Charitology
The Open Problems

Twenty-three questions nobody has answered

In 1900 the mathematician David Hilbert published a list of 23 unsolved problems, and it steered mathematics for a century. These are charitology’s. Each turns a condition of the charity system into a question precise enough to work on. Solve one and you change where billions of dollars go.

23 open · 0 partly answered · 0 solved

  1. 01 The Depth Census What share of the world’s charitable money goes to relief, repair, prevention, structure and source work? open
  2. 02 The Exchange Rate Problem 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? open
  3. 03 Measuring the Source 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? open
  4. 04 The Counterfactual Problem How can a giver estimate what would have happened without their gift, cheaply and at scale? open
  5. 05 Closing the Feedback Loop What mechanism lets the people a charity serves send a signal that moves money, the way prices do in markets? open
  6. 06 The Overhead Replacement What simple public measure could replace overhead ratios as the default way donors judge a charity, without being easy to game? open
  7. 07 Story Without Bias Can a story make people feel the scale of a problem rather than one face, and does it move money toward larger needs? open
  8. 08 The Optimal Restriction When does restricting a gift help, and when does it harm? open
  9. 09 The Failure Commons What incentives would get charities to publish their failures, and what happens to their funding when they do? open
  10. 10 The Replication Rate What share of headline charity impact findings replicate when they are tested again? open
  11. 11 The Fragmentation Question Is the charity sector over-fragmented, and when do mergers, shared services or coordination layers improve outcomes? open
  12. 12 The Payout Question What is the best rate to spend philanthropic money now versus later? open
  13. 13 Discounting the Future How much should future people count, and how should giving weigh present suffering against risks to the future? open
  14. 14 The Agency Premium Do community-led programs outperform top-down ones on the same outcome, and by how much? open
  15. 15 The Status Flip Can generosity become a stronger status signal than consumption, and what would that unlock? open
  16. 16 Moral Parliament in Practice How should a real giver allocate money when unsure which moral framework is right, and do different methods give stable answers? open
  17. 17 The Profession Question What should a charitologist be trained in, and does training change where money goes? open
  18. 18 Proximity and Obligation How should distance weigh in giving, and what do givers choose when they see honest comparisons? open
  19. 19 The Money-Time Exchange When is an hour of volunteering worth more than giving an hour’s wages? open
  20. 20 When Charity Harms When does charity cause harm, through dependency, crowding out local markets or governments, or delaying reform? open
  21. 21 The Government Question When does philanthropy add to public spending, when does it replace it, and when does it shape public policy without public accountability? open
  22. 22 The Enough Question How much money would it take to fix a specific problem at its source, and is it true that money isn’t the bottleneck? open
  23. 23 The Question of Questions How should the field decide which open problem to work on first? open
Work on one. Open an issue or a pull request on GitHub with your approach, data or partial result. Progress is published in the Open Problems Progress Report. Prizes will come through Question Bounties once that program is funded.