Our Pledge: Hire a Business Coach and We Will Give a Child a Primary School Education
Today we’re launching our giving pledge: for every new client we sign we will give a child access to a primary school education. In this article I’ll tell you how we decided on the idea, how we’re able to buy the equivalent of an entire 8 year primary school education for a child in a developing country for £50 and how this is all part of a much larger plan to introduce CEOs in London to an exciting new idea called effective altruism.
As business mentors to the CEOs of companies in London we spend a lot of time trying to find clever answers to business problems.
We thought it only appropriate that we find an equally clever way to use our charity donations this year. We thought it was interesting how a business will track the return on investment on every pound they spend yet people rarely put that kind of thought into their charitable giving.
What would happen if we combined compassion with business thinking and looked for ways to get the biggest bang for our charitable buck?
The research group GiveWell are one of the biggest names in ‘effective altruism’ (the name for this kind of rigorous evidence-based philanthropy). They conduct research into the cost-effectiveness of different charities and they’ve found that some charities are indeed thousands of times more effective than others per dollar donated.
Their current recommendations for the most effective charities in the world based on cost-effectiveness, transparency, scalability and capacity to use additional funding include: the Against Malaria Foundation, who will manufacture and distribute a mosquito net to a family in Sub-Saharan Africa for just $5; the Deworm The World Initiative, who will treat a child in Kenya for parasitic worms for a paltry $0.22; and the Malaria Consortium, who will provide a child with antimalarial drugs for $3.45.
Taking inspiration from Toms’ famous pledge to donate a pair of shoes to someone in need each time they sold a pair, we settled on a ‘buy one give one’ pledge inspired by effective altruism.
For every coaching programme purchased we will give a child access to a primary school education
The charity we’re donating to is the Deworm The World Initiative, one of GiveWell’s top three most effective charities in the world (for the past five years running) and MIT Poverty Action Lab’s “best buy” in both education and health.
You might ask why deworming? It ticks all the boxes because 870 million children worldwide are at risk from parasitic worms and this debilitating infection costs less than 20p per year to treat.
Studies find that deworming programmes are an incredibly cost-effective way of raising school attendance, far more effective than conventional interventions like money for textbooks or teachers. Scientists at MIT found that if you relieve children of the symptoms caused by parasitic worms (anemia, malnourishment and stunted growth) it costs less than £50 to buy the equivalent of 8 years of additional school attendance.
When we worked out that it was possible to make such a big impact so easily the whole team immediately got on board with the idea.
So this is our pledge: a £50 donation to Deworm The World, or the equivalent of an entire primary school education in additional school attendance, every time we sign a new client.
One criticism might be that we shouldn’t be shouting about this. Why not donate the money quietly without bragging? We think there are several reasons why it makes sense to publicise our pledge.
Firstly by making our commitment public we’re more likely to stick to it. As coaches we’re intimately familiar with the power of external accountability. Secondly, by talking openly about what we’re doing we’re hoping to inspire a few of our clients to follow suit.
Taken together, the businesses we’ve coached are responsible for generating over £50 million in revenue every year. As trusted mentors and confidants to these CEOs we’re uniquely positioned to promote effective altruism to the people who could donate the most.
I’d be interested to hear what you think, so do get in touch if you have any thoughts. If you would like some help setting up and promoting a similar giving pledge in your business drop me a line at brynhopewell@actioncoach.com and I’d be happy to see what I can do to help.
