A field needs a shared vocabulary before it can argue well. The Encyclopedia is that vocabulary at full length: each entry explains one concept, where it came from, what the evidence says and how it connects to the charity system.
Every entry follows the Charitology Standard: plain language, a source for every factual claim, and an honest label where people disagree. Short definitions live in the Lexicon. Book-length arguments live in Principles of Charitology.
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Coverage and review
This is a working collection, not complete coverage of the field. Entries remain drafts until the review standard is met. A source count describes the record; it does not establish the quality of the evidence.
This is a working set of concepts, not a complete encyclopedia. The review label records editorial review; the number of sources is not a measure of evidence quality.
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Beneficiary feedback
Systematically asking the people a program serves what they think of it, and acting on what they say. It is the most direct way to restore part of the feedback loop that charity is missing.
- Also called
- constituent feedback · constituent voice · client feedback · listening to the people served
- System conditions
- The Missing Feedback Loop · The Missing Voice
Read the source list (4)
- Listening to Those Who Matter Most, the Beneficiaries — Fay Twersky, Phil Buchanan and Valerie Threlfall, Stanford Social Innovation Review, 2013
- Feedback Labs — Feedback Labs
- Fund for Shared Insight
— Fund for Shared Insight, 2026
The collaborative concluded in 2026 after 12 years. Its site is now an archive.
- Six Practices of Trust-Based Grantmaking — Trust-Based Philanthropy Project
Charity as a system
Charitology’s model of giving as one connected system. Givers respond to signals, money moves through channels to the work, the work produces outcomes, and feedback can carry results back. The size of any gap is an open empirical question.
- Also called
- the charity system · the system map · giving system
- System conditions
- The Missing Feedback Loop · The Missing Profession · The Fragmentation Problem
Read the source list (5)
- Giving USA: $617.2B Was Given To Nonprofits During 2025 — The NonProfit Times, reporting Giving USA 2026, 2026
- Exempt Organizations Business Master File Extract
— Internal Revenue Service, 2026
The page listed a record count of 1,975,975 organizations when checked in October 2026. The file covers every kind of tax-exempt organization, not only charities.
- DAF Assets Soar 30% to $326 Billion — The Chronicle of Philanthropy, reporting the Annual DAF Report 2025 by the DAF Research Collaborative, 2025
- The Role of Nonprofit Enterprise — Henry B. Hansmann, Yale Law Journal 89, 1980
- Annual DAF Report 2025, full report — Donor Advised Fund Research Collaborative, Indiana University repository, 2025
Cost-effectiveness analysis
Estimating how much good a program produces per dollar, so that options can be compared. The estimates are rough, and the differences they reveal can be enormous.
- Also called
- CEA · cost per outcome · cost per DALY · cost per life saved
- System conditions
- The Overhead Myth · The Measurement Gap
Read the source list (5)
- The Moral Imperative toward Cost-Effectiveness in Global Health — Toby Ord, Center for Global Development, 2013
- Cost-Effectiveness — GiveWell, 2025
- How Much Does It Cost to Save a Life? — GiveWell, 2024
- Errors in DCP2 cost-effectiveness estimate for deworming — The GiveWell Blog, 2011
- Why we can’t take expected value estimates literally (even when they’re unbiased) — Holden Karnofsky, The GiveWell Blog, 2011
Counterfactual impact
The real effect of a gift is the difference between what happens with it and what would have happened without it. Estimating that difference is one of the hardest and most important problems in giving.
- Also called
- counterfactual · additionality · replaceability · funging
- System conditions
- The Missing Feedback Loop · The Measurement Gap
Read the source list (5)
- Counterfactuals and how they change our view of what does good — Benjamin Todd, 80,000 Hours, 2021
- Doing good together: how to coordinate effectively and avoid single-player thinking — Benjamin Todd, 80,000 Hours, 2018
- Revisiting leverage — James Snowden, The GiveWell Blog, 2018
- Our Criteria — GiveWell
- “Scared Straight” and other juvenile awareness programs for preventing juvenile delinquency — Anthony Petrosino and colleagues, Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, 2022
Discounting
Giving less weight to benefits and costs the further in the future they fall. Some reasons for discounting are about uncertainty and growth. One, pure time preference, is the moral claim that later wellbeing matters less just because it is later.
- Also called
- discount rate · time discounting · pure time preference · social discount rate
- System conditions
- The Short Horizon
Read the source list (3)
- Ramsey and Intergenerational Welfare Economics
— Partha Dasgupta, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2019
First published in 2019 and revised in 2023. Quotes Frank Ramsey’s “A Mathematical Theory of Saving” (1928).
- A review of GiveWell’s discount rate — Jenny Kudymowa, James Hu, Melanie Basnak and Tom Hird, Rethink Priorities, 2023
- The “Stern Review” on the Economics of Climate Change — William D. Nordhaus, NBER Working Paper 12741, 2006
Donor-advised funds
Charitable accounts held by a sponsoring public charity, which the donor advises on grants and investments. They held about $326 billion in 2024, and how fast that money should reach working charities is one of the live debates in philanthropy.
- Also called
- DAFs · DAF · donor-advised fund
- System conditions
- Parked Money · The Short Horizon
Read the source list (4)
- Donor-advised funds — Internal Revenue Service
- DAF Assets Soar 30% to $326 Billion — The Chronicle of Philanthropy, reporting the Annual DAF Report 2025 by the DAF Research Collaborative, 2025
- The Annual DAF Report 2025 — Johnson Center for Philanthropy, 2025
- Annual DAF Report 2025, full report — Donor Advised Fund Research Collaborative, Indiana University repository, 2025
Effective altruism
A philosophy and social movement that uses evidence and careful reasoning to find the ways of helping others that do the most good. Charitology shares its rigor and starts from a different place.
- Also called
- EA
- System conditions
- The Single Lens · The Proximity Pull
Read the source list (9)
- Famine, Affluence, and Morality — Peter Singer, Philosophy & Public Affairs 1(3), 1972
- About GiveWell — GiveWell
- Our history — Giving What We Can
- The history of the term ‘effective altruism’ — William MacAskill, Effective Altruism Forum, 2014
- Open Philanthropy Is Now Coefficient Giving — Effective Altruism Forum, 2025
- What are the most pressing world problems? — 80,000 Hours
- FTX bankruptcy also endangers founder’s philanthropic gifts — Thalia Beaty and Glenn Gamboa, Associated Press, 2022
- Effective Altruism and Its Critics — Iason Gabriel, Journal of Applied Philosophy 34(4), 2017
- Stop the Robot Apocalypse: The New Utilitarians — Amia Srinivasan, London Review of Books 37(18), 2015
Expected value
The probability-weighted average of an action’s possible results. It is the standard way to compare a sure thing with a long shot, and it misleads when the probabilities are guesses.
- Also called
- EV · expected impact · probability-weighted value
- System conditions
- The Measurement Gap · The Short Horizon
Read the source list (4)
- Why we can’t take expected value estimates literally (even when they’re unbiased) — Holden Karnofsky, The GiveWell Blog, 2011
- Moral Uncertainty — William MacAskill, Krister Bykvist and Toby Ord, Oxford University Press, 2020
- Stop the Robot Apocalypse: The New Utilitarians — Amia Srinivasan, London Review of Books 37(18), 2015
- A framework for comparing global problems in terms of expected impact — Robert Wiblin, 80,000 Hours, 2016
Identifiable victim effect
The tendency to give more to help one specific, identified person than to help many people described by statistics. It is one of the best-known findings about giving, and recent replications have questioned how large and reliable it is.
- Also called
- identified victim effect · singularity effect · statistical victims
- System conditions
- The Story Bias · The Proximity Pull
Read the source list (4)
- Sympathy and callousness: The impact of deliberative thought on donations to identifiable and statistical victims
— Deborah A. Small, George Loewenstein and Paul Slovic, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes 102(2), 2007
Freely readable at https://faculty.wharton.upenn.edu/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/Sympathy_and_callousness.pdf
- The identifiable victim effect: a meta-analytic review — Seyoung Lee and Thomas Hugh Feeley, Social Influence 11(3), 2016
- Revisiting and Rethinking the Identifiable Victim Effect: Replication and Extension of Small, Loewenstein, and Slovic (2007)
— Maximilian Maier, Yik Chun Wong and Gilad Feldman, Collabra: Psychology 9(1), 2024
Open manuscript and publication record at https://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/id/eprint/201115/
- FLoRA Replication Atlas entry for Small, Loewenstein and Slovic (2007) — FORRT
Impact investing
Investing with the intention of producing measurable social or environmental good alongside a financial return. It brings investment capital, not only gifts, to bear on social problems, and it raises a sharp counterfactual question.
- Also called
- social investing · mission-related investing · program-related investments
- System conditions
- The Measurement Gap · Parked Money
Read the source list (5)
- What you need to know about impact investing — Global Impact Investing Network (GIIN)
- Sizing the Impact Investing Market 2024 — Dean Hand, Maddie Ulanow, Hongyu Pan and Kelly Xiao, Global Impact Investing Network, 2024
- The State of Impact Investing — Jem Hudson, Wharton Magazine, 2014
- Many Paths to One Mountaintop – Antony Bugg-Levine on Building Movements That Shift Systems — The Rockefeller Foundation
- Program-related investments — Internal Revenue Service
Moral uncertainty
Uncertainty about which moral view is right, as opposed to uncertainty about the facts. Philosophers have developed ways to act well under it, and Charitology’s method of looking through every framework depends on them.
- Also called
- normative uncertainty · deciding under moral uncertainty
- System conditions
- The Single Lens
Read the source list (3)
- Moral Uncertainty
— William MacAskill, Krister Bykvist and Toby Ord, Oxford University Press, 2020
Open access under a Creative Commons license (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0); freely readable at https://www.moraluncertainty.com/s/Moral-Uncertainty.pdf
- Moral uncertainty – towards a solution? — Nick Bostrom, Overcoming Bias, 2009
- The parliamentary approach to moral uncertainty — Toby Newberry and Toby Ord, Future of Humanity Institute Technical Report 2021-2, 2021
Mutual aid
People in a community pooling time, money and skills to meet one another’s needs directly, without a charity standing between giver and receiver. Its structure can differ from giving through a separate service provider.
- Also called
- solidarity networks · community self-help
- System conditions
- The Missing Feedback Loop · The Missing Voice · The Proximity Pull
Read the source list (2)
- Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution — Peter Kropotkin (Project Gutenberg edition), 1902
- We Keep Each Other Safe: Mutual Aid for Survival and Solidarity — Barnard Center for Research on Women, conversation with Dean Spade, Mariame Kaba and Ejeris Dixon, 2021
Neglectedness
How few resources already go to a problem relative to its size. Other things equal, an extra dollar tends to do more where few other dollars go, because the best opportunities there have not yet been taken.
- Also called
- crowdedness · uncrowdedness · diminishing returns
- System conditions
- The Story Bias · The Proximity Pull · The Symptom Trap · The Single Lens
Read the source list (3)
- A framework for comparing global problems in terms of expected impact
— Robert Wiblin, 80,000 Hours, 2016
First published in 2016 and last updated in December 2025.
- The Important/Neglected/Tractable framework needs to be applied with care — Robert Wiblin, Effective Altruism Forum, 2016
- Narrowing down U.S. policy areas — Holden Karnofsky, The GiveWell Blog, 2014
Outputs and outcomes
Outputs are what a program does or delivers. Outcomes are what changes for people as a result. Counting outputs alone does not establish outcomes.
- Also called
- outputs · outcomes · impact · results chain · logic model
- System conditions
- The Measurement Gap · The Overhead Myth
Read the source list (2)
- Logic Model Development Guide — W.K. Kellogg Foundation, 2004
- Insecticide-treated nets for preventing malaria (Cochrane systematic review) — Joseph Pryce, Marty Richardson and Christian Lengeler, Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, 2018
Overhead ratio
The share of a charity’s spending that goes to management and fundraising rather than to programs. It is easy to find and widely used, but it does not establish what a charity achieves.
- Also called
- overhead · program expense ratio · administrative costs · fundraising ratio
- System conditions
- The Overhead Myth · The Measurement Gap
Read the source list (5)
- Instructions for Form 990, Part IX, Statement of Functional Expenses — Internal Revenue Service, 2025
- The Nonprofit Starvation Cycle — Ann Goggins Gregory and Don Howard, Stanford Social Innovation Review, 2009
- 3 Major Charity Groups Ask Donors to Stop Focusing on Overhead Costs — The Chronicle of Philanthropy, 2013
- Charity Impact Media — Charity Impact Media
- The overhead myth: crash course to fundraising transparency — Candid, 2022
Participatory grantmaking
Grantmaking in which funders hand some or all of the decisions about money, including strategy and criteria, to the communities the money is meant to serve.
- Also called
- participatory philanthropy · community-led grantmaking · shifting power
- System conditions
- The Missing Voice · The Missing Feedback Loop
Read the source list (3)
- New report on how funders can engage in participatory grantmaking — Alliance magazine, on Cynthia Gibson’s GrantCraft guide “Deciding Together”, 2018
- Humanity’s Checklist: six things to fix so we can fix everything else — Humanity’s Checklist, 2026
- Deciding Together: Shifting Power and Resources Through Participatory Grantmaking — Cynthia Gibson, GrantCraft, Foundation Center, 2018
Private foundations
In U.S. law, charities that do not qualify as public charities, usually because they lack broad public support. They must generally spend an amount tied to 5 percent of their investment assets on charitable purposes each year.
- Also called
- foundations · grantmaking foundations · the 5 percent rule · minimum distribution requirement
- System conditions
- Parked Money · The Short Horizon
Read the source list (8)
- Private foundations — Internal Revenue Service
- Minimum investment return — Internal Revenue Service
- Taxes on failure to distribute income, private foundations — Internal Revenue Service
- Program-related investments — Internal Revenue Service
- Key takeaways from Giving USA’s 2026 report on philanthropy — Foundation Source, 2026
- The 5 Percent Foundation Payout Requirement May Be a Floor, but the Ceiling Is Awfully Low — Helen Flannery, Inequality.org (Institute for Policy Studies), 2023
- Gates to give away $200 billon and shutter foundation in 2045 — Alliance magazine, 2025
- Phil Trammell on how becoming a ‘patient philanthropist’ might allow you to do far more good — 80,000 Hours Podcast, 2020
Psychic numbing
The way concern for people in danger fails to grow with their number, and can even shrink, so that a single person in need moves us more than a mass tragedy. The psychologist Paul Slovic has used it to explain how people respond to suffering on a large scale.
- Also called
- compassion fade · compassion collapse · scope insensitivity
- System conditions
- The Story Bias · The Symptom Trap
Read the source list (2)
- “If I look at the mass I will never act”: Psychic numbing and genocide — Paul Slovic, Judgment and Decision Making 2(2), 2007
- Compassion Fade: Affect and Charity Are Greatest for a Single Child in Need — Daniel Västfjäll, Paul Slovic, Marcus Mayorga and Ellen Peters, PLoS ONE 9(6), 2014
Randomized controlled trials
Experiments that assign people or communities to a program or to a comparison group by chance, so that differences in outcomes can be credited to the program. They reshaped development economics, and their limits are still debated.
- Also called
- RCTs · randomized evaluations · field experiments
- System conditions
- The Measurement Gap
Read the source list (5)
- The Prize in Economic Sciences 2019 — The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, 2019
- About us — Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL)
- Understanding and misunderstanding randomized controlled trials
— Angus Deaton and Nancy Cartwright, Social Science & Medicine 210, 2018
Freely readable at https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6019115/
- Insecticide-treated nets for preventing malaria (Cochrane systematic review) — Joseph Pryce, Marty Richardson and Christian Lengeler, Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, 2018
- “Scared Straight” and other juvenile awareness programs for preventing juvenile delinquency — Anthony Petrosino and colleagues, Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, 2022
Restricted and unrestricted funding
Restricted gifts must be spent on a purpose the funder names. Unrestricted gifts, also called general operating support, let the organization decide. The balance between them shapes what charities can learn, fix and attempt.
- Also called
- general operating support · flexible funding · project funding · multiyear funding
- System conditions
- The Restriction Reflex · The Overhead Myth · The Short Horizon
Read the source list (5)
- New Attitudes, Old Practices: The Provision of Multiyear General Operating Support — Center for Effective Philanthropy, via the National Center for Family Philanthropy, 2020
- Top Foundations Pledge Flexible Funding to Grantees in Wake of COVID-19 Crisis — Ford Foundation, 2020
- A Call to Action: Philanthropy’s Commitment During COVID-19 — Council on Foundations
- Six Practices of Trust-Based Grantmaking — Trust-Based Philanthropy Project
- The Nonprofit Starvation Cycle — Ann Goggins Gregory and Don Howard, Stanford Social Innovation Review, 2009
Scale, neglectedness and tractability
A framework for comparing problems by how big they are, how few resources already go to them and how much extra effort would achieve. It grew out of GiveWell Labs and 80,000 Hours and is widely used in effective altruism.
- Also called
- SNT framework · ITN framework · importance, neglectedness and tractability · scale, neglectedness and solvability
- System conditions
- The Single Lens · The Symptom Trap
Read the source list (5)
- A framework for comparing global problems in terms of expected impact
— Robert Wiblin, 80,000 Hours, 2016
First published in 2016 and last updated in December 2025.
- A framework for strategically selecting a cause — Benjamin Todd, 80,000 Hours, 2013
- Narrowing down U.S. policy areas — Holden Karnofsky, The GiveWell Blog, 2014
- The Important/Neglected/Tractable framework needs to be applied with care — Robert Wiblin, Effective Altruism Forum, 2016
- Open Philanthropy Is Now Coefficient Giving — Effective Altruism Forum, 2025
Source depth
Charitology’s five-level scale for where a piece of work acts on the chain from symptom to source, from relief through repair, prevention and structure to source. It describes the work. It never grades it.
- Also called
- depth scale · depth · relief to source
- System conditions
- The Symptom Trap · The Measurement Gap
Read the source list (1)
- Humanity’s Checklist: six things to fix so we can fix everything else — Humanity’s Checklist, 2026
Symptoms and sources
The core distinction of charitology. A symptom is a problem as it shows up in people’s lives. A source is what keeps producing it upstream.
- Also called
- root causes · upstream causes
- System conditions
- The Symptom Trap
Read the source list (1)
- Humanity’s Checklist: six things to fix so we can fix everything else — Humanity’s Checklist, 2026
Systemic change
Change to the structures that produce outcomes, such as laws, markets, institutions, relationships and beliefs, rather than to outcomes one case at a time. On Charitology’s depth scale it is the work of the structure and source levels.
- Also called
- systems change · structural change · root-cause change
- System conditions
- The Symptom Trap · The Short Horizon · The Measurement Gap
Read the source list (4)
- Leverage Points: Places to Intervene in a System — Donella Meadows, The Sustainability Institute, 1999
- The Water of Systems Change — John Kania, Mark Kramer and Peter Senge, FSG, 2018
- Six Conditions for Systems Change — Complex Systems Frameworks Collection
- Effective Altruism and Its Critics — Iason Gabriel, Journal of Applied Philosophy 34(4), 2017
Theory of change
A written account of how and why a program’s activities are expected to lead to its long-term goal, step by step, with the assumptions that link each step to the next.
- Also called
- ToC · causal pathway · change model
- System conditions
- The Measurement Gap · The Symptom Trap
Read the source list (3)
- What is Theory of Change? — Center for Theory of Change
- TOC Origins — Center for Theory of Change
- Logic Model Development Guide — W.K. Kellogg Foundation, 2004
Warm-glow giving
The satisfaction people get from the act of giving itself, apart from what the gift achieves. The economist James Andreoni built it into a theory of giving in 1990, It is one possible input to Charitology’s hypotheses about giving signals.
- Also called
- warm glow · impure altruism · joy of giving
- System conditions
- The Prestige Economy · The Missing Feedback Loop · The Story Bias
Read the source list (2)
- Impure Altruism and Donations to Public Goods: A Theory of Warm-Glow Giving? — James Andreoni, The Economic Journal 100(401), 1990
- Paying Taxes, According To The Brain, Can Bring Satisfaction — University of Oregon, via EurekAlert, on William Harbaugh, Ulrich Mayr and Dan Burghart in Science, 2007