Charitology

Journal of Charitology: Volume 0 source capture

Journal of Charitology · fixed capture 1 · editorial draft

Journal of Charitology: Volume 0 source capture

This is a new capture of explicitly committed sources, not a claim about exact bytes served on an earlier date. Freezing content does not establish independent review, a staffed institution or a research result.

Captured
Declared publication day
Unknown / not declared
Source label
Volume 0; three editorial drafts
Scope
Three exact draft manuscripts and their pinned R4 qualification references.
Geography
Charitology project
Source baseline
d98f9560b866055971ddea7176c8e5e1028ec58d
  • Unknown historical baselines stay unknown. Capture time is not a source measurement or a historical served-edition timestamp.
  • A fixed edition records its stated sources and scope; it does not establish a staffed institution, independently reviewed research or an annual publication cadence.

AI assistance: Prepared with AI assistance. Independent human review has not been completed.

Edition journal-volume-zero-capture · final hash c0c1545d7b71e3104c57c2bd7da3817d8478c1ded8d6a431eeff706235b9c9ee
Content core db32b17441f9255a5b3412fad4aab812fe1774f7ef58cf336666cb1374725074

Volume 0, issue 1 · 2026-10-25

Ten Dollars

The founding poem uses a ten-dollar domain registration as an image for Charitology’s invitation to study how generosity is aimed.

Charitology

Source review declaration: draft. This archive is an editorial draft; preserving a source does not supply an independent reviewer.

*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.*

In 2026, we bought a word for ten dollars.

Not a rare word. Not a clever one.\ The most obvious word there is.\ It was just lying there,\ unregistered, unclaimed, unbuilt,\ like a key nobody had picked up\ because nobody knew there was a door.

*Charitology.*

We have a word for the study of bells.\ Campanology.\ We have a word for the study of flags.\ Vexillology.\ We have a word for the science of mixing a cocktail.\ Mixology.

But for the science of doing the most good\ a human being can do,\ there was nothing.\ No word. No field. No craft.\ Not even a name to argue about.

Think about what that means.\ Rocket science gets a whole discipline,\ and rockets only have to obey physics.\ Physics doesn’t change its mind.\ Gravity doesn’t have a culture.\ Thrust doesn’t ask whose child gets saved first.

Doing good is harder.\ It is the hardest problem we have:\ which suffering, which cure,\ which country, which century,\ now or later, them or us,\ the person in front of you\ or the millions you’ll never meet.\ No equation hands you the answer.\ And we’ve been working on it\ without ever admitting it needed solving.

Here’s the part nobody says out loud:\ the money is already here.\ Hundreds of billions of dollars, every single year,\ given freely,\ given with love,\ given by people who meant every cent.

The generosity was never missing.\ The aim was.

And that is not your fault.\ You gave with your whole heart.\ Nobody handed you a map.\ Nobody trained the mapmakers.\ Nobody even named the territory.

You can’t master a craft that doesn’t exist.\ You can’t get better at something\ no one has agreed is a thing to get better at.\ Without a field, without the people who live in it,\ without that honest, stubborn, careful search for what actually works,\ we’re all just trying\ with the lights off.

So we’re turning them on.

*Charitology.*\ The science of doing the most good.\ Not one cause. Every cause.\ Not one method. Every method.\ Not one answer handed down,\ but the endless, humble, rigorous work\ of finding the best of all ways.

We’re not here to tell you you’ve been giving wrong.\ We’re here to tell you it’s worth getting right.

So study it. Question it. Test it. Teach it.\ Argue about it at dinner.\ Prove us wrong and make it better.\ Become what this world has never had a name for:

*a charitologist.*

It cost us ten dollars to claim the word.\ It will take the rest of our lives to deserve it.

Sources retained with this version

    Exact ledger qualification reference

    A reference identifies the record to inspect; it does not itself state that a review gate passed.

    manuscript:ten-dollars · version 1 · 5b46f78f4ff3fbad153d4a2e2c902dc908d6a775ffd73f2d5426f1415595c836
    Ledger edition:2026-10-27-initial · 63af9ab52aa86652f81ea1fac0b7c40aaad46cd8623865918d41ec347f9b2cd3

    Inspect this exact ledger edition
    Member identity and provenance

    ten-dollars · c47799ee0e68a3c120ad21ccdf0cd4910da3f660e53731200907721272f73116

    1 exact retained source pins. The complete edition manifest contains their identities and hashes.

    Volume 0, issue 2 · 2026-10-25

    Depth without a ladder: a protocol for describing where work acts

    A reproducible proposal for classifying activities across relief, repair, prevention, structure and source without turning description into a rating.

    Charitology editorial project (AI-assisted draft)

    Source review declaration: draft. This archive is an editorial draft; preserving a source does not supply an independent reviewer.

    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.

    The unit is an activity

    An 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.

    Record 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 are hypotheses that may help generate questions; invoking one does not demonstrate causality.

    A proposed coding rule

    Use 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.

    An 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.

    An illustrative coding exercise

    Consider 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.

    The 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.

    Independent coding and disagreement

    Give 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.

    Disagreements 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.

    Denominators and unknowns

    A 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.

    The Gap Map provides a local worksheet for making this accounting explicit. Its user-entered scenarios are not a global census.

    Tests that could reject the method

    A 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.

    Before 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.

    Reproduction packet

    Publish the sampling frame, inclusion and exclusion rules, source retrieval dates, coding manual, coder assignments, uncoded records, adjudications and analysis code. Use the Replication Program to preregister the question and the Evidence Reviews desk to track sources. Report descriptive results even when they fail to support the founding hypothesis.

    Sources retained with this version

    • Humanity's Checklist · The proposed source framework cited in this draft, not established causal evidence.
    Exact ledger qualification reference

    A reference identifies the record to inspect; it does not itself state that a review gate passed.

    manuscript:depth-without-a-ladder · version 1 · 6f9e81cf213139edc9a1f3c36a913ba5806793bf34f63e0cc2fc374740186708
    Ledger edition:2026-10-27-initial · 63af9ab52aa86652f81ea1fac0b7c40aaad46cd8623865918d41ec347f9b2cd3

    Inspect this exact ledger edition
    Member identity and provenance

    depth-without-a-ladder · cfb3384e27c17061d8281440fedb831252498210854cc85af84491c51f4c0aa6

    1 exact retained source pins. The complete edition manifest contains their identities and hashes.

    Volume 0, issue 3 · 2026-10-25

    The feedback contract: designing a giving decision people can correct

    A proposed reporting contract linking a giving decision to outcomes, uncertainty, affected communities and a public revision rule.

    Charitology editorial project (AI-assisted draft)

    Source review declaration: draft. This archive is an editorial draft; preserving a source does not supply an independent reviewer.

    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.

    Start with a decision

    A 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.

    A 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.

    Seven linked records

    1. Resources: what money, time and equipment went in, in which period and currency.
    2. Activity: what was actually delivered and the public evidence for that record.
    3. Reach: who could access it and who was excluded. Avoid publishing personal records.
    4. Outcome: what changed, including a unit, observation date and a defensible denominator.
    5. Counterfactual: what might have happened without the activity and why that comparison is credible.
    6. Experience and harm: what participants say mattered, how dissent can be raised safely and what unintended effects were observed.
    7. Revision: the threshold, review date and named organizational role responsible for changing the decision.

    Missing 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.

    A worked, fictional example

    Suppose 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.

    Before 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.

    No 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.

    Publish the revision rule first

    A 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.

    Changes 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.

    Depth and values remain separate

    The 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.

    Use and test

    The Impact Measurement Toolkit can turn the mechanism into an observation plan. Charity OS can retain local project, budget and evidence records. The Moral Frameworks desk can record disagreements, while the Failure Lab can document what changed after an unexpected result.

    A 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.

    Sources retained with this version

      Exact ledger qualification reference

      A reference identifies the record to inspect; it does not itself state that a review gate passed.

      manuscript:the-feedback-contract · version 1 · 40b575ce4271462dbf2ca4e6abff3f5c5cf15d9a2bf1e39a7d5241aedd56427e
      Ledger edition:2026-10-27-initial · 63af9ab52aa86652f81ea1fac0b7c40aaad46cd8623865918d41ec347f9b2cd3

      Inspect this exact ledger edition
      Member identity and provenance

      the-feedback-contract · c543cd79983b1f97392c5ea27562751cc62583078a2d231e175c6720e5c80226

      1 exact retained source pins. The complete edition manifest contains their identities and hashes.

      Inspect all 195 exact source snapshots and artifact hashes

      Snapshot text is inert. Original source commits are retained; a later edition baseline can reuse unchanged snapshots only after explicit byte verification. A capture does not establish fresh retrieval of a cited external website.

      Text artifacts

      • edition.md · 43975 UTF-8 bytes

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      • edition.txt · 43975 UTF-8 bytes

        ae1d49755e55be5fa6438faeb437ea8bb493301e417c5d23977149629b191877

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