Venkat Krishnan is one of the early promisors of #LivingMyPromise, a Philanthropy Evangelist, #DaanUtsav Volunteer, Former founder of GiveIndia and former co-founder of Educational Initiatives Pvt Ltd.
People often whine about comparing apples and oranges, but the REALITY is that we actually do make that comparison several times every single day in our lives. Occasionally, we do it literally when we go to the market to buy fruit- and decide whether to buy apples or oranges! But more often, it is choosing between going out to dinner or a movie instead. Watching something on Netflix v/s scrolling through reels on your phone or reading a book.
There are 2 ways to compare apples and oranges- one is simply using the classic economic model of “demand and supply” to arrive at equilibrium pricing. But there’s a more general model of comparing “utility functions”, that individuals exercise subconsciously while making choices- “how badly do I want an apple now, v/s an orange?”, or mathematically speaking, which of the 2 fruits’ utility functions have higher value for me? One answer may be that an apple is more useful now, but having eaten one, an orange may be more useful to a person (to another, having eaten an apple, 1 more may be more useful).
Subconsciously, when a donor/philanthropist chooses 1 cause over another, they are assigning higher utility to the first over the second (e.g., educating 20 children for 5 years v/s saving a life). However, we tend to double down on these initial assessments and then become rigid in our thematic focus- with the result that 10 years after doubling down on education, one stops comparing the cost of educating x children for a year with y lives saved.
As I work through 27 grant applications to give away upto Rs9cr over 3 years, I’m trying to create a utility function for each type of impact. I will end up comparing educating children with providing palliative care, helping someone get a job with fighting a legal case, delivering career readiness with providing a GP consultation.
If each of us, as philanthropists, used this as a base factor (of course, while also considering other aspects like the context/circumstance of the work, the impact per rupee, the value we believe we can add to the org, the long term secondary benefits from the work, the likelihood of the org getting support from other sources, etc.), I believe we can be a little less random and a little more objective in our giving decisions.
Specifically in the volunteering context, I’m currently writing a paper on utility of volunteer-driven impacts, that factors in both the external impact (outcomes delivered) AND the impact on the volunteer, and on society at large. This is still work in progress and will take me some time.
Meanwhile, every time you wish to donate substantial sums, do consider going beyond narrative storytelling nonsense, to calculating the impact per rupee and assigning utility to each type of impact and then comparing the utility per rupee to make your decisions :-)!!