What are your dollars doing? How are they being used? A Reflection on Effective Philanthropy
What is effective philanthropy?
Effective philanthropy is a philosophy and a movement in philanthropy. Essentially, it describes making the most out of the money you give in a lifetime, and emphasizes finding the opportunities for volunteering and donating that will have the most impact. The goal is to find ways to best channel resources to improve people’s lives and livelihoods, and, ultimately, to improve the world in doing so.
As an example of what effective philanthropy looks like could be using data to find out what impact you could have if you give X amount of dollars and aligning that impact with your personal priorities. This way, your time and donations can be used in the best way to have the most impact.
Effective philanthropy is particularly popular and impactful in the global health sector, likely because of the clearly defined and easily trackable impact on human life in this field.
Effective Philanthropy and Health Access Connect
In the rural areas of Uganda in which we operate, there are tremendous hurdles to accessing healthcare services. Although the actual costs of medical care are free or very low, transportation to the facilities that provide the care is nonexistent or cost-prohibitive. As villagers have told us, 3-5 miles might as well be thousands when you are sick, pregnant, or trying to transport a sick child.
The stakes are very high. People suffering from malaria and HIV/AIDS too often have to go without treatment. It is crucial to get pregnant women to give birth in hospitals or health clinics because many life-threatening pre-and-post-partum complications can be prevented. Otherwise, these complications need to be treated. For example, without proper medical attention, a ruptured uterus during birth is deadly. However, women cannot get to health centers to give birth, even though it is very inexpensive to get care there. The costs of transportation are so high and prohibitive that villagers have told us they used to have to sell land, an acre of corn (livelihood), or even sex to afford transportation to get medical treatment. Because we bring our outreach clinics directly to the villages, we are truly providing life-saving care to thousands of people. This is why we do this work and why we continue to do it.
We give donors the opportunity to connect with our mission and see the impact of our work. HAC uses donations to target people and places that really benefit from the investment. Your donation will provide access to health services for thousands of people throughout the year, helping targeted portions of the population that are ignored by typical nonprofits. The money that people donate goes so far and we have incredible programs that are saving people’s lives.
