{
  "name": "open-problems",
  "description": "The Open Problems of Charitology, with status.",
  "license": "CC BY 4.0. Cite “Charitology (charitology.org)”.",
  "generated": "2026-10-26",
  "data": [
    {
      "id": "closing-the-feedback-loop",
      "path": "/open-problems/closing-the-feedback-loop/",
      "title": "Closing the Feedback Loop",
      "number": 5,
      "statement": "What mechanism lets the people a charity serves send a signal that moves money, the way prices do in markets?",
      "progress": "A working mechanism in which feedback from the people served measurably changes funding, tested against a comparison group.",
      "conditions": [
        "missing-feedback-loop",
        "missing-voice"
      ],
      "status": "open",
      "bounty": "Unfunded. The Question Bounties program will attach prizes once it is funded.",
      "sources": [],
      "review": "draft",
      "body": "## Why it matters\n\nThis is the root condition of the [Diagnosis](/diagnosis/). Charitology hypothesizes that improving this loop could also change other conditions.\n\n## Where to start\n\nBeneficiary feedback surveys, participatory grantmaking and cash transfers (where recipients choose what to buy) are three existing mechanisms that give the people served some say. The open question is which of them, if any, can be scaled into a signal donors actually follow."
    },
    {
      "id": "discounting-the-future",
      "path": "/open-problems/discounting-the-future/",
      "title": "Discounting the Future",
      "number": 13,
      "statement": "How much should future people count, and how should giving weigh present suffering against risks to the future?",
      "progress": "A clear map of the positions, what each implies for allocation, and which facts would change the answer.",
      "conditions": [
        "short-horizon",
        "single-lens"
      ],
      "status": "open",
      "bounty": "Unfunded. The Question Bounties program will attach prizes once it is funded.",
      "sources": [],
      "review": "draft",
      "body": "## Why it matters\n\nIf humanity has a long future, vastly more people may live after us than are alive now. How much they count changes nearly every allocation decision. Short funding cycles may leave that choice implicit; see [the Short Horizon hypothesis](/diagnosis/short-horizon/).\n\n## Where to start\n\nPhilosophers distinguish pure time preference (valuing the future less simply because it is later) from uncertainty about whether help will arrive. Separating the two is the first step. The [Future generations](/tools/values-compass/) framework in the Values Compass is a rough starting point."
    },
    {
      "id": "measuring-the-source",
      "path": "/open-problems/measuring-the-source/",
      "title": "Measuring the Source",
      "number": 3,
      "statement": "How do you measure the impact of source-level work, such as changing a story, a norm or an institution, when the effects are diffuse, shared and delayed?",
      "progress": "A measurement approach validated on at least one historical source-level change, recovering an effect that independent historians agree took place.",
      "conditions": [
        "symptom-trap",
        "measurement-gap",
        "short-horizon"
      ],
      "status": "open",
      "bounty": "Unfunded. The Question Bounties program will attach prizes once it is funded.",
      "sources": [],
      "review": "draft",
      "body": "## Why it matters\n\nIf funders require measurements that source work cannot provide, useful work may be missed. That is one possible mechanism behind the [Symptom Trap](/diagnosis/symptom-trap/) hypothesis. Hard-to-measure is not the same as small.\n\n## Where to start\n\nWork backwards from changes everyone agrees happened, such as the spread of oral rehydration therapy or the end of smallpox (see [Historical Case Studies](/record/case-studies/)), and test which measures would have detected them early. Contribution analysis, process tracing and forecasting tournaments are candidate methods."
    },
    {
      "id": "moral-parliament-in-practice",
      "path": "/open-problems/moral-parliament-in-practice/",
      "title": "Moral Parliament in Practice",
      "number": 16,
      "statement": "How should a real giver allocate money when unsure which moral framework is right, and do different methods give stable answers?",
      "progress": "A comparison of allocation methods, such as credence-weighted averaging, moral parliaments and maximizing expected choice-worthiness, on real portfolios, with their sensitivity reported.",
      "conditions": [
        "single-lens"
      ],
      "status": "open",
      "bounty": "Unfunded. The Question Bounties program will attach prizes once it is funded.",
      "sources": [],
      "review": "draft",
      "body": "## Why it matters\n\nThe [Single Lens](/diagnosis/single-lens/) is the condition Charitology was founded to treat. Treating it means giving people a sound way to act on several frameworks at once.\n\n## Where to start\n\nThe [Portfolio Builder](/tools/portfolio-builder/) implements a simple credence-weighted method. The open problem is whether more sophisticated methods give meaningfully different, and more defensible, answers."
    },
    {
      "id": "proximity-and-obligation",
      "path": "/open-problems/proximity-and-obligation/",
      "title": "Proximity and Obligation",
      "number": 18,
      "statement": "How should distance weigh in giving, and what do givers choose when they see honest comparisons?",
      "progress": "Experimental evidence on how givers allocate with and without comparisons, alongside a clear account of the moral positions.",
      "conditions": [
        "proximity-pull"
      ],
      "status": "open",
      "bounty": "Unfunded. The Question Bounties program will attach prizes once it is funded.",
      "sources": [],
      "review": "draft",
      "body": "## Why it matters\n\nThe [Proximity Pull](/diagnosis/proximity-pull/) is partly a moral question and partly an information gap. The information gap can be closed, and then we can see what people choose.\n\n## Where to start\n\nA scoped survey experiment could test how comparisons across distance affect choices, with its cost and limits stated. The moral side is mapped in the [Disagreement Register](/record/disagreements/)."
    },
    {
      "id": "the-agency-premium",
      "path": "/open-problems/the-agency-premium/",
      "title": "The Agency Premium",
      "number": 14,
      "statement": "Do community-led programs outperform top-down ones on the same outcome, and by how much?",
      "progress": "Head-to-head comparisons of community-led and expert-led versions of the same intervention, in several contexts.",
      "conditions": [
        "missing-voice"
      ],
      "status": "open",
      "bounty": "Unfunded. The Question Bounties program will attach prizes once it is funded.",
      "sources": [],
      "review": "draft",
      "body": "## Why it matters\n\nThe case for [listening to the people served](/diagnosis/missing-voice/) is strong in principle. A measured premium would make it impossible to ignore, and a measured cost would show where expertise should lead.\n\n## Where to start\n\nLook for interventions that have been delivered both ways, such as community-driven development programs evaluated against centrally planned ones."
    },
    {
      "id": "the-counterfactual-problem",
      "path": "/open-problems/the-counterfactual-problem/",
      "title": "The Counterfactual Problem",
      "number": 4,
      "statement": "How can a giver estimate what would have happened without their gift, cheaply and at scale?",
      "progress": "A method that produces counterfactual estimates for ordinary gifts, with error ranges, at a cost small relative to the gift.",
      "conditions": [
        "missing-feedback-loop"
      ],
      "status": "open",
      "bounty": "Unfunded. The Question Bounties program will attach prizes once it is funded.",
      "sources": [],
      "review": "draft",
      "body": "## Why it matters\n\nThe real effect of a gift is the difference between the world with it and the world without it. Most givers never see that difference, which is part of why the [feedback loop](/diagnosis/missing-feedback-loop/) is missing.\n\n## Where to start\n\nFunding-gap disclosures (how much a charity could productively absorb), matched comparisons between funded and unfunded applicants, and published “room for more funding” analyses are partial answers. The open problem is making them routine."
    },
    {
      "id": "the-depth-census",
      "path": "/open-problems/the-depth-census/",
      "title": "The Depth Census",
      "number": 1,
      "statement": "What share of the world’s charitable money goes to relief, repair, prevention, structure and source work?",
      "progress": "A public, reproducible estimate of the depth mix for at least one country’s giving, with a method others can rerun and a stated error range.",
      "conditions": [
        "symptom-trap",
        "measurement-gap"
      ],
      "status": "open",
      "bounty": "Unfunded. The Question Bounties program will attach prizes once it is funded.",
      "sources": [],
      "review": "draft",
      "body": "## Why it matters\n\nCharitology’s founding hypothesis, [the Symptom Trap](/diagnosis/symptom-trap/), says the charity system is weighted toward symptoms. Charitology has not established the current mix. If the hypothesis is wrong, the field should be the first to say so. The census would supply a descriptive baseline. Deciding whether a mix is appropriate also requires an explicit standard tied to the goals being considered.\n\n## Where to start\n\nDraw a random sample of organizations from a public registry and code each one on the [depth scale](/method/#depth), weighting by spending. Program descriptions from Form 990 filings, published openly by [Charity Impact Media](https://theguysaccount.github.io/charity-impact-media/), and the foundation grants in [WHOFUNDS](https://theguysaccount.github.io/whofunds-open-grant-graph/) are open starting points. How often two independent coders agree is itself a finding: if people can’t agree on depth, the scale needs work first."
    },
    {
      "id": "story-without-bias",
      "path": "/open-problems/story-without-bias/",
      "title": "Story Without Bias",
      "number": 7,
      "statement": "Can a story make people feel the scale of a problem rather than one face, and does it move money toward larger needs?",
      "progress": "A replicated experiment in which a storytelling format shifts giving toward larger needs without lowering total giving.",
      "conditions": [
        "story-bias"
      ],
      "status": "open",
      "bounty": "Unfunded. The Question Bounties program will attach prizes once it is funded.",
      "sources": [],
      "review": "draft",
      "body": "## Why it matters\n\nThe [Story Bias](/diagnosis/story-bias/) draws on attention research, including findings whose strength and replication remain debated. In the classic study, explaining the bias did not increase donations to statistical appeals. The fix has to work with human attention, not against it.\n\n## Where to start\n\nExisting research on identifiable victims and psychic numbing gives the baseline effects to beat. Formats to test include stories of communities rather than individuals, visualizations of scale and stories about sources rather than symptoms."
    },
    {
      "id": "the-enough-question",
      "path": "/open-problems/the-enough-question/",
      "title": "The Enough Question",
      "number": 22,
      "statement": "How much money would it take to fix a specific problem at its source, and is it true that money isn’t the bottleneck?",
      "progress": "Costed source-level plans for specific problems, judged by independent experts, and a record of what happened when such plans were funded.",
      "conditions": [
        "symptom-trap"
      ],
      "status": "open",
      "bounty": "Unfunded. The Question Bounties program will attach prizes once it is funded.",
      "sources": [
        {
          "title": "Humanity’s Checklist",
          "url": "https://humanityschecklist.org/",
          "publisher": "Humanity’s Checklist",
          "year": 2026
        }
      ],
      "review": "draft",
      "body": "## Why it matters\n\nHumanity’s Checklist points out that hundreds of billions of dollars go to charity every year, and asks what would happen if $5 million, spent correctly, were enough to go after the six sources upstream of every world problem. Charitology treats that as a hypothesis to test, not a slogan. If money really isn’t the bottleneck, the field should find out what is.\n\n## Where to start\n\nPick one problem, write the source-level plan, cost it, fund it and publish what happens, including if it fails."
    },
    {
      "id": "the-exchange-rate-problem",
      "path": "/open-problems/the-exchange-rate-problem/",
      "title": "The Exchange Rate Problem",
      "number": 2,
      "statement": "Can outcomes in different causes (a life saved, a species protected, a law changed, a child educated) be compared on a common scale, and where must comparison stop?",
      "progress": "A comparison method that people holding different moral frameworks accept as fair for at least some pairs of causes, with the pairs it can’t compare stated openly.",
      "conditions": [
        "single-lens"
      ],
      "status": "open",
      "bounty": "Unfunded. The Question Bounties program will attach prizes once it is funded.",
      "sources": [],
      "review": "draft",
      "body": "## Why it matters\n\nEvery choice between two causes is an exchange rate, whether or not anyone writes it down. Writing it down lets people argue about it.\n\n## Where to start\n\nHealth economics already compares treatments with quality- and disability-adjusted life years. Wellbeing research proposes life-satisfaction measures. Each scale carries a moral framework inside it. The work is to map which scales each framework accepts and where every scale breaks down. Charitology’s [frameworks data](/tools/public-api/) is a place to begin."
    },
    {
      "id": "the-failure-commons",
      "path": "/open-problems/the-failure-commons/",
      "title": "The Failure Commons",
      "number": 9,
      "statement": "What incentives would get charities to publish their failures, and what happens to their funding when they do?",
      "progress": "A shared failure registry with a meaningful sample of participating organizations, and data on their funding before and after disclosure.",
      "conditions": [
        "silence-about-failure"
      ],
      "status": "open",
      "bounty": "Unfunded. The Question Bounties program will attach prizes once it is funded.",
      "sources": [],
      "review": "draft",
      "body": "## Why it matters\n\nThe [Silence About Failure](/diagnosis/silence-about-failure/) costs the field its most valuable data. If disclosure turns out to be rewarded, the incentive problem is smaller than people fear. If it’s punished, funders need to see that.\n\n## Where to start\n\nCharitology’s [Failure Archive](/record/failure-archive/) is the commons in seed form. Pair it with a funder pledge not to penalize honest disclosure, and measure what happens."
    },
    {
      "id": "the-fragmentation-question",
      "path": "/open-problems/the-fragmentation-question/",
      "title": "The Fragmentation Question",
      "number": 11,
      "statement": "Is the charity sector over-fragmented, and when do mergers, shared services or coordination layers improve outcomes?",
      "progress": "Comparative evidence on outcomes before and after consolidation or coordination, across several fields.",
      "conditions": [
        "fragmentation"
      ],
      "status": "open",
      "bounty": "Unfunded. The Question Bounties program will attach prizes once it is funded.",
      "sources": [],
      "review": "draft",
      "body": "## Why it matters\n\n[Fragmentation](/diagnosis/fragmentation/) is easy to see and hard to judge. A plural sector experiments more. A fragmented one may waste more. The answer probably depends on the field.\n\n## Where to start\n\nNonprofit mergers, shared back-office services and collective-impact coalitions all leave records. Outcome data before and after is the missing piece."
    },
    {
      "id": "the-money-time-exchange",
      "path": "/open-problems/the-money-time-exchange/",
      "title": "The Money-Time Exchange",
      "number": 19,
      "statement": "When is an hour of volunteering worth more than giving an hour’s wages?",
      "progress": "A framework that estimates the value of volunteer time by role and skill, checked against organizations’ own assessments.",
      "conditions": [],
      "status": "open",
      "bounty": "Unfunded. The Question Bounties program will attach prizes once it is funded.",
      "sources": [],
      "review": "draft",
      "body": "## Why it matters\n\nVolunteer time can help in different ways and also takes coordination. The proposed study would compare the value of roles with the cost of supporting them; it does not assume those answers are already known.\n\n## Where to start\n\nAsk organizations what an hour of each kind of volunteer help is worth to them, and compare that with the volunteer’s wage. See [Time Charitology](/programs/time-charitology/)."
    },
    {
      "id": "the-government-question",
      "path": "/open-problems/the-government-question/",
      "title": "The Government Question",
      "number": 21,
      "statement": "When does philanthropy add to public spending, when does it replace it, and when does it shape public policy without public accountability?",
      "progress": "Evidence on whether private giving crowds public budgets in or out, and shared norms for when private money should shape public policy.",
      "conditions": [
        "missing-voice"
      ],
      "status": "open",
      "bounty": "Unfunded. The Question Bounties program will attach prizes once it is funded.",
      "sources": [],
      "review": "draft",
      "body": "## Why it matters\n\nPrivate giving and public spending interact. A gift can unlock government money, replace it or steer it. Each has different consequences for the people served and for democracy.\n\n## Where to start\n\nEconomists have studied crowding-in and crowding-out for decades, with mixed results. The open problem is turning that literature into guidance a giver can use."
    },
    {
      "id": "the-optimal-restriction",
      "path": "/open-problems/the-optimal-restriction/",
      "title": "The Optimal Restriction",
      "number": 8,
      "statement": "When does restricting a gift help, and when does it harm?",
      "progress": "Evidence from natural experiments or trials on how restriction affects outcomes, including the conditions under which each kind of funding works better.",
      "conditions": [
        "restriction-reflex"
      ],
      "status": "open",
      "bounty": "Unfunded. The Question Bounties program will attach prizes once it is funded.",
      "sources": [],
      "review": "draft",
      "body": "## Why it matters\n\nThe case for unrestricted funding is strong but mostly built on surveys of what charities prefer. A science of giving needs outcome evidence, including any cases where restriction does better.\n\n## Where to start\n\nLarge shifts toward unrestricted giving, such as funders that relaxed restrictions in 2020, are natural experiments. Comparing grantee outcomes before and after is a feasible first study."
    },
    {
      "id": "the-overhead-replacement",
      "path": "/open-problems/the-overhead-replacement/",
      "title": "The Overhead Replacement",
      "number": 6,
      "statement": "What simple public measure could replace overhead ratios as the default way donors judge a charity, without being easy to game?",
      "progress": "A measure computable from public data for most large charities, shown to track independently assessed effectiveness better than overhead does.",
      "conditions": [
        "overhead-myth"
      ],
      "status": "open",
      "bounty": "Unfunded. The Question Bounties program will attach prizes once it is funded.",
      "sources": [],
      "review": "draft",
      "body": "## Why it matters\n\nTelling donors to stop using overhead has been tried. The [Overhead Myth](/diagnosis/overhead-myth/) persists partly because nothing equally simple replaced it.\n\n## Where to start\n\nCandidate measures include published outcome data, the presence of independent evaluations, transparency about failures and feedback from the people served. Each has to be tested for whether it can be gamed. Open Form 990 data from [Charity Impact Media](https://theguysaccount.github.io/charity-impact-media/) provides source-linked spending records."
    },
    {
      "id": "the-payout-question",
      "path": "/open-problems/the-payout-question/",
      "title": "The Payout Question",
      "number": 12,
      "statement": "What is the best rate to spend philanthropic money now versus later?",
      "progress": "A model that ties the payout rate to measurable inputs, such as investment returns, how fast the best opportunities are used up and discount rates, and gives ranges a funder can act on.",
      "conditions": [
        "parked-money",
        "short-horizon"
      ],
      "status": "open",
      "bounty": "Unfunded. The Question Bounties program will attach prizes once it is funded.",
      "sources": [],
      "review": "draft",
      "body": "## Why it matters\n\nThe Annual DAF Report 2025 estimated about $326 billion in donor-advised fund assets in 2024. Whether assets should be spent sooner is a substantial allocation question; the asset total alone cannot answer it. See [Parked Money](/diagnosis/parked-money/).\n\n## Where to start\n\nEconomists have written “give now or give later” models. The open problem is grounding them in real data on how the cost of doing good changes over time."
    },
    {
      "id": "the-profession-question",
      "path": "/open-problems/the-profession-question/",
      "title": "The Profession Question",
      "number": 17,
      "statement": "What should a charitologist be trained in, and does training change where money goes?",
      "progress": "A curriculum, and evidence comparing the decisions of trained and untrained advisors or donors on the same choices.",
      "conditions": [
        "missing-profession"
      ],
      "status": "open",
      "bounty": "Unfunded. The Question Bounties program will attach prizes once it is funded.",
      "sources": [],
      "review": "draft",
      "body": "## Why it matters\n\nCharitology’s founding claim is that a profession would improve where money goes, as medicine improved how illness is treated. That claim can be tested, so it should be. See [the Missing Profession](/diagnosis/missing-profession/).\n\n## Where to start\n\nThe [Principles of Charitology](/record/principles/) textbook and the [Certified Charitologist](/programs/certified-charitologist/) program are draft curricula. A randomized study of a short training course is a feasible first test."
    },
    {
      "id": "the-question-of-questions",
      "path": "/open-problems/the-question-of-questions/",
      "title": "The Question of Questions",
      "number": 23,
      "statement": "How should the field decide which open problem to work on first?",
      "progress": "A published value-of-information estimate for each open problem, updated as problems are solved.",
      "conditions": [
        "missing-profession"
      ],
      "status": "open",
      "bounty": "Unfunded. The Question Bounties program will attach prizes once it is funded.",
      "sources": [],
      "review": "draft",
      "body": "## Why it matters\n\nResearch money is limited too. The first problems solved should be the ones whose answers would change the most decisions.\n\n## Where to start\n\nFor each problem, estimate how much money would move if it were solved and how likely a solution is in the next five years. Publish the estimates and let the [Forecasting Platform](/tools/forecasting-platform/) test them."
    },
    {
      "id": "the-status-flip",
      "path": "/open-problems/the-status-flip/",
      "title": "The Status Flip",
      "number": 15,
      "statement": "Can generosity become a stronger status signal than consumption, and what would that unlock?",
      "progress": "Field evidence that a status mechanism tied to what gifts achieve changes giving behavior at scale.",
      "conditions": [
        "prestige-economy"
      ],
      "status": "open",
      "bounty": "Unfunded. The Question Bounties program will attach prizes once it is funded.",
      "sources": [
        {
          "title": "Humanity’s Checklist",
          "url": "https://humanityschecklist.org/",
          "publisher": "Humanity’s Checklist",
          "year": 2026
        }
      ],
      "review": "draft",
      "body": "## Why it matters\n\nHumanity’s Checklist proposes directing status toward generosity. Whether that would increase giving or improve its results is a hypothesis to test. See [the Prestige Economy](/diagnosis/prestige-economy/).\n\n## Where to start\n\nHumanity’s Checklist proposes charity designer goods, where the coolest thing you can wear shows how much you gave. Testing that proposal, and others like Charitology’s shareable [Wrapped](/tools/charitology-wrapped/) card, is a concrete first experiment."
    },
    {
      "id": "the-replication-rate",
      "path": "/open-problems/the-replication-rate/",
      "title": "The Replication Rate",
      "number": 10,
      "statement": "What share of headline charity impact findings replicate when they are tested again?",
      "progress": "A systematic replication project covering a defined set of influential findings, publishing the rate with confidence bounds.",
      "conditions": [
        "silence-about-failure",
        "measurement-gap"
      ],
      "status": "open",
      "bounty": "Unfunded. The Question Bounties program will attach prizes once it is funded.",
      "sources": [],
      "review": "draft",
      "body": "## Why it matters\n\nThe [Replication Program](/programs/replication-program/) describes published checks in psychology and deworming research. Charitology has not established an equivalent sector-wide rate for charity impact findings. Donors deserve to know how much to trust a headline.\n\n## Where to start\n\nChoose a fixed list of widely cited findings, pre-register the replication plan and publish everything, including findings that replicate. See the [Replication Program](/programs/replication-program/)."
    },
    {
      "id": "when-charity-harms",
      "path": "/open-problems/when-charity-harms/",
      "title": "When Charity Harms",
      "number": 20,
      "statement": "When does charity cause harm, through dependency, crowding out local markets or governments, or delaying reform?",
      "progress": "A catalog of documented harm mechanisms, with the conditions under which each appears, drawn from real cases.",
      "conditions": [
        "symptom-trap",
        "silence-about-failure"
      ],
      "status": "open",
      "bounty": "Unfunded. The Question Bounties program will attach prizes once it is funded.",
      "sources": [],
      "review": "draft",
      "body": "## Why it matters\n\nGood intentions are not good outcomes. Some programs have made things worse, and others may have delayed the structural fixes that would have helped more. A science of giving has to study harm as carefully as help.\n\n## Where to start\n\nThe [Failure Archive](/record/failure-archive/) collects documented cases. The work is to find the patterns that connect them."
    }
  ]
}