adds predictive information beyond context, evidence quality and program design. A null result belongs in the Record.\n\nBefore any named-charity recommendation uses depth, the method requires public red-team review, a defensible unit of analysis, transparent uncertainty and independent source checks. This draft has not met those conditions.\n\n## Reproduction packet\n\nPublish the sampling frame, inclusion and exclusion rules, source retrieval dates, coding manual, coder assignments, uncoded records, adjudications and analysis code. Use the [Replication Program](/programs/replication-program/) to preregister the question and the [Evidence Reviews desk](/programs/evidence-reviews/) to track sources. Report descriptive results even when they fail to support the founding hypothesis."
    },
    {
      "id": "ten-dollars",
      "path": "/record/journal/ten-dollars/",
      "title": "Ten Dollars",
      "author": "Charitology",
      "date": "2026-10-25",
      "summary": "The founding poem uses a ten-dollar domain registration as an image for Charitology’s invitation to study how generosity is aimed.",
      "volume": 0,
      "issue": 1,
      "review": "draft",
      "body": "*Editorial note: This manifesto is a poem, not a history of philanthropy. The ten-dollar image is the author’s account of a domain registration. Existing philanthropy, ethics and evaluation fields have long studied giving; the poem’s invitation is to develop and test Charitology’s proposed shared craft.*\n\nIn 2026, we bought a word for ten dollars.\n\nNot a rare word. Not a clever one.\\\nThe most obvious word there is.\\\nIt was just lying there,\\\nunregistered, unclaimed, unbuilt,\\\nlike a key nobody had picked up\\\nbecause nobody knew there was a door.\n\n*Charitology.*\n\nWe have a word for the study of bells.\\\nCampanology.\\\nWe have a word for the study of flags.\\\nVexillology.\\\nWe have a word for the science of mixing a cocktail.\\\nMixology.\n\nBut for the science of doing the most good\\\na human being can do,\\\nthere was nothing.\\\nNo word. No field. No craft.\\\nNot even a name to argue about.\n\nThink about what that means.\\\nRocket science gets a whole discipline,\\\nand rockets only have to obey physics.\\\nPhysics doesn’t change its mind.\\\nGravity doesn’t have a culture.\\\nThrust doesn’t ask whose child gets saved first.\n\nDoing good is harder.\\\nIt is the hardest problem we have:\\\nwhich suffering, which cure,\\\nwhich country, which century,\\\nnow or later, them or us,\\\nthe person in front of you\\\nor the millions you’ll never meet.\\\nNo equation hands you the answer.\\\nAnd we’ve been working on it\\\nwithout ever admitting it needed solving.\n\nHere’s the part nobody says out loud:\\\nthe money is already here.\\\nHundreds of billions of dollars, every single year,\\\ngiven freely,\\\ngiven with love,\\\ngiven by people who meant every cent.\n\nThe generosity was never missing.\\\nThe aim was.\n\nAnd that is not your fault.\\\nYou gave with your whole heart.\\\nNobody handed you a map.\\\nNobody trained the mapmakers.\\\nNobody even named the territory.\n\nYou can’t master a craft that doesn’t exist.\\\nYou can’t get better at something\\\nno one has agreed is a thing to get better at.\\\nWithout a field, without the people who live in it,\\\nwithout that honest, stubborn, careful search for what actually works,\\\nwe’re all just trying\\\nwith the lights off.\n\nSo we’re turning them on.\n\n*Charitology.*\\\nThe science of doing the most good.\\\nNot one cause. Every cause.\\\nNot one method. Every method.\\\nNot one answer handed down,\\\nbut the endless, humble, rigorous work\\\nof finding the best of all ways.\n\nWe’re not here to tell you you’ve been giving wrong.\\\nWe’re here to tell you it’s worth getting right.\n\nSo study it. Question it. Test it. Teach it.\\\nArgue about it at dinner.\\\nProve us wrong and make it better.\\\nBecome what this world has never had a name for:\n\n*a charitologist.*\n\nIt cost us ten dollars to claim the word.\\\nIt will take the rest of our lives to deserve it."
    },
    {
      "id": "the-feedback-contract",
      "path": "/record/journal/the-feedback-contract/",
      "title": "The feedback contract: designing a giving decision people can correct",
      "author": "Charitology editorial project (AI-assisted draft)",
      "date": "2026-10-25",
      "summary": "A proposed reporting contract linking a giving decision to outcomes, uncertainty, affected communities and a public revision rule.",
      "volume": 0,
      "issue": 3,
      "review": "draft",
      "body": "**Article type: design proposal. Peer review: not completed.** The contract below is an editorial method for testing, not an established intervention or a claim about what most charities do.\n\n## Start with a decision\n\nA report becomes useful when it can change a decision. Specify who will decide, what options they can choose, when they must choose and what they will do if the evidence changes. “We will learn about impact” leaves all four questions open.\n\nA small organization might decide whether to continue a weekly service, change its delivery schedule or test a referral partnership. A donor might decide whether to renew an unrestricted grant. A community group might decide whether a promised benefit matches what participants actually value. The decision belongs to the people with the authority to act, but the reporting process must also hear those affected by it.\n\n## Seven linked records\n\n1. **Resources:** what money, time and equipment went in, in which period and currency.\n2. **Activity:** what was actually delivered and the public evidence for that record.\n3. **Reach:** who could access it and who was excluded. Avoid publishing personal records.\n4. **Outcome:** what changed, including a unit, observation date and a defensible denominator.\n5. **Counterfactual:** what might have happened without the activity and why that comparison is credible.\n6. **Experience and harm:** what participants say mattered, how dissent can be raised safely and what unintended effects were observed.\n7. **Revision:** the threshold, review date and named organizational role responsible for changing the decision.\n\nMissing links stay missing. A count of services delivered is not automatically a causal effect. A testimonial can supply information about experience without estimating a population average. A model can clarify assumptions without becoming an observation.\n\n## A worked, fictional example\n\nSuppose a community learning program can fund one more term. Its team records sessions delivered and attendance, then learns that the existing timetable excludes caregivers. A simple continuation decision based only on attendance would miss that access question. The group therefore considers a changed schedule alongside continuation and closure.\n\nBefore choosing, it defines what it needs to know: whether the alternative time is acceptable, what participation would cost caregivers, whether learning outcomes differ and what other services may be displaced. A pilot could be appropriate, but a small pilot would not by itself establish a durable population effect.\n\nNo numerical benefit is invented here. The example demonstrates how the contract can expose an omitted decision dimension. Whether it improves real decisions is an open empirical question.\n\n## Publish the revision rule first\n\nA rule might say: review the program after one term; consult participants through a specified, accessible process; compare outcomes with the predeclared baseline; document harms and missing data; then record why the organization continued, adapted or stopped. The appropriate thresholds depend on context and should not be copied from this example as universal standards.\n\nChanges to the rule belong in a dated log. Distinguish a justified amendment from an outcome selected after seeing the result. Publishing the original plan lets another contributor reconstruct that difference.\n\n## Depth and values remain separate\n\nThe contract asks both where work acts and what different moral lenses consider important. A rights concern may create a constraint rather than an extra point in an average. Care may require attending to relationships that a cost model misses. Future generations may change the time horizon. These questions belong in the decision record, not behind a single hidden score.\n\n## Use and test\n\nThe [Impact Measurement Toolkit](/tools/impact-measurement-toolkit/) can turn the mechanism into an observation plan. [Charity OS](/tools/charity-os/) can retain local project, budget and evidence records. The [Moral Frameworks desk](/programs/moral-frameworks-program/) can record disagreements, while the [Failure Lab](/programs/failure-lab/) can document what changed after an unexpected result.\n\nA field test should compare decisions made with and without the contract, define what improvement means before analysis, track burden on staff and communities and publish failures as well as successes. No such test is claimed here. The contract earns its place only if evidence shows that its benefits justify its costs."
    }
  ]
}