Jason Dykstra: How To Have Maximum Impact In Medicine or Any Profession

Summary:

In this episode, we speak with Jason Dykstra. Jason is a jack of all trades. He has experience in the medical field, as a physician specializing in diagnostic radiology. On top of that, he runs a house church network called World Wide House Church. He also founded Bless Big, a charity evaluator founded on Christian principles, which has advised GiveWell and Charity Navigator. Jason and his family are committed givers; they limit their income to $50,000 and consequently give everything above that away.

Some things we touch on in this episode:

• What it’s like working in a charity evaluator that is founded on Christian principles as a Christian.

• How to know if a charity is impactful.

• How and why to give most effectively.

• How to pursue a career with a radical impact on God's kingdom.

• Jason’s career advice for Christians who want to have a big impact.

Articles, organizations, and other media discussed in this episode

• Bless Big is a charity evaluator founded on Christian principles that supports giving to the people who need help the most.

• GiveWell is an independent nonprofit focused on helping people do as much good as possible with their donations.

• GiveDirectly is a nonprofit organization operating in East Africa that helps families living in extreme poverty by making unconditional cash transfers to them via mobile phone.

• Helen Keller International provides critical nutrition to children around the world at risk for vitamin A deficiency by delivering vitamin A supplements.

• Faith Comes by Hearing is an international 501(c)(3) non-profit organization that records and freely provides the Bible in the languages of the world.

• The Mailbox Club is a through-the-mail discipleship ministry for children and adults where one receives Bible study lessons via mail.

• Charity Navigator is a charity assessment organization that evaluates hundreds of thousands of charitable organizations based in the United States.

• Malaria Consortium is an international non-profit organization specializing in the prevention, control, and treatment of malaria and other communicable diseases.

• Against Malaria Foundation is a charity that provides long-lasting insecticidal nets to populations at high risk of malaria, primarily in Africa.

• Jesus Film Project is a Christian media ministry that uses film to spread the gospel.

---

Episode Highlights:

There are many fields you can go into to have an impact

[00:03:39] “But what I didn't realize until later until we kind of added the effectiveness component, was that there are many other fields, of course, that one can go into that either directly or indirectly or even simply through the money or advocacy abilities they have, financial advocacy abilities they have as a result of their job. They can use their job indirectly to have a huge impact in ways that their actual work might not be so impactful in addressing.”

To find an impactful job, look at all aspects of what the job has to offer

[00:05:02]“And so I think when we look at our job, it's far more important to look at not just what the work is and whether it's fulfilling, but what all of the aspects of that job have to offer in regard to our ability to impact others? Will I have educational opportunities because of my position? Will I have resources or money or paycheck kind of earning to give type of a mentality and am I willing to use that money in impactful ways? Will I have extra time off sometimes to be able to use, to advocate, or to build relationships with people outside of my kind of field of work that I can use to help create a higher impact?”

On high-risk high-reward charity: “How confident am I in the statistic that I'm doing math on?”

[00:47:42]“And some people are just maybe more high-risk, high-reward folks. But I think the key question is to ask how confident am I in the statistic that I'm doing math on. How confident am I in that low percentage? Is that low percentage as well established as the high percentage for the other cause? Because if it's not as objectively established, then my math ratcheting up, my giving to multiply that benefit is not at all reliable, and I don't think that it's a good guide for giving in that case.”

Setting a spending limit, give the rest away

[01:18:30]“I really do think the best thing you can do for yourself though, early on in your career, no matter what career you go into, is just that intentionality of setting an expenditure limit, learning about high impact charities and getting to them, to your capacity right now. Because no matter what career you go into, it's that intentionality of making your career into a high impact lifestyle where all those things are, where all those aspects of your career be using that way.”

---

• Full Transcript (expandable)

  [00:00:02.970] - JD

  I'm JD and this is the Christians for Impact podcast. We talk to Christians about the world's most pressing problems and what you can do to impact them during and after university. Today, I speak with Jay Dijkstra about unimpactful charity and how to give most effectively. Jay is a jack of all trades. He is an experienced medical doctor and radiologist. He runs a house church. He also founded a Christian charity, evaluator called Blessbig, which has consulted for GiveWell and Charity Navigator. He and his family have a passion for giving and they're really committed to it. They limited their family income a few years ago to $50,000 and they give everything above that away. We speak about how to know if a charity is impactful, how and why to give effectively, and how to pursue a career with a radical impact for God's kingdom. Jay, thanks so much for coming on.

  [00:01:07.350] - Jason

  Thanks for having me. It's great to chat.

  [00:01:09.930] - JD

  Could you please begin by just sharing a bit about your background, your studies, and what it is you're doing now to impact the world?

  [00:01:16.870] - Jason

  Yeah, so my background is in medicine. I was a pre medical student at a small liberal arts college, went on to medical school at University of Michigan and did my residency in diagnostic radiology over in Southeast Michigan. And so I have been working for 13 years as a radiologist and got married during that whole process and now have two adopted children, both from Detroit. And so we have a biracial family, which is all kinds of fun and challenge and greatness at the same time. And so our journey really began with some role models from childhood that we had as far as how much we might give or how to set up a mindset of giving. And so we always had it in our mind that we wanted to do something just special or extra with that. And that became setting aside an expenditure limit for us so that we only could spend a certain amount on our family and then getting the rest away. But really, besides general biblical principles about where we might give, we really didn't have any sense of how to give well or effectively, how to give in any evidence based way or any retrospectively confirmed way.

  [00:02:26.430] - Jason

  And so the last five years in particular have been that journey of taking the money that we've kind of accumulated or set aside to give whatever that amount was throughout our process and then being able to bear a lot more fruit for the Kingdom of God, but also just for people in the world and our global neighbors in much more effective ways, we hope. We think. And that journey continues. So we keep learning and we keep growing. And my wife and I and kids even now are really excited about doing that as we see what God and what our communities have been able to use that for, which is fantastic. So that's a real quick nutshell journey for us.

  [00:03:08.010] - JD

  Yes. Thanks so much for sharing. And a lot of people, when they think about impacting the world, they think about what career to pursue, what job to take to have a direct impact for God's kingdom. You have gone this path, you became a doctor, you practice medicine. Do you think of that as your primary path or impact? You talk a lot about giving. When did you realize that you could have an impact through giving? And how does that compare, do you think, to the impact you have as a doctor?

  [00:03:39.450] - Jason

  Yeah, that's a great question. And I just come into many opportunities to work with young adults the last 20 years, whether it's been high school, college graduate or post graduate levels. And so it's made me really think about what parts of our journey maybe I would have done differently, but also what parts I think God led us through in really helpful ways. And for me, the pursuit of medicine, I think for anybody who goes into medicine or many other careers, that the goal primarily is to help people, right? And so that mantra was there in my brain being a doctor. But what I didn't realize until later, until we kind of added the effectiveness component, was that there are many other fields, of course, that one can go into that either directly or indirectly or even simply through the money or advocacy abilities they have, financial advocacy abilities they have as a result of their job. They can use their job indirectly to have a huge impact in ways that their actual work might not be so impactful in addressing. And so from my personal standpoint as my career matured as a physician, I started realizing how the non clinical parts of my career, namely the advocacy opportunities that gave me the money I was making, the time that I had off that might be a little bit more sometimes than others.

  [00:05:02.290] - Jason

  Allows me to be more impactful for the world even than my clinical work. And so at this point, because many high impact giving opportunities are related to health care, I like to tell the pre Meds that I work with or the residents that I work with or really anybody that I work with, that I'm a far more impactful physician through my money and through my advocacy than I actually am through my clinical work. And it's not because that work is not impactful. It's just because I'm serving a population that already has many resources available to it from a healthcare standpoint. And so I think when we look at our job, it's far more important to look at not just what the work is and whether it's fulfilling, but what does all of the aspects of that job have to offer in regard to our ability to impact others? Will I have educational opportunities because of my position? Will I have resources or money or paycheck kind of the earning to give type of a mentality and am I willing to use that money in impactful ways? Will I have extra time off sometimes to be able to use, to advocate or to build relationships with people outside of my kind of field of work that I can use to help create higher impact?

  [00:06:20.010] - Jason

  And of course, can I tweak the actual work that I do so that it is more impactful? And there are ways I can do that in my job. If I read certain types of studies or engage certain types of patients and if my company needs me to do that, then great. Then I can even be more impactful in the clinical work that I do. But just kind of a small statistic that tells you why this is important. There have been a lot of studies as far as how impactful physicians actually are in the US. And it's estimated that a given physician in the US. Because of just redundancy of resources and manpower and because of what's available to people regarding health care will save an average of about three to four lives throughout their career that would not have been saved otherwise. So you drop a physician like me out of the system and three or four people would be dead instead of alive throughout a whole career. And that is great. Three to four people is a big deal, but it might not be clear.

  [00:07:12.970] - JD

  Yeah. So to be clear, the stat is something like if we have one more physician then that person will provide care that will effectively save three or four people.

  [00:07:23.220] - Jason

  Right. Isolated from all other variables like the nursing care they would have otherwise gotten the ancillary care like that. Right.

  [00:07:31.550] - JD

  So it's not the case that if a physician sees patients every day that they're, I suppose in a counterfactual sense, saving all these people's lives every day even though they do have direct hands on the patient and are serving the patient directly and are the most immediate extension of the health care system for that person.

  [00:07:53.210] - Jason

  Right.

  [00:07:53.450] - JD

  It might not be the case that if they weren't there that those people wouldn't be saved. Is that right?

  [00:07:57.450] - Jason

  Yes. They're doing all of these things for these people and they're providing valuable services for these people. But if they dropped out of the system, given all of the other manpower and resources that were available besides them, their impact, isolated individual impact would be to save around three to four lives throughout their career. Right. That would have died otherwise. But when you actually look at what a physician can do with an average physician's salary, if they, let's say, even give 10% of their available income to very high impact organizations throughout their career that are dealing with healthcare, they can save 3000 thousand four lives very easily throughout that time based on highly evidence based, robustly, research proven mechanisms that show us that they are reliable and sustainable in saving lives. And so very realistically, you can actually be a better doctor than most doctors, even if you're working in the investment field or in the business world, by using your resources in highly impactful, evidence based ways. A lot of people don't want to go to med school or don't feel like they can go to med school. And of course, healthcare is just one way you can impact people's lives.

  [00:09:11.360] - Jason

  But it's great for people because they don't have to go into one of these compassion related fields. They can go into the field they're very gifted in and still make a huge impact for people who are suffering in ways that we more you typically think of suffering.

  [00:09:29.430] - JD

  I'm sure this idea comes as a shock for many of the medical students you mentored. You mentioned you've mentored hundreds of medical students or young doctors. Is this at all surprising to them when you make this claim or is this something people just into it it makes sense. Yeah. How does that come off?

  [00:09:49.440] - Jason

  I think from a factual standpoint, most of us, especially at the stage where you would be a young adult, has learned enough about the world to not be shocked intellectually that this is the case. We all know that things are far cheaper in certain parts of the world than they are in more developed nations. We all know that approaches to solving problems or the ability of money to solve problems is oftentimes more effective in different parts of the world than where we can spend money on typical problems around us. And most of us know that there are more a greater abundance of resources and organizations providing that care in this part of the world or in a Western developed part of the world than there are in some of these other places. And so I think once they think as they think through it, it makes sense to them intellectually. But for 21 years, they've been so ingrained to think about people in need as being only those that they've seen or only those that they've personally experienced or only stories that have happened to their loved ones or to people around them that I think their idea of compassion and care and charity and generosity almost always immediately conjures up an image of something domestic or relationally or tied to them.

  [00:11:02.390] - Jason

  And so I think from a head standpoint, it's not hard for them to make that transition from a heart standpoint and a care standpoint that would actually cause some sort of action on that. That can be a very difficult transition. And it's not their fault. It's the way the world teaches us about helping people in need is it teaches us to help those we have a picture or a story or some relational and emotional tie to. And what I like to do is help them to see the need behind that picture, whether it's dignity, health care, upward mobility, equality, something like that. And to help them to realize that they're passionate about the need not just the picture so they can transfer that need to a population they don't have those ties to that might allow them to be so much more effective with, let's say, resources, instead of just going into a field that seems to be very compassionate. Right. And once you show them that there's a whole variety of ways that they can have impact with their job and the peripheral aspects of their job, it opens up their career search a lot more and helps them to be able to consider a lot more options that maybe aren't traditionally thought of as being compassionate, but in reality, allow them to be far more compassionate than they would have.

  [00:12:17.930] - Jason

  I just had a student shadow me this week, actually. She is studying different type of medical fields. She's in radiation therapy currently right now at a local university. And she was floored by this idea that she didn't have to necessarily go into a medical field to able to help people from a healthcare standpoint. And it was really exciting for her to see that there were other options available to her that allowed her to do health care in ways that were even more effective than her actually going into health care. And of course, going into healthcare can be very impactful in and of itself too. But it's just great to see people's minds open up and they don't feel pigeonholed into a traditionally compassionate job that they might not really be as gifted at or as fit for to be able to truly be compassionate in the world.

  [00:13:11.150] - JD

  I have a question about the direct effectiveness of work as a doctor or as a healthcare professional. So you mentioned a stat that said that on average, an additional marginal doctor will save about three or four people's lives. Now, that's taking an average of a doctor in the US. Is it a different story if we're looking at doctors in the US in high need areas, let's say a rural population, is the picture drastically different? And then also let's look at it again for a doctor, let's say with doctors. Is it Doctors Without Borders or in some global at risk population? Is the story radically different there?

  [00:13:51.980] - Jason

  Yeah. No, I don't have any statistics for the domestic rural, underserved population. But I can say that these same types of studies have indicated that if you do take your medical training from a western country and do serve in a developing country or one of the poor developing countries, which many of my friends do. That's what they did with their medical training. Then that number does jump up from three to four to 300 to 400. But it's still not quite as much because there are resources still in these countries and because usually these people can only sustain that type of care for so long before they return to their country. Of origin and sometimes the fruit of that is not able to be sustained after they come back either. So there's a lot of factors or a global pandemic can come and force them to come home, right? So there's a lot of factors that play a role in that. It's still not as impactful from a statistical standpoint as someone who is very intentional about using resources they're making here and devoting them. Now, I'm not at all saying that people shouldn't go because the need is incredible.

  [00:14:53.110] - Jason

  And of course if there's nothing to give money to or no people to give money to over there, then it doesn't help at all to have a bunch of money. We need boots on the ground, right? And preferably indigenous boots on the ground who are being trained and can sustainably continue to bring care to their cultures regardless of what happens. But still from a purely number standpoint, one can easily be more sustainably and abundantly impactful from a healthcare standpoint by really intentionally giving money and from any field, not just from a healthcare related field. In fact, I think we all know that many business people and investors and others do a lot better financially than physicians do. And so that's exciting to me. I think that opens up abilities in many fields for people to be able to have a lot more impact in the compassionrelated areas or povertyrelated areas or even some of the more exorist types of areas like AI safety or pandemic prevention types of things. And that's cool. I was a greater number of people to have a greater impact in ways that they might not thought their job could.

  [00:16:02.530] - JD

  You've talked a lot about charitable effectiveness and that if you give to an effective charity you can have an outsized impact. I'd like to talk a bit about that effectiveness. A lot of people have this intuition that charities are roughly the same in their impact. You've done a lot of research into this. You have a charity evaluator, you do evaluation with Blessbig. You've also talked about other evaluators like give. Well, who you've mentioned once is the gold standard for giving with health and poverty charities. I know with GiveWell they emphasize a few different factors in their research. They often look at RCTs, they look at organizations where there's transparency in the data, they look at organizations that have room for more funding, that can demonstrate the impact of marginal donations or additional donations and orgs that have clear theories of change or stories of change. How does your evaluation differ from that? Or do you think any of these are relatively unimportant or do we need all of these things to measure an effective charity? That's a big question, but maybe we can parse out each of those because I think there's a lot of new and you know better than anyone of the new Christian charity evaluators.

  [00:17:13.470] - JD

  In the space up to now there's been relatively few. Could you speak to these elements and which are most important and what's most needed?

  [00:17:21.070] - Jason

  Yeah, I think the first consideration is are you pursuing a type of aid or effort that can be evaluated? And if so, what metrics do you use? And the only reason I bring that up is because in the religious or Christian space, a lot of times with impact, especially potentially eternal impact, we're talking about evangelism and discipleship and church planning and missions. And so you have to be very careful which metrics are selected and how you're measuring those metrics. Of course, it's not as easy to do something like a randomized control trial on these types of things. And of course, many of the organizations providing this type of service are not participating in such studies and many groups evaluating them are not offering such a rigorous assessment of how impactful these organizations are. And so one of the biggest problems is that we're limited in the quality and abundance of evidence that we have or a lot of the metrics that Christians would find important. Now, fortunately, Christians also find development and health care and reducing poverty important as well. And of course, we're called to do that and so that is much easier to study scientifically.

  [00:18:29.720] - Jason

  Although, of course, there's always complexities with such an intricate system as planet Earth and in all of its societies and communities. But we can much more easily isolate variables such as a decrease in mortality or disease prevalence or whatnot and be able to more confidently do high quality, repetitive and large sample size studies on these interventions. So I think you do have to ask what type of intervention are we talking about and what metrics are we using and how well can we measure those metrics before you even kind of say these are the metrics that we find important now? So assuming that you can do a good retrospective, preferably doubleblind large sample size evaluation on these metrics and that your metrics accurately reflect the intervention you're trying to measure, then I do think that basically all of the parameters you listed are very important in blessbig. The ones that we use are first and foremost evidence of impact. So that's our first parameter is there high quality evidence or at least the highest quality we can find that there has been a measurable impact per dollar or at least impact for intervention on the targeted community that they're serving and how isolated is it?

  [00:19:51.790] - Jason

  Right. And so if there's high quality studies or information or exploration that does demonstrate that there has been a high impact per dollar, that's of utmost importance because to an extent, to a large extent, it takes into consideration a lot of those trickle down variables that you'd otherwise have to worry about. Some of the other variables that I'm even going to talk about, it, it kind of loops them into one thing and that's the value of science. Of course, is that it looks at the back end. So you don't have to prospectively come up with all these predictions that will kind of take into account all the variables that could go into play but it takes into consideration what's already happened and all the variables that did already happen and still measures of high impact per dollar. So that's very important and that's a very GiveWell approach. They, they do the same thing. They look prospectively at high pretense probability approaches to solving problems and which ones have been, I guess, confirmed by a very large, very long term body of research to be the most likely approaches to do well. And then they pare down the organizations by that and then look at which organizations working within that space have then been retrospectively and from a quality standpoint, proven.

  [00:21:06.460] - Jason

  So I think that is the most important parameter. The other three that we use that I think are important quickly are financial transparency and budget efficiency which is great and that's the one that people most often look at if they look at any and all. So how much of these organizations money is going to their programs overhead exactly and how much is being spent and what their programs actually entail and all of that and how transparent are they about that data? Right. The problem is if you stop there you miss the whole point because you can spend 100% of your budget on your intervention but if your intervention hasn't been proven to accomplish anything, it doesn't matter, you're just wasting your money. In fact, it would be better if you didn't spend 100% of your money because at least you'd be spending some of your money on yourself then, which presumably would be better benefit than not having any benefit at all. Right? And so I think once you know that an organization is having a high retrospectively proven impact per dollar based on high quality information then it's important how much of their budget is being spent on that intervention.

  [00:22:12.660] - Jason

  But only once you've proven that there is an impact. And then the last few variables EAS far as is distractable is there room for funding? How much money can this organization accept before it's going to decrease in effectiveness? I think those are all important variables but less important for the individual donor because the individual donor is very unlikely unless you've got tens of millions of dollars that you're ready to give. The individual donor is very unlikely to saturate whatever room for funding there is left in these organizations and they don't have to worry as much about tractability because they're probably not going to be giving so much that I'm not saying they're unimportant considerations, I'm just saying they're less important and you can follow that over time. If it's not trackable, if there's no more room for funding then you can easily switch your giving around. So I wouldn't consider those to be as important unless again you're a very wealthy donor that has the chance to influence those variables.

  [00:23:13.790] - JD

  What do you say to criticisms that go something like this? Of course evidence considerations are important, but at the end of the day, we should look at holistic change because when we look at our own lives, when we look at the lives of others and how that's transformed through the gospel or through other generous services, it's never something that we can easily measure. It's never something that we rarely ever something we have fantastic data about. And so at the end of the day, having transparent data, having clear measurable impact is good, but it's not going to seal the deal in terms of finding the best charities. Do you run into this kind of criticism often or what's maybe the best version of this criticism that you found?

  [00:24:01.390] - Jason

  Yeah, I think maybe one version of this criticism is, what about my general sense of well being? Right? Or what about variables that can't be measured, like certain quality of life variables or happiness? And I think that on the surface, those concerns are important and valid because a lot of things that are hard to measure end up being very critical and important aspects of who we are and what we consider our well being to be. But I think that you can also set up studies to quantify a lot of those things. And they may not be perfect numerical quantifications, but I think they can certainly be a survey type of quantification, or at least a change over time in certain metrics, like is your quality of life better? Are you happier? Whatever that subjectively might mean to somebody. There are still ways to measure that if you're intentional about measuring that. And it doesn't mean you have a number like this $50 is going to make a person 50% happier. Although you actually could quantify that if you set up your data gathering system correctly. I think a lot of these seemingly intangible variables are actually still variables that we can measure.

  [00:25:20.860] - Jason

  It's just that you have to set that up ahead of time and want to measure that. And I think oftentimes the argument that we need to consider things more holistically, it's more of a smokescreen or excuse than anything. Because ultimately, no matter what you're trying to improve, whether it's well being or a general sense of happiness or quality of life or decrease in mortality or a measurable decrease in disease prevalence or a measurable increase in the number of churches that are meeting regularly in an area, every one of your interactions has to eventually have some sort of impact. And I think a lot of people use kind of the holistic what about holistic considerations. It's more of this nebulous kind of go nowhere excuse in some ways, because does that mean we just don't care about any of the impact that we do? Does that mean that we just kind of don't try to measure that. I would think that if you're trying to improve a nebulous variable, you can still at least ask about that variable among the target population that you're working with. And you should still have a desire to make sure that that variable is being addressed and being addressed as effectively as possible, even if your data isn't as hard or numerical as it might be with other types of metrics that you're looking at.

  [00:26:43.330] - JD

  What do you think about criticisms that go something like this? Well, sure, we can measure concrete impacts in the short or medium term, and we can look at marginal impacts, but really the big wins on people's lives on. Wellbeing, it's going to happen over the long run, it's going to happen over the next several decades, and this might even be intergenerational change. If we establish a church in some place or do some program in some other place, we're not going to be able to measure the impacts of that in the near term. So it's a smokescreen to try to say that we have to measure it in the near term. Do you find that critique at all compelling? And if so, where do you think that is most relevant?

  [00:27:31.330] - Jason

  I don't, because I think you can either plan to do follow up retrospective evaluation over the long term, which many studies actually involving humanitarian aid have done, to see if there's been long term sustainable effects on this. So again, there's opportunities to at least measure some aspects of this long term and you just have to have the intentionality to do it. But I think the more, I guess, compelling reason not to be taken in by this criticism is that you can't measure that. If you can't measure that with the parameters that I might be talking about, you also can't measure that with the parameters that you might be talking about or the interventions that you would value. And so if you're trying to get away from more evidence based giving in the near term because we can't measure its effects very well in the long term so that you can give somewhere else either in the near term or the long term, you can't measure the long term effects of that intervention either. And so since you can't know one way or the other from that argument, if there's any long term benefit to anything we're doing, you might as well pick the one that has at least evidence based short term benefit, right?

  [00:28:44.390] - Jason

  If you can't know about the long term benefit anyway, pick the intervention that has at least some known benefit and you're going to at least do something in the short term and you won't know that you're doing anything worse in the long term. Right now, if there's clear evidence that there's a long term detriment to a short term benefit, that's different. But that's not the argument. The argument is that we can't know one way or the. Other what the long term benefit is, right?

  [00:29:08.830] - JD

  What do you think about arguments for growth? For development that say something like well, if we provide for short term needs, then we're providing relief. But for development, what we need are institutions and structures that support sustainable growth. Maybe we're talking about property rights or some other kind of more fundamental basis for wealth creation or even just culture change. That doesn't happen overnight. This happens to incremental elite. How would you and your charity evaluation take that into consideration? Or do you say those things are important, that's just not within the realm of measurement?

  [00:29:45.990] - Jason

  Yeah, perfect. That's a great question. I've done a lot of thinking about that because it does seem that the evidence would suggest that retrospectively I like to put it this way where development has worked, it has worked incredibly well and we're talking on a country level, right? Or a national level, or even a continental level in some places. But what's absent from that conversation is that where development hasn't worked very well, we're not talking about it. In other words, it's very hard to predict prospectively where I could give to where I know development is going to trickle down through decades and through incredible numbers of variables and through regime changes and civil wars and pandemics to be impactful. And we're only looking retrospectively to say oh my gosh, development has been amazing in certain countries. It's been far more effective per dollar retrospectively than maybe we could prospectively gain by dealing with some of these more specific interventions like insecticides laden bed nets or something like that, right? The problem is that we're only looking a where it has gone well and we're not looking at where it totally failed and B we're only looking at it retrospectively.

  [00:30:58.070] - Jason

  Whereas no one could have predicted any factors about that development program 30 years prior that would have allowed them to know confidently that their resources would have produced that effect 30 years later. Right? So I think the way that I like to look at development is that it's and this is not any right way I want to emphasize that I'm not formally trained in international development but in reading a lot about this and really exposing myself to a lot of perspectives. To me on the governmental level where you could get a job in development where you could influence very large sums of money or very large political decisions that are being made. I think that is an excellent way to engage the development world and to really be involved in that because you are able to influence a lot of decisions and policy making that has been beneficial. On the individual donor level, it's much more effective, I think, to be able to give toward I wouldn't say just the near term costs, but to more evidence based specific types of interventions because it's really hard for me right now. Let's say I wanted to go all in on development.

  [00:32:07.650] - Jason

  Well, where do I give, what do I give to? Where do I write my check? Where do I donate my cryptocurrency or whatever it is? I don't know. I don't know what to do. Do I just write a check to a government? There are some development initiatives, but we only know development has worked well in the places it has because it's worked well in the places it has. There's no way we could have known that specifically about that specific location and program 30 years ago. And if there had been a civil war or a regime change or some sort of corruption in those places, it would have completely derailed that. And so I like using advocacy and education to impact development, a job, political advocacy, I think those are great resources to take advantage of the benefits of development. But as far as an individual donor who only has X amount of money, I really think it's more impactful and more certain and more available to be able to give in a high impact way. That's very evidence based that we can have confidence in x impact per dollar. Right.

  [00:33:15.790] - JD

  One question about something you said and of course you're not a development economist, so we'll have to forgive any yes.

  [00:33:23.640] - Jason

  Take what I say.

  [00:33:26.370] - JD

  But I guess some economists would say that we do know what causes growth over the long term and maybe there is some cultural context. But in general we think that property rights and other pro market institutions seem to lead to structures that create wealth and lift people out of poverty. And it does seem like there are think tanks and other initiatives that are trying to promote these EAS. Do you see any value in a big donor who cares about development donating to think tanks that encouraged research or encourage advocacy for pro market solutions? I know there's this case I mentioned to Brian Fickard about how the Ford Foundation funded some pro development reforms in India in the 1990s and that plausibly had some impact on on India's multi trillion dollar GDP increases since then as measured over time. So do you think there's nothing we can know there? Do you think there might be some routes for bigger donors to influence think tanks and advocacy in that way?

  [00:34:37.640] - Jason

  Yeah. No, I'm not at all saying that there's nothing we can know. I think a great deal has been learned and again, largely from where there has been retrospective success. So I agree completely that a lot has been learned and a lot of the principles as far as this is what seems to create impact over this many years. I think the two things we can't know that make it very difficult for an individual donor, especially one that doesn't have tens of millions of dollars to play with, which is most of us is is my investment going to work prospectively in this situation, in a specific situation over the next 30 years. We know that it did over the last 30 years. But again, that's because there wasn't an AI takeover, there wasn't a global pandemic, there wasn't a civil war. And so yes, all of these principles work, or they are the most likely to work in development, but only if you have a situation where the curveballs are minimal, so to speak. Now it can work despite those and it has in different countries. And so even that is not a reason to derail any argument for development.

  [00:35:46.930] - Jason

  But that's one reason that makes it very difficult for me as an individual donor is I only know what has worked if circumstances don't go awry. But it's hard with the future changing as rapidly as it is and with so many variables, to devote so much money to something that might not work. And I think that's the other thing is I still don't necessarily know where to give to. I can give to think tanks, which is great, and I actually don't think that's a bad idea. I just think I can be more certain with what I'm giving and its impact, if I'm giving to a cause that still has room for funding, has an incredible amount of evidence based impact and that I can actually tangibly make a difference in right now. And so I don't criticize anybody who's giving to these think tanks at all and they might be right to do so in the end. But I do think that that investment is less certain both from a nobody knows. What's going to happen in the future standpoint, but also from a I don't even quite know where to give that would even have the highest amount of evidence that I would be making a difference.

  [00:36:55.540] - Jason

  But I do have other options where I do know that information that makes sense.

  [00:37:01.030] - JD

  Let's talk about certainty for a moment, because you mentioned certainty quite a bit about how giving to a think tank might be a good option, might not. We don't have as much certainty about that as we would as say, donating to an organization that distributes bed nets. How much do you think certainty should play a role in our giving, especially as Christians? Is it important that we are certain about the impact of our intervention or is it okay, do you think also to give to more speculative bets that are evidence based, but instead of maybe 100% chance of helping someone, we have a 10% chance of helping, say, ten people. So just a riskier bet while still grounded in evidence?

  [00:37:43.410] - Jason

  I think you have to be really careful with I guess there's two things I would say to that. I think you have to be really careful with a certainty spectrum. So I think one really big flaw in a lot of EA thinking and effective altruism thinking is that we can say something has a 10% benefit and so devoting ten times the amount of resources that will have the same as 100% benefit somewhere else. That's just terrible math. You just can't translate that in the same way. And especially when you're only considering a 10% benefit. The margin of error with something like a 10% benefit is so huge that for you to say that ten times that much is going to have the same EAS 100% benefit elsewhere is just ridiculous. I think when we have so certain and such an evidence based benefit, that where we can say that with a 95% confidence interval on this study, with a huge sample size, there has been a 95% benefit. Let's just say that is certain enough to where the certainty actually means something. But when you start doing math on lower percentages and in multiplying them and saying that they're the same, that's a really bad ineffective practice.

  [00:39:01.940] - Jason

  And I think that kind of certainty. When I'm talking about certainty, I'm talking about as certain as we can be based on the best evidence that's available. And so only when that kind of certainty is available would I say that that's one of these interventions that I would really focus on getting to clearly above and beyond, like a development think tank or something. The other thing I want to say.

  [00:39:26.020] - JD

  Sure, you have another point. I have a follow up question on this point. Maybe yeah, you can go back and ask this first. A common example of this is malaria nets, which we have a very high degree of certainty, works effectively in the same space. In the health and poverty space, we have another intervention like Deworming, which some evidence says is extremely effective, maybe many times more effective than malaria nets, but other evidence points to it not being very effective. So what do we do with something like this? It's not completely out of the blue or completely inconceivable that by giving people deworming tablets and freeing them from parasitic worms, that we do improve their health and their performance in school well enough that they have increases in education and increases in health and just massive benefits from just a $1 tablet. Do we just say, oh well, we can't be too sure, it's not an almost certain bet, so we should just put everything in malaria nets?

  [00:40:32.970] - Jason

  I would say yes in that example. And that's because in that case, with a Deworming case, I've heard numbers all over the place, but someone could say we have a 50% confidence that this has ten times greater benefit than bed nets. Let's say, well, that doesn't mean anything to me because 50%, where are you getting that number? That's not an evidence based number, that's not a randomized control trial number, that's not an objective number. It's in many ways kind of a guess. And so you could get that number by saying there was one really good study that did show this benefit and there was another study that didn't. And we're just averaging the two benefits or we're just saying that we have a 50% confidence that the one study was right and the other one was wrong. Which if you look at where studies were done and which populations they were done on, there could be very good reasons why one study showed a benefit and the other one didn't. And you're not doing this bad math by averaging these results, right? And it's only when you average the results or when you use a really shady 50% statistic would you say that, well, if I give twice as much to Deworming, it's going to have the same benefit as giving half as much to bed nets?

  [00:41:48.940] - Jason

  Right? And that's the problem with those very low or very subjective kind of percentages. Which is why I think it's much better to focus our resources on the things that do have higher percentages, much higher percentages and much better evidence behind them, even though it could be true, but it could be definitely not true that other interventions do not. Now, I've given to Deworming initiatives myself, so I don't think that this is a terrible thing to do or bogus thing. It's just that I don't feel we have any right to do a lot of mathematical wrangling and a lot of subjective percentage introduction into these arguments to say that we should do one, we should do that instead of the other.

  [00:42:35.490] - JD

  So thank you for that, that's helpful. I suppose to me it gets a bit confusing. When does being a little bit uncertain disqualify an intervention from being effective? Sorry if this is a bit semantical, but if we're 90% to 100% sure that one organization does some service A really well, but we're only 50% sure charity B does this service ten times as well. I mean, it sounds like if you do the math, that is pretty strong argument to consider charity B, if you're comfortable with that uncertainty, it sounds like what you're saying is something like, well, in this case, charity B by being less certain, has other complicating factors that maybe imply we can't even be 50% sure. We really have no clue at all.

  [00:43:24.100] - Jason

  Right, that's what I would say. I would say where is that 50% coming from? Was that objectively proven by some high quality research study that 50% of the time this intervention is as beneficial as we're saying that it is? Or are we again just averaging studies, taking the number of studies that say it's good versus bad and averaging them? If the 50% number is 95% accurate according to evidence base, then we can do the mathematical calculations on it and say we should give twice EAS much to that intervention, right? But if it's not if the quality of that 50% number is not as high as the quality of the 95% number of the bed net charity, let's say, then we have no business doing any sort of mathematical computation on that 50% number. To say that it's likely EAS if we give twice as much or twice as much of the time to have the same benefit. Right. And that's the problem, is that these 50% numbers I'm seeing or these low.

  [00:44:26.850] - JD

  Degrees, oftentimes much smaller than 50% right. For many of these long standing no.

  [00:44:31.850] - Jason

  I know, I don't know where these numbers come from. It's kind of like saying we've calculated that there's a one out of six chance of some significant catastrophic existential risk happening in the next 100 years. Well, that would mean that if you do the bad math, that would mean that if we give six times as much to x risk type things, we're more likely to have a much higher impact. Well, I need to know where that one out of six number came from. Is the quality of that calculation as high as the quality of the calculation that says that if I give my money to bed dents, let's say it's going to improve mortality by this much right now? If it is, if we can objectively agree on that, and if the body of evidence suggests that that one out of six number is in fact objectively as high confidence as the bednet intervention, great. I'm more than happy to do the math on that then and to do what you kind of were talking about in going for the higher reward with that statistic. But that number has to be proven just as much as the other one for me to care about it.

  [00:45:40.250] - JD

  What are some examples of some very low probability outcomes that you think are well established, so well established that even though it's very low probability we should focus a lot of resources on it. Maybe that's an upside from a program of some charity or maybe some risk of downside like from some kind of catastrophic risk. Are there any low probability percentages that you do put a lot of faith in?

  [00:46:05.670] - Jason

  No to me, and this is just me. So I'm not saying everybody has to think this way, but as long as there is significant room for funding and very high probability, evidence based, long term established approaches to relieving both present and future human suffering really? Or causing development that benefits both present and future humans, I see no reason to give to far less certain causes. Because it's a crapshoot. I mean, I have no idea really if these are going to be beneficial. And now if it were saturated, if these other markets were saturated, where I couldn't have the benefit to prevent malaria or to provide clean water or to provide highly effective evangelism discipleship and church planning around the world, IFP those were all given and covered, then absolutely. I would start giving to some of the less certain things because that's my best bet at that point. But since I've been alive, I don't think any of these high impact places to give money are saturated. And I don't have an infinite number of resources. So I have to decide where my finite resources go. And to me, and I think this is biblically congruent as well, it makes more sense to give toward the interventions that are helping the most people with the highest degree of evidence.

  [00:47:42.550] - Jason

  And people can disagree with that. I totally get if they do. And some people ara just maybe more high risk, high reward folks. But I think the key question is to ask how confident AMF I in the statistic that I'm doing math on that? How confident am I in that low percentage? Is that low percentage as well established as the high percentage for the other cause? Because if it's not if it's not as objectively established, then my math ratcheting up, my giving to multiply that benefit is not at all reliable, and I don't think that it's a good guide for giving in that case.

  [00:48:20.990] - JD

  Real quick, what are some concrete examples of high likely hood of success programs or charities that you would recommend in a heartbeat?

  [00:48:30.930] - Jason

  Southern Calendar International, I think the Vitamin A prevention supplementation program they have has been very well established by a lot of research. It's probably one of the best established interventions in organizations out there. It's easy to administer, incredibly easy to measure, a lot of different outcomes, not just mortality, but blindness and quality of life issues and all that kind of stuff. Since you're dealing with a problem that is not difficult to measure, which is blindness or partial blindness at least. Obviously, the malaria prevention programs like Malaria Consortium and Against Malaria Foundation have been highly studied as well. There's some very exciting new ones coming up with vaccination programs. I will be curious to see what kind of a long term impact those have because they highly depend on a lot of different social factors for them to work, which all of them do. But I think those three in particular, I think on the more Christian discipline side, evangelism, discipleship and church planting, really, all of the high impact organizations. As far as I would love better research on these, but as far as the best research that we have, all of them adopt a very indigenously driven approach that involves a lot of multiplication, a lot of retrospectively evaluating.

  [00:50:00.510] - Jason

  Discipleship programs where you're not looking for converts or raised hands or even baptisms, but where you're actually looking for people who complete discipleship programs over a period of months and where you're looking for actual churches that are meeting and gathering. It's a no brainer. I mean, obviously long term indicators of impact are much better than short term ones in any sort of type of cause or approach that you're measuring. But of those, to me, faith comes by. Hearing has been the stand out for me there and also the Jesus Film Project, which many people are very familiar with. I think there's better evidence that better research that needs to be done on those types of disciplines and metrics. And again, these are not the be all, end all of it. And I always am learning and growing. And so I expect that the organizations I would have answered your question with will be different in five years and that's okay.

  [00:50:55.250] - JD

  But yeah, the marginal impact of money donated to those health charities you mentioned has been well studied. The marginal impact of money donated to Faith Comes By Hearing and to the Jesus Film Project I haven't seen too well studied. If I were to donate say, $10,000 or some other amount to one of those charities now, what can I expect on average in terms of outcomes?

  [00:51:21.370] - Jason

  Yeah, I think it depends on what metrics you're looking for. The reason I mentioned those organizations in particular is because they're well established discipleship and multiplying strategies. And so their focus is to have a sustainable indigenous approach that does not depend on any sort of Western boots on the ground, so to speak. Which is great, because most Christians are not in Western countries anyway. But that allow the least reach people to be reached through various means that are not traditional, like through the media of Film with Jesus Film Project and the media of audio Scripture with Faith Comes By Hearing, which covers a huge population, the illiterate population, the population of people that really can't understand kind of a typical Bible but can understand story. It allows those people to be reached, which is great from an effectiveness standpoint because you're not reaching people who have already been reached by a more traditional means. So EAS far as what you can expect faith comes by hearing throughout the pandemic has been pretty consistent that it's almost dollar for dollar not quite, but it's close to that where for every dollar or two that you spend someone is hearing the gospel indicating a desire.

  [00:52:44.330] - Jason

  It's usually through audio scripture indicating a desire to continue learning about that and then completing a specified discipleship type of program. And for most of the organizations that I would recommend from that kind of a cause, that's exactly what they do. So what I want to say very carefully is something you already alluded to. I don't have the quality of research that I would like to have with these charities to be able to say that I could very confidently tell you that this is going to happen. But what we do have is retrospective third party survey data and exploration that at least third parties have gone in and confirmed that this EAS truly happened in these communities and that per dollar of budget that's being supplied to these organizations, this is what's come of it. And so I think the research that needs to be done yet is to specify which metrics and make them uniform that we're measuring from these organizations. So what is discipleship? Entail. Like, what is completing a discipleship program entail? Or what does it mean that somebody has planted a church, right? There needs to be some sort of uniform metric, and then we can go in as a research group and say we can actually measure this uniformly across the board and use the same criteria to be confirming that this is happening with these different organizations.

  [00:54:16.120] - Jason

  And the third part of that is you have to isolate an organization's impact. Obviously, if they've got 20 financial partners or 20 ministry partners who are all claiming that these same numbers, that's a problem, because their impact then is only one 20th of what they're claiming it to be, right? And so you've got to make sure that that organization's isolated impact is being either fractionated from the total impact or it's being actually measured in isolation at the time of measurement. And so if you can do that, great, but I agree with you completely. My confidence in those approaches is by necessity much less, but it's the best data I have, and it's something Jesus commands us to do. So I got my hands tied, but I'm okay, because if I have to do it at all because Jesus commands me to do it, then I may as well use the best stuff that we have and continue to advocate for better research.

  [00:55:14.450] - JD

  If you don't mind me asking, where is it that you and your family have personally decided to give, maybe not for all time, but at least in the last year or two?

  [00:55:23.350] - Jason

  Yes, sir. We have five monthly partners and then we use one time giving us strategically as we can to provide counterfactual matches, to donate to match campaigns, to get other people to give or to give to meta, which, if you're not familiar with that is to give to research efforts themselves, to make sure that we have good quality research to continue basing recommendations off of. So right now, we use one time giving after tax time. The way that my taxes work is, unfortunately, I'm almost forced to get a refund, which seems like a good thing, but we all know that we don't want to do that if we don't have to. But there is a chunk of money that comes in end of April or beginning of May that we typically would fund meta or research initiatives with, whether that's give well, whether that's other research organizations like ROI ministry or something, that's one thing we do use that for. But our regular donations go to. There's no right way to do this, but we thought we'd apportion them according to how Jesus kind of spent his own time, which was about a third doing evangelism, about a third specifically discipling and really growing people in the faith, and then a third doing just healing and humanitarian work.

  [00:56:38.350] - Jason

  And so that works out to be the organizations we give to, which, again, will change. In fact, very soon they're going to change as we have new data coming in. But currently that works out to be faith comes by hearing as more of an adult evangelism and discipleship the Mailbox Club more engaging people under 18 with evangelism and discipleship programs neverthurst. Which kind of does a combination really cool, unique way of bringing clean water through local church leaders in the most arid, needy parts of the world. So that's a humanitarian primarily, but with a church based kind of a ministry component to it. And then Living Goods, which is a multifaceted organization that's probably one that will change, but it has been fantastic for at least the last few years. And they train nurses and community health workers in underserved countries to be able to go then provide basic health care to people who have no access to it. And then finally against Malaria Foundation, which we've talked about already a little bit, and then Give directly, which is direct cash transfers that will also likely be one that changes soon. And this is not the right list, of course.

  [00:57:56.700] - Jason

  It's just a list that tries to take all of these EA principles and using the best data we can, put them into a biblical context that kind of would reflect kind of how Jesus spent the resources available to him.

  [00:58:11.050] - JD

  We've talked a bit about EA or Effective Altruism, which is about using evidence and reason to find the best ways to do good, especially in charity, and then to just make informed decisions based off of that. You've done a lot of research into charitable effectiveness for your evaluations at Bless Big. You've also been very cooperative in the space. You've had discussions with Charity Navigator and others recently. Were you at all a part of them becoming, quote, EA informed?

  [00:58:36.470] - Jason

  Yeah, actually it's kind of exciting. But I was and not just with them. I've also been invited into discussion with GiveWell, not to change their system or anything, but to both of these groups. To their credit, GiveWell and Charity Navigator have been very open to seeking out community people in the community who are giving and who have kind of done a lot of research and exploration into this. And they actually listen to you like it's not just a formality. So I've been able to meet twice, been invited with a small group of other individuals to meet with the Charity Navigator's ratings team and to all together kind of say, hey, what do we need to be thinking about, talking about? And they have actually made changes to their rating system as a result of that. Very clearly. Not just because of me, I'm not saying, but as a result of those 20 people that were part of that conversation, they have truly changed how they've done that. And in the next six months, this month and then in March especially, their trend has been toward more impact and outcomes, evidence as much as it can be.

  [00:59:44.320] - Jason

  Of course, they evaluate a bajillion different organizations and so it's a huge job. But they've been phenomenal to work with and they've been very receptive to kind of people like us in this space who have really looked at a lot of that stuff. And it's not that I have a mountain of data to give them, but it's more just really working through principles that need to be included in their evaluation system. And same with GiveWell, I mean, just very willing to reach out and to say, hey, what are people thinking as far as what's important to create high impact kind of giving? Especially when GiveWell went down to just four organizations recently. As far as the recommendations, that's right. When I talked to one of their reps and we talked about the pros and cons of that and what that means for room, for funding, what that means for people who will only gift organizations that aren't in their specific kind of lane, what that means for uncertainty and how certain they need to be to recommend organizations. Those conversations are very open and very welcome and they are continually in a place of flux trying to figure out how to the level of uncertainty they have for organizations they've dropped is much higher than the level of uncertainty we were talking about earlier.

  [01:01:07.870] - Jason

  But still they have very high standards. And so how do they communicate organizations to people that are at the 90% level of certainty, not the 50%, even though they want to only communicate the ones that are at the 95% level of certainty, right, let's say. And so those are really great conversations too. So I found these people to be very open minded. I've learned a lot from them, which has been fantastic, of course, because they just have so much knowledge that I don't have. And it's been really fun. It's been really fun.

  [01:01:36.420] - JD

  What are some things you've learned from Charity Navigator and from the Giveaway team?

  [01:01:41.070] - Jason

  One of the biggest things is just how to engage. I mean, obviously these people are engaging donors all the time, right? And with Blessbig, of course, we want to engage potential donors, not for our benefits, we don't make any money, just like they don't off of it. But we want to be able to obviously unlock the potential of people and their generosity. And so they have been invaluable it's just a resource for saying, okay, what if I encounter this type of person? How have you best been able to engage that person? Or how do you even begin to approach larger donors? How do you even start those conversations with people? And if you've heard Will McCaskill or others in the kind of EA, the secular EA movement, I mean, that's the big question. They're always asking us, how do we get really rich people to give to these causes? Right? And I have no idea. I don't have any experience with that. And so it's really cool to learn from them. And that, I think, also just the transparency issue, especially with GiveWell, it's not human nature to acknowledge where we've fallen short, even if we're completely honest and totally by accident.

  [01:02:49.470] - Jason

  And so I think there's an accountability there that's like, okay, I need to be open and honest about just changes we've had to make and things like that. And so that's been helpful. But I think one of the biggest benefits of talking to these folks is just to find like minded people. It's very difficult to find people who are both very generous and also very open to changing where they give to give more effectively. It's not hard to find very generous people, but most of those people will only give to what they are to give to. It's not hard to find people who love science and who love research and evidence based practices, but it is hard to find people who love that and are willing to give money. And so finding both of those people at once, it's phenomenal. And it's just life giving to just be able to just feed off each other in these conversations. And that in itself is very necessary for people like us to continue giving what we do and to continue feeling encouraged to advocate, because it's really easy to say, well, I've tried. I can't get anybody to give, so forget it.

  [01:03:57.230] - Jason

  I'm just going to keep giving myself and then just wash my hands of the world. Honestly, it's really easy to do that. But when you talk to these people, you're motivated and encouraged to keep going. And hey, if that results in one other person in the next five years really adopting some of these principles, that's thousands of people that will be impacted as a result of that. And we're humans, we need that encouragement to keep going, right?

  [01:04:25.010] - JD

  We've talked a lot about Blessbig, about other well, Bless big, I suppose, is evaluates secular and Christian charities, charity Navigators and give, well, evaluate probably mostly secular charities. Are there any Christian charity evaluators in the space that you think listeners should be watching out for or are doing a particularly good job at measuring impact?

  [01:04:53.870] - Jason

  According to my standards as a physician and evidence, I would say no.

  [01:05:02.370] - JD

  What do we need for the future of Christian charity evaluators? What does that future look like? How do we encourage aspiring Christian entrepreneurs to build the next Charity Navigator? Or what improvements would you like to see? Even with Blessbig EAS, it grows and develops.

  [01:05:22.700] - Jason

  I think from an ideal standpoint, it would be a group of Christian researchers who are willing to be a think tank, a self sustaining think tank that people supporting meta research or getting other sources of funding could get. I think for them to agree on metrics of Christian disciplines like discipleship or church planning or whatever that might be, and then to actually go and do the primary research. Obviously, there's plenty of sample size out there. There's tons of organizations, there's tons of people that they're serving, the data is there waiting to be mined. It's just that I don't know that there's a body of researchers who really takes things seriously. From an evidence based standpoint, I do think that Christian organizations would be willing, especially the more effective ones, would be willing to subject themselves to that research because they've already been willing to subject themselves to a lower quality of research. And I think, too, they see what benefits that has for organizations in the secular space. Whereas if you have a very high ratings on GiveWell, or if you're recommended very highly by these other evaluators, you tend to get a lot more donations.

  [01:06:37.210] - Jason

  So I don't think that's the problem. I think just having the high quality body of researchers who can agree on metrics to go and then uniformly apply to organizations, that's the biggest thing. But I do think practically that's ideally, that would be perfect world kind of a thing. Practically people are working toward that. And I love them. I commend them highly because I'm not a primary researcher. But practically speaking, especially within the Charity Navigator space, they are continually moving toward a much more retrospective kind of impact focused field. And they also already have evaluation mechanism for both secular and Christian charities. And they are the only party that is really doing that, that I know of. I guess there are a few others that do include some Christian charities, but Charity Navigator by far is the widest net in regard to welcoming really any sort of nonprofit organization into their ratings. So from a practical standpoint, as they continue trending toward impact evidence and as they're already willing to evaluate any type of organization, I think in the shorter term, I'm excited about what they could offer us in terms of this research. It still won't be on the randomized control trial level, but the way that they're doing it, I have a very intimate knowledge of how they're going about their rating system.

  [01:07:58.250] - Jason

  The way that they're doing it is very give. Well, like, honestly, and it's exciting. It's something that I would consider to be very valuable once that information is out. And so other groups, like ROI Ministry, they do do good research, but it's not on the level of the double blind, randomized controlled trial type of research. It's much more a retrospective survey type of research. Which is valuable, because if I have a third party that can tell me that a number coming out of an organization is truly legit regarding how many people were baptized, how many churches have been planted in a regularly meeting? How many people have completed a discipleship program? I feel like I can trust those numbers enough to say that at least my money is producing that effect long term. I don't know specifically what completing Discipleship means. I don't necessarily know. But that's a reasonable, I think, quality of information for me to base giving off of something that I'm commanded to give to by Jesus. Right?

  [01:09:04.510] - JD

  So I want to transition for the next five or ten minutes to just talking about careers and how Christians who are at university or recent graduates can think about planning their career to have a huge kingdom impact. What would you recommend, generally speaking, for? I suppose if there are any medical students or premed students that they can reach out to our impact mentoring program and we can connect them with you directly. But in terms of general career advice for Christians who want to have a big impact, would you say maximizing salary to give away that is the path that people should be considering or are there other direct paths that you would recommend?

  [01:09:48.090] - Jason

  I would say you'd have to be very honest about what you're realistically going to do and I think there should be some evidence in your life that you're already doing it. So if you are going to pursue an earning to give type of approach which I think is very effective and impactful, I think there needs to be proof in the beginning of that journey that you're already setting aside money and already giving it high impact causes and not just for once or twice, but for a couple of years. You need to have evidence yourself that that is going to be a sustainable journey for you. And quite frankly, as a young adult you need to already have that in your brain for that to be a sustainable journey in you. And so if it is, or if it is in the next couple of years, if you're able to sustain that, even if it's a small amount, the amount doesn't matter right now. What matters is that you're setting an expenditure limit, giving the rest away and being willing to give it to high impact organizations you might not have a connection to.

  [01:10:48.110] - JD

  How do you go about doing that, setting that expenditure limit and just getting started? Is it really just a matter of sitting down, praying, just setting a goal and taking a leap of faith and revisiting that? Or how would you recommend? Let's just say someone who graduates from college, they go about setting up those norms for themselves.

  [01:11:09.430] - Jason

  Yeah, I think it's exactly what you said. The most important thing is to start you're not going to have it. Right. There is no right as far as what your expenditure limit is. There's not even a right EAS far as being 100% certain that everything you give is going to have the impact that you think it's going to have. Right, but what is important is living that mindset and having it be something that you're not just thinking about but actually doing. And the other thing I was going to say about your career pursuit is that it's important not just for yourself, but for all the people that are along with you in your program, in your major, in your friend group and your family. Think about it this way. No matter how effective your choice of career ends up being, if you put someone else on that path, even if you didn't have any answers, if you just got them thinking about those things at the same stage, you're at in your early 20s. Late 20s, whatever it is, and they go on in their career, you've potentially doubled your impact without having to do anything yourself.

  [01:12:15.070] - Jason

  Right? And so just getting someone to think along those lines at your stage of the game, even though you don't have all the answers, is important, but they're not going to think about it unless you're also doing it. And even if you're only given $10 a month, which I'm sorry if that's a huge amount of money to you, maybe it is. But even if you're only giving $10 a month to something that's high impact and that's all you can give, but you're doing it. The mindset is there and the example is there which the mindset will allow you to continue on that path, to continue growing it and changing it because it's already present. And the fact that you're doing it is what you need to be able to advocate for other people. Not just to show them that you're legitimate, but to give them an actual, concrete example to follow from someone they respect at a time in their life when it's easier to build a mindset instead of having to retract from the opposite mindset. Right? And so when you think about your career and what career you choose, the most important career advice I can say, and this is what I say to every single college and graduate student I shadow with or mentor or whatever it is, is to think about everything your job allows you to do.

  [01:13:26.790] - Jason

  Whether it's the work that it does, the advocacy opportunities it could give you, the prestige it gives you, the money it gives you, the time off it gives you. And to find out some of these things, you'll have to ask people in these careers, obviously, so that you have a realistic measurement of these things and then take those things and say, what could I do with each of those resources that's most effective? So you could end up going into literally any career you want. And maybe you're using the actual work you do as a time component to address needs around you that time is best at addressing. But you're using the money component to give to places high impact charities around the world where money does the best. And you're using your educational or advocacy component to really focus on the highest yield types of people that you have available to you to be able to start learning these principles and applying them. But you can see that if you're intentional with whatever job you're picking, you can actually utilize all of these things. Now, I do think that some types of actual work is is more effective than others and in 80,000 hours type of a website, it's going to be very helpful to you in regard to that.

  [01:14:41.050] - Jason

  But actual work, in regard to something like biosecurity kind of things or considerations or AI safety risk or honestly, what we talked about with development and global development and the think tank there, those can be incredibly impactful careers with the time that you spend. But you have to weigh that against what you think the impact of the money is that you're going to make what you can use your time off for the advocacy and mentoring that you do on the side of that too.

  [01:15:09.170] - JD

  So you mentioned particular fields or cause areas where people can dedicate their career towards, especially for direct work. Donations aside, is there a cause area for direct work that you think is potentially most impactful? Let's say someone is pretty cause neutral. They're very open to doing, to applying a wide range of skills to any cause that's most important for advancing God's kingdom. Do you think that person should go into missions or do you think they should instead pursue tackling extreme poverty or neglected tropical diseases? Or do you have a sense in terms of cause areas what you would find most exciting or what you think would advance Scott's kingdom most?

  [01:15:53.200] - Jason

  Sure. I'd have to start with a disclaimer that of course I don't have experience in a lot of these fields personally and so I wouldn't be able to say from a personal standpoint. But I think what I have seen from people who go out into the world, I do think research related fields where you are able to be a valid, authoritative spokesperson on where people who do have a lot of money can give that money. If I went into a different field, that's probably the field I would go into is where I would be a respected authority, like on a foundation or for other very largely funded groups on where money can be used effectively and somebody that would be looked up to in that field. Now of course there's no guarantee in that field, but if you think about it, there's plenty of money around and far more than you'll ever be able to make on your own. And so if you can be someone that can motivate others and this is exactly why the EA movement focuses on this. Their whole focus is getting rich people to donate to their causes and it's because I think that is probably the most effective use of someone's time if they have avenues to do that.

  [01:17:09.130] - Jason

  I can't speak with any sort of expertise on working in AI safety or biosecurity or things like that. So I don't want to say too much there. I think those are very admirable fields, as is the field of development. And if anybody feels like they were gifted and go into that area, I would totally encourage them to do so. And I would also if you've already proven to yourself in some ways that you walked the first few steps down that journey of earning to give and just making a ton of money, and you have a reasonable expectation that you're actually going to follow through with that. Yes, do that. Because you're going to be able to not just do it yourself, but also very easily advocate to other people in your space of how to do that too.

  [01:17:52.570] - JD

  So I think all those comments no, this is a comment that Bruce Friedrich, another guest on our podcast, made, which is if you if you pursue a very ambitious path and you make it into some kind of inner circle of large, givers or of directors. Then you're able to influence peers who have a similar command over resources in a way that makes you just it's a unique position to help others steward their wealth better. One that you might not have any other tips of how you might reverse engineer a career that would give you the rapport to advise larger donors.

  [01:18:30.770] - Jason

  I wish I had all the answers to that question. I would love to have all the answers to that question. I really do think the best thing you can do for yourself though, early on in your career, no matter what career you go into, is just that intentionality of setting an expenditure limit, learning about high impact charities and getting to them, to your capacity right now. Because no matter what career you go into, it's that intentionality of making your career into a high impact lifestyle where all those things are, where all those aspects of your career be using that way. And a lot of times you don't have control over what your career is. You could go for AI safety and do all the training and end up developing video games and there's nothing wrong with that. But a lot of times you just got to take the job you're given and then that kind of propels you into a pathway that it's hard to get out of sometimes. So even if you have all the right training for a certain career, it doesn't mean you're going to end up in that job that was going to save all these lives.

  [01:19:31.800] - Jason

  And so I think it's more important to learn how to look at a career in a holistic way that allows you to create a lifestyle of impact. Because no matter where you end up no matter where the demands of the company that you work for lead you, no matter whether or not you do end up in the actual work that allows you to do what? You thought you were going to do. You will have set the example and built a mindset that will perpetuate that sort of maximizing of resources in any job that you have. And more importantly, it will give you the authority and experience to network with the people who maybe do have the job you wish you would have had and be able to impact them. And I think just in the last few years, that has been the primary determinant of my own advocacy opportunities. It has not been my formal area of expertise. Nobody looks at a radiologist and says, oh, come talk to me about where to give effectively, right? That's not what happens. But they do. Look at what my wife EAS done together to create that lifestyle of impact and say, this guy has a lot of principles in play, that even though I'm a business person or a contractor or a financial advisor or a social worker, those principles he knows about, he's practicing, and he can talk to me about them.

  [01:20:53.200] - Jason

  And that has been far more, far more useful to me than going into the perfect line of work, hoping to get the perfect job, making the most perfect impact with my work. And also it gives you a lot of hope because guess what? It's really hard to prospectively pick the perfect line of work, and you don't have to, but you do have to have that mentality and that practice of putting those principles into play so that when you do reach whatever job you have, you will maximize the impact of each aspect of it.

  [01:21:26.330] - JD

  A final question. You said that your relationship with your father has shaped the way you approach money and stewardship. What was it that he did that influenced you so greatly in this direction? And do you have any advice for listeners who want to pass on radical biblical values about stewardship and about following Jesus to their children?

  [01:21:44.370] - Jason

  I think the most valuable thing about my father's example was that A, he did what I just said. He already was practicing giving. He didn't have the research component, he didn't have the evidence based component. But I knew that he valued giving and giving indiscriminately, not to where he was familiar or emotionally tied, but really anywhere in the world that he was like, oh, this is amazing, that kind of a thing. And he didn't advertise it all the time. We just knew it happened. We knew it was a priority. And that stuck with me as something that should be part of my life too. And of course, it coincides with what we're encouraged to do in the Bible. So I think really just having that constant presence of someone, I knew it was normal for them to give and just to give to wherever, right? Not just to places that benefited him or that was close to him. I think that was the biggest thing. And I think what's so important about that is that you can be that person for somebody else very easily. Trust me, they absolutely need the people in your life, absolutely need someone that's connected to them to show them an example of a giving, especially at a time in your life where people don't think about giving, like in your young adult years, but also b giving to places nobody else would think of giving.

  [01:23:08.830] - Jason

  And if they see the joy and the impact you're creating, if they see how fulfilling it is for you, if they see how excited you get working toward developing that journey for yourself, I mean, they're at the perfect time where they will find that exciting too. And I think as a teenager, seeing that happened, that was exciting for me. And so I think that same role model can be you for a lot of people, which is great.

  [01:23:34.690] - JD

  Jay, thank you so much for coming on. I really appreciate it.

  [01:23:37.800] - Jason

  Yeah, thank you. I appreciate it.

  [01:23:40.550] - JD

  Hi, listeners. I hope you enjoyed this episode. If you are listening to this and you say yes, I want to be radically generous. I want to show Christ's love for the poor and I want to be a wise steward of my wealth. Then I highly recommend you check out Jay's website, Blessbig.org or GiveWell, which has done considerable research, thousands, tens of thousands of hours on the most impactful charities that have the best evidence behind them in the global health in poverty space. Yes. Cannot recommend those enough. And for more discussions on what works and what doesn't in poverty alleviation, I recommend our other episodes with Paul Neehouse, Brian Figurt and Katie Fantaguzi. Great episodes. I encourage you to check them out.

  [00:00:02.970] - JD

  I'm JD and this is the Christians for Impact podcast. We talk to Christians about the world's most pressing problems and what you can do to impact them during and after university. Today, I speak with Jay Dijkstra about unimpactful charity and how to give most effectively. Jay is a jack of all trades. He is an experienced medical doctor and radiologist. He runs a house church. He also founded a Christian charity, evaluator called Blessbig, which has consulted for GiveWell and Charity Navigator. He and his family have a passion for giving and they're really committed to it. They limited their family income a few years ago to $50,000 and they give everything above that away. We speak about how to know if a charity is impactful, how and why to give effectively, and how to pursue a career with a radical impact for God's kingdom. Jay, thanks so much for coming on.

  [00:01:07.350] - Jason

  Thanks for having me. It's great to chat.

  [00:01:09.930] - JD

  Could you please begin by just sharing a bit about your background, your studies, and what it is you're doing now to impact the world?

  [00:01:16.870] - Jason

  Yeah, so my background is in medicine. I was a pre medical student at a small liberal arts college, went on to medical school at University of Michigan and did my residency in diagnostic radiology over in Southeast Michigan. And so I have been working for 13 years as a radiologist and got married during that whole process and now have two adopted children, both from Detroit. And so we have a biracial family, which is all kinds of fun and challenge and greatness at the same time. And so our journey really began with some role models from childhood that we had as far as how much we might give or how to set up a mindset of giving. And so we always had it in our mind that we wanted to do something just special or extra with that. And that became setting aside an expenditure limit for us so that we only could spend a certain amount on our family and then getting the rest away. But really, besides general biblical principles about where we might give, we really didn't have any sense of how to give well or effectively, how to give in any evidence based way or any retrospectively confirmed way.

  [00:02:26.430] - Jason

  And so the last five years in particular have been that journey of taking the money that we've kind of accumulated or set aside to give whatever that amount was throughout our process and then being able to bear a lot more fruit for the Kingdom of God, but also just for people in the world and our global neighbors in much more effective ways, we hope. We think. And that journey continues. So we keep learning and we keep growing. And my wife and I and kids even now are really excited about doing that as we see what God and what our communities have been able to use that for, which is fantastic. So that's a real quick nutshell journey for us.

  [00:03:08.010] - JD

  Yes. Thanks so much for sharing. And a lot of people, when they think about impacting the world, they think about what career to pursue, what job to take to have a direct impact for God's kingdom. You have gone this path, you became a doctor, you practice medicine. Do you think of that as your primary path or impact? You talk a lot about giving. When did you realize that you could have an impact through giving? And how does that compare, do you think, to the impact you have as a doctor?

  [00:03:39.450] - Jason

  Yeah, that's a great question. And I just come into many opportunities to work with young adults the last 20 years, whether it's been high school, college graduate or post graduate levels. And so it's made me really think about what parts of our journey maybe I would have done differently, but also what parts I think God led us through in really helpful ways. And for me, the pursuit of medicine, I think for anybody who goes into medicine or many other careers, that the goal primarily is to help people, right? And so that mantra was there in my brain being a doctor. But what I didn't realize until later, until we kind of added the effectiveness component, was that there are many other fields, of course, that one can go into that either directly or indirectly or even simply through the money or advocacy abilities they have, financial advocacy abilities they have as a result of their job. They can use their job indirectly to have a huge impact in ways that their actual work might not be so impactful in addressing. And so from my personal standpoint as my career matured as a physician, I started realizing how the non clinical parts of my career, namely the advocacy opportunities that gave me the money I was making, the time that I had off that might be a little bit more sometimes than others.

  [00:05:02.290] - Jason

  Allows me to be more impactful for the world even than my clinical work. And so at this point, because many high impact giving opportunities are related to health care, I like to tell the pre Meds that I work with or the residents that I work with or really anybody that I work with, that I'm a far more impactful physician through my money and through my advocacy than I actually am through my clinical work. And it's not because that work is not impactful. It's just because I'm serving a population that already has many resources available to it from a healthcare standpoint. And so I think when we look at our job, it's far more important to look at not just what the work is and whether it's fulfilling, but what does all of the aspects of that job have to offer in regard to our ability to impact others? Will I have educational opportunities because of my position? Will I have resources or money or paycheck kind of the earning to give type of a mentality and am I willing to use that money in impactful ways? Will I have extra time off sometimes to be able to use, to advocate or to build relationships with people outside of my kind of field of work that I can use to help create higher impact?

  [00:06:20.010] - Jason

  And of course, can I tweak the actual work that I do so that it is more impactful? And there are ways I can do that in my job. If I read certain types of studies or engage certain types of patients and if my company needs me to do that, then great. Then I can even be more impactful in the clinical work that I do. But just kind of a small statistic that tells you why this is important. There have been a lot of studies as far as how impactful physicians actually are in the US. And it's estimated that a given physician in the US. Because of just redundancy of resources and manpower and because of what's available to people regarding health care will save an average of about three to four lives throughout their career that would not have been saved otherwise. So you drop a physician like me out of the system and three or four people would be dead instead of alive throughout a whole career. And that is great. Three to four people is a big deal, but it might not be clear.

  [00:07:12.970] - JD

  Yeah. So to be clear, the stat is something like if we have one more physician then that person will provide care that will effectively save three or four people.

  [00:07:23.220] - Jason

  Right. Isolated from all other variables like the nursing care they would have otherwise gotten the ancillary care like that. Right.

  [00:07:31.550] - JD

  So it's not the case that if a physician sees patients every day that they're, I suppose in a counterfactual sense, saving all these people's lives every day even though they do have direct hands on the patient and are serving the patient directly and are the most immediate extension of the health care system for that person.

  [00:07:53.210] - Jason

  Right.

  [00:07:53.450] - JD

  It might not be the case that if they weren't there that those people wouldn't be saved. Is that right?

  [00:07:57.450] - Jason

  Yes. They're doing all of these things for these people and they're providing valuable services for these people. But if they dropped out of the system, given all of the other manpower and resources that were available besides them, their impact, isolated individual impact would be to save around three to four lives throughout their career. Right. That would have died otherwise. But when you actually look at what a physician can do with an average physician's salary, if they, let's say, even give 10% of their available income to very high impact organizations throughout their career that are dealing with healthcare, they can save 3000 thousand four lives very easily throughout that time based on highly evidence based, robustly, research proven mechanisms that show us that they are reliable and sustainable in saving lives. And so very realistically, you can actually be a better doctor than most doctors, even if you're working in the investment field or in the business world, by using your resources in highly impactful, evidence based ways. A lot of people don't want to go to med school or don't feel like they can go to med school. And of course, healthcare is just one way you can impact people's lives.

  [00:09:11.360] - Jason

  But it's great for people because they don't have to go into one of these compassion related fields. They can go into the field they're very gifted in and still make a huge impact for people who are suffering in ways that we more you typically think of suffering.

  [00:09:29.430] - JD

  I'm sure this idea comes as a shock for many of the medical students you mentored. You mentioned you've mentored hundreds of medical students or young doctors. Is this at all surprising to them when you make this claim or is this something people just into it it makes sense. Yeah. How does that come off?

  [00:09:49.440] - Jason

  I think from a factual standpoint, most of us, especially at the stage where you would be a young adult, has learned enough about the world to not be shocked intellectually that this is the case. We all know that things are far cheaper in certain parts of the world than they are in more developed nations. We all know that approaches to solving problems or the ability of money to solve problems is oftentimes more effective in different parts of the world than where we can spend money on typical problems around us. And most of us know that there are more a greater abundance of resources and organizations providing that care in this part of the world or in a Western developed part of the world than there are in some of these other places. And so I think once they think as they think through it, it makes sense to them intellectually. But for 21 years, they've been so ingrained to think about people in need as being only those that they've seen or only those that they've personally experienced or only stories that have happened to their loved ones or to people around them that I think their idea of compassion and care and charity and generosity almost always immediately conjures up an image of something domestic or relationally or tied to them.

  [00:11:02.390] - Jason

  And so I think from a head standpoint, it's not hard for them to make that transition from a heart standpoint and a care standpoint that would actually cause some sort of action on that. That can be a very difficult transition. And it's not their fault. It's the way the world teaches us about helping people in need is it teaches us to help those we have a picture or a story or some relational and emotional tie to. And what I like to do is help them to see the need behind that picture, whether it's dignity, health care, upward mobility, equality, something like that. And to help them to realize that they're passionate about the need not just the picture so they can transfer that need to a population they don't have those ties to that might allow them to be so much more effective with, let's say, resources, instead of just going into a field that seems to be very compassionate. Right. And once you show them that there's a whole variety of ways that they can have impact with their job and the peripheral aspects of their job, it opens up their career search a lot more and helps them to be able to consider a lot more options that maybe aren't traditionally thought of as being compassionate, but in reality, allow them to be far more compassionate than they would have.

  [00:12:17.930] - Jason

  I just had a student shadow me this week, actually. She is studying different type of medical fields. She's in radiation therapy currently right now at a local university. And she was floored by this idea that she didn't have to necessarily go into a medical field to able to help people from a healthcare standpoint. And it was really exciting for her to see that there were other options available to her that allowed her to do health care in ways that were even more effective than her actually going into health care. And of course, going into healthcare can be very impactful in and of itself too. But it's just great to see people's minds open up and they don't feel pigeonholed into a traditionally compassionate job that they might not really be as gifted at or as fit for to be able to truly be compassionate in the world.

  [00:13:11.150] - JD

  I have a question about the direct effectiveness of work as a doctor or as a healthcare professional. So you mentioned a stat that said that on average, an additional marginal doctor will save about three or four people's lives. Now, that's taking an average of a doctor in the US. Is it a different story if we're looking at doctors in the US in high need areas, let's say a rural population, is the picture drastically different? And then also let's look at it again for a doctor, let's say with doctors. Is it Doctors Without Borders or in some global at risk population? Is the story radically different there?

  [00:13:51.980] - Jason

  Yeah. No, I don't have any statistics for the domestic rural, underserved population. But I can say that these same types of studies have indicated that if you do take your medical training from a western country and do serve in a developing country or one of the poor developing countries, which many of my friends do. That's what they did with their medical training. Then that number does jump up from three to four to 300 to 400. But it's still not quite as much because there are resources still in these countries and because usually these people can only sustain that type of care for so long before they return to their country. Of origin and sometimes the fruit of that is not able to be sustained after they come back either. So there's a lot of factors or a global pandemic can come and force them to come home, right? So there's a lot of factors that play a role in that. It's still not as impactful from a statistical standpoint as someone who is very intentional about using resources they're making here and devoting them. Now, I'm not at all saying that people shouldn't go because the need is incredible.

  [00:14:53.110] - Jason

  And of course if there's nothing to give money to or no people to give money to over there, then it doesn't help at all to have a bunch of money. We need boots on the ground, right? And preferably indigenous boots on the ground who are being trained and can sustainably continue to bring care to their cultures regardless of what happens. But still from a purely number standpoint, one can easily be more sustainably and abundantly impactful from a healthcare standpoint by really intentionally giving money and from any field, not just from a healthcare related field. In fact, I think we all know that many business people and investors and others do a lot better financially than physicians do. And so that's exciting to me. I think that opens up abilities in many fields for people to be able to have a lot more impact in the compassionrelated areas or povertyrelated areas or even some of the more exorist types of areas like AI safety or pandemic prevention types of things. And that's cool. I was a greater number of people to have a greater impact in ways that they might not thought their job could.

  [00:16:02.530] - JD

  You've talked a lot about charitable effectiveness and that if you give to an effective charity you can have an outsized impact. I'd like to talk a bit about that effectiveness. A lot of people have this intuition that charities are roughly the same in their impact. You've done a lot of research into this. You have a charity evaluator, you do evaluation with Blessbig. You've also talked about other evaluators like give. Well, who you've mentioned once is the gold standard for giving with health and poverty charities. I know with GiveWell they emphasize a few different factors in their research. They often look at RCTs, they look at organizations where there's transparency in the data, they look at organizations that have room for more funding, that can demonstrate the impact of marginal donations or additional donations and orgs that have clear theories of change or stories of change. How does your evaluation differ from that? Or do you think any of these are relatively unimportant or do we need all of these things to measure an effective charity? That's a big question, but maybe we can parse out each of those because I think there's a lot of new and you know better than anyone of the new Christian charity evaluators.

  [00:17:13.470] - JD

  In the space up to now there's been relatively few. Could you speak to these elements and which are most important and what's most needed?

  [00:17:21.070] - Jason

  Yeah, I think the first consideration is are you pursuing a type of aid or effort that can be evaluated? And if so, what metrics do you use? And the only reason I bring that up is because in the religious or Christian space, a lot of times with impact, especially potentially eternal impact, we're talking about evangelism and discipleship and church planning and missions. And so you have to be very careful which metrics are selected and how you're measuring those metrics. Of course, it's not as easy to do something like a randomized control trial on these types of things. And of course, many of the organizations providing this type of service are not participating in such studies and many groups evaluating them are not offering such a rigorous assessment of how impactful these organizations are. And so one of the biggest problems is that we're limited in the quality and abundance of evidence that we have or a lot of the metrics that Christians would find important. Now, fortunately, Christians also find development and health care and reducing poverty important as well. And of course, we're called to do that and so that is much easier to study scientifically.

  [00:18:29.720] - Jason

  Although, of course, there's always complexities with such an intricate system as planet Earth and in all of its societies and communities. But we can much more easily isolate variables such as a decrease in mortality or disease prevalence or whatnot and be able to more confidently do high quality, repetitive and large sample size studies on these interventions. So I think you do have to ask what type of intervention are we talking about and what metrics are we using and how well can we measure those metrics before you even kind of say these are the metrics that we find important now? So assuming that you can do a good retrospective, preferably doubleblind large sample size evaluation on these metrics and that your metrics accurately reflect the intervention you're trying to measure, then I do think that basically all of the parameters you listed are very important in blessbig. The ones that we use are first and foremost evidence of impact. So that's our first parameter is there high quality evidence or at least the highest quality we can find that there has been a measurable impact per dollar or at least impact for intervention on the targeted community that they're serving and how isolated is it?

  [00:19:51.790] - Jason

  Right. And so if there's high quality studies or information or exploration that does demonstrate that there has been a high impact per dollar, that's of utmost importance because to an extent, to a large extent, it takes into consideration a lot of those trickle down variables that you'd otherwise have to worry about. Some of the other variables that I'm even going to talk about, it, it kind of loops them into one thing and that's the value of science. Of course, is that it looks at the back end. So you don't have to prospectively come up with all these predictions that will kind of take into account all the variables that could go into play but it takes into consideration what's already happened and all the variables that did already happen and still measures of high impact per dollar. So that's very important and that's a very GiveWell approach. They, they do the same thing. They look prospectively at high pretense probability approaches to solving problems and which ones have been, I guess, confirmed by a very large, very long term body of research to be the most likely approaches to do well. And then they pare down the organizations by that and then look at which organizations working within that space have then been retrospectively and from a quality standpoint, proven.

  [00:21:06.460] - Jason

  So I think that is the most important parameter. The other three that we use that I think are important quickly are financial transparency and budget efficiency which is great and that's the one that people most often look at if they look at any and all. So how much of these organizations money is going to their programs overhead exactly and how much is being spent and what their programs actually entail and all of that and how transparent are they about that data? Right. The problem is if you stop there you miss the whole point because you can spend 100% of your budget on your intervention but if your intervention hasn't been proven to accomplish anything, it doesn't matter, you're just wasting your money. In fact, it would be better if you didn't spend 100% of your money because at least you'd be spending some of your money on yourself then, which presumably would be better benefit than not having any benefit at all. Right? And so I think once you know that an organization is having a high retrospectively proven impact per dollar based on high quality information then it's important how much of their budget is being spent on that intervention.

  [00:22:12.660] - Jason

  But only once you've proven that there is an impact. And then the last few variables EAS far as is distractable is there room for funding? How much money can this organization accept before it's going to decrease in effectiveness? I think those are all important variables but less important for the individual donor because the individual donor is very unlikely unless you've got tens of millions of dollars that you're ready to give. The individual donor is very unlikely to saturate whatever room for funding there is left in these organizations and they don't have to worry as much about tractability because they're probably not going to be giving so much that I'm not saying they're unimportant considerations, I'm just saying they're less important and you can follow that over time. If it's not trackable, if there's no more room for funding then you can easily switch your giving around. So I wouldn't consider those to be as important unless again you're a very wealthy donor that has the chance to influence those variables.

  [00:23:13.790] - JD

  What do you say to criticisms that go something like this? Of course evidence considerations are important, but at the end of the day, we should look at holistic change because when we look at our own lives, when we look at the lives of others and how that's transformed through the gospel or through other generous services, it's never something that we can easily measure. It's never something that we rarely ever something we have fantastic data about. And so at the end of the day, having transparent data, having clear measurable impact is good, but it's not going to seal the deal in terms of finding the best charities. Do you run into this kind of criticism often or what's maybe the best version of this criticism that you found?

  [00:24:01.390] - Jason

  Yeah, I think maybe one version of this criticism is, what about my general sense of well being? Right? Or what about variables that can't be measured, like certain quality of life variables or happiness? And I think that on the surface, those concerns are important and valid because a lot of things that are hard to measure end up being very critical and important aspects of who we are and what we consider our well being to be. But I think that you can also set up studies to quantify a lot of those things. And they may not be perfect numerical quantifications, but I think they can certainly be a survey type of quantification, or at least a change over time in certain metrics, like is your quality of life better? Are you happier? Whatever that subjectively might mean to somebody. There are still ways to measure that if you're intentional about measuring that. And it doesn't mean you have a number like this $50 is going to make a person 50% happier. Although you actually could quantify that if you set up your data gathering system correctly. I think a lot of these seemingly intangible variables are actually still variables that we can measure.

  [00:25:20.860] - Jason

  It's just that you have to set that up ahead of time and want to measure that. And I think oftentimes the argument that we need to consider things more holistically, it's more of a smokescreen or excuse than anything. Because ultimately, no matter what you're trying to improve, whether it's well being or a general sense of happiness or quality of life or decrease in mortality or a measurable decrease in disease prevalence or a measurable increase in the number of churches that are meeting regularly in an area, every one of your interactions has to eventually have some sort of impact. And I think a lot of people use kind of the holistic what about holistic considerations. It's more of this nebulous kind of go nowhere excuse in some ways, because does that mean we just don't care about any of the impact that we do? Does that mean that we just kind of don't try to measure that. I would think that if you're trying to improve a nebulous variable, you can still at least ask about that variable among the target population that you're working with. And you should still have a desire to make sure that that variable is being addressed and being addressed as effectively as possible, even if your data isn't as hard or numerical as it might be with other types of metrics that you're looking at.

  [00:26:43.330] - JD

  What do you think about criticisms that go something like this? Well, sure, we can measure concrete impacts in the short or medium term, and we can look at marginal impacts, but really the big wins on people's lives on. Wellbeing, it's going to happen over the long run, it's going to happen over the next several decades, and this might even be intergenerational change. If we establish a church in some place or do some program in some other place, we're not going to be able to measure the impacts of that in the near term. So it's a smokescreen to try to say that we have to measure it in the near term. Do you find that critique at all compelling? And if so, where do you think that is most relevant?

  [00:27:31.330] - Jason

  I don't, because I think you can either plan to do follow up retrospective evaluation over the long term, which many studies actually involving humanitarian aid have done, to see if there's been long term sustainable effects on this. So again, there's opportunities to at least measure some aspects of this long term and you just have to have the intentionality to do it. But I think the more, I guess, compelling reason not to be taken in by this criticism is that you can't measure that. If you can't measure that with the parameters that I might be talking about, you also can't measure that with the parameters that you might be talking about or the interventions that you would value. And so if you're trying to get away from more evidence based giving in the near term because we can't measure its effects very well in the long term so that you can give somewhere else either in the near term or the long term, you can't measure the long term effects of that intervention either. And so since you can't know one way or the other from that argument, if there's any long term benefit to anything we're doing, you might as well pick the one that has at least evidence based short term benefit, right?

  [00:28:44.390] - Jason

  If you can't know about the long term benefit anyway, pick the intervention that has at least some known benefit and you're going to at least do something in the short term and you won't know that you're doing anything worse in the long term. Right now, if there's clear evidence that there's a long term detriment to a short term benefit, that's different. But that's not the argument. The argument is that we can't know one way or the. Other what the long term benefit is, right?

  [00:29:08.830] - JD

  What do you think about arguments for growth? For development that say something like well, if we provide for short term needs, then we're providing relief. But for development, what we need are institutions and structures that support sustainable growth. Maybe we're talking about property rights or some other kind of more fundamental basis for wealth creation or even just culture change. That doesn't happen overnight. This happens to incremental elite. How would you and your charity evaluation take that into consideration? Or do you say those things are important, that's just not within the realm of measurement?

  [00:29:45.990] - Jason

  Yeah, perfect. That's a great question. I've done a lot of thinking about that because it does seem that the evidence would suggest that retrospectively I like to put it this way where development has worked, it has worked incredibly well and we're talking on a country level, right? Or a national level, or even a continental level in some places. But what's absent from that conversation is that where development hasn't worked very well, we're not talking about it. In other words, it's very hard to predict prospectively where I could give to where I know development is going to trickle down through decades and through incredible numbers of variables and through regime changes and civil wars and pandemics to be impactful. And we're only looking retrospectively to say oh my gosh, development has been amazing in certain countries. It's been far more effective per dollar retrospectively than maybe we could prospectively gain by dealing with some of these more specific interventions like insecticides laden bed nets or something like that, right? The problem is that we're only looking a where it has gone well and we're not looking at where it totally failed and B we're only looking at it retrospectively.

  [00:30:58.070] - Jason

  Whereas no one could have predicted any factors about that development program 30 years prior that would have allowed them to know confidently that their resources would have produced that effect 30 years later. Right? So I think the way that I like to look at development is that it's and this is not any right way I want to emphasize that I'm not formally trained in international development but in reading a lot about this and really exposing myself to a lot of perspectives. To me on the governmental level where you could get a job in development where you could influence very large sums of money or very large political decisions that are being made. I think that is an excellent way to engage the development world and to really be involved in that because you are able to influence a lot of decisions and policy making that has been beneficial. On the individual donor level, it's much more effective, I think, to be able to give toward I wouldn't say just the near term costs, but to more evidence based specific types of interventions because it's really hard for me right now. Let's say I wanted to go all in on development.

  [00:32:07.650] - Jason

  Well, where do I give, what do I give to? Where do I write my check? Where do I donate my cryptocurrency or whatever it is? I don't know. I don't know what to do. Do I just write a check to a government? There are some development initiatives, but we only know development has worked well in the places it has because it's worked well in the places it has. There's no way we could have known that specifically about that specific location and program 30 years ago. And if there had been a civil war or a regime change or some sort of corruption in those places, it would have completely derailed that. And so I like using advocacy and education to impact development, a job, political advocacy, I think those are great resources to take advantage of the benefits of development. But as far as an individual donor who only has X amount of money, I really think it's more impactful and more certain and more available to be able to give in a high impact way. That's very evidence based that we can have confidence in x impact per dollar. Right.

  [00:33:15.790] - JD

  One question about something you said and of course you're not a development economist, so we'll have to forgive any yes.

  [00:33:23.640] - Jason

  Take what I say.

  [00:33:26.370] - JD

  But I guess some economists would say that we do know what causes growth over the long term and maybe there is some cultural context. But in general we think that property rights and other pro market institutions seem to lead to structures that create wealth and lift people out of poverty. And it does seem like there are think tanks and other initiatives that are trying to promote these EAS. Do you see any value in a big donor who cares about development donating to think tanks that encouraged research or encourage advocacy for pro market solutions? I know there's this case I mentioned to Brian Fickard about how the Ford Foundation funded some pro development reforms in India in the 1990s and that plausibly had some impact on on India's multi trillion dollar GDP increases since then as measured over time. So do you think there's nothing we can know there? Do you think there might be some routes for bigger donors to influence think tanks and advocacy in that way?

  [00:34:37.640] - Jason

  Yeah. No, I'm not at all saying that there's nothing we can know. I think a great deal has been learned and again, largely from where there has been retrospective success. So I agree completely that a lot has been learned and a lot of the principles as far as this is what seems to create impact over this many years. I think the two things we can't know that make it very difficult for an individual donor, especially one that doesn't have tens of millions of dollars to play with, which is most of us is is my investment going to work prospectively in this situation, in a specific situation over the next 30 years. We know that it did over the last 30 years. But again, that's because there wasn't an AI takeover, there wasn't a global pandemic, there wasn't a civil war. And so yes, all of these principles work, or they are the most likely to work in development, but only if you have a situation where the curveballs are minimal, so to speak. Now it can work despite those and it has in different countries. And so even that is not a reason to derail any argument for development.

  [00:35:46.930] - Jason

  But that's one reason that makes it very difficult for me as an individual donor is I only know what has worked if circumstances don't go awry. But it's hard with the future changing as rapidly as it is and with so many variables, to devote so much money to something that might not work. And I think that's the other thing is I still don't necessarily know where to give to. I can give to think tanks, which is great, and I actually don't think that's a bad idea. I just think I can be more certain with what I'm giving and its impact, if I'm giving to a cause that still has room for funding, has an incredible amount of evidence based impact and that I can actually tangibly make a difference in right now. And so I don't criticize anybody who's giving to these think tanks at all and they might be right to do so in the end. But I do think that that investment is less certain both from a nobody knows. What's going to happen in the future standpoint, but also from a I don't even quite know where to give that would even have the highest amount of evidence that I would be making a difference.

  [00:36:55.540] - Jason

  But I do have other options where I do know that information that makes sense.

  [00:37:01.030] - JD

  Let's talk about certainty for a moment, because you mentioned certainty quite a bit about how giving to a think tank might be a good option, might not. We don't have as much certainty about that as we would as say, donating to an organization that distributes bed nets. How much do you think certainty should play a role in our giving, especially as Christians? Is it important that we are certain about the impact of our intervention or is it okay, do you think also to give to more speculative bets that are evidence based, but instead of maybe 100% chance of helping someone, we have a 10% chance of helping, say, ten people. So just a riskier bet while still grounded in evidence?

  [00:37:43.410] - Jason

  I think you have to be really careful with I guess there's two things I would say to that. I think you have to be really careful with a certainty spectrum. So I think one really big flaw in a lot of EA thinking and effective altruism thinking is that we can say something has a 10% benefit and so devoting ten times the amount of resources that will have the same as 100% benefit somewhere else. That's just terrible math. You just can't translate that in the same way. And especially when you're only considering a 10% benefit. The margin of error with something like a 10% benefit is so huge that for you to say that ten times that much is going to have the same EAS 100% benefit elsewhere is just ridiculous. I think when we have so certain and such an evidence based benefit, that where we can say that with a 95% confidence interval on this study, with a huge sample size, there has been a 95% benefit. Let's just say that is certain enough to where the certainty actually means something. But when you start doing math on lower percentages and in multiplying them and saying that they're the same, that's a really bad ineffective practice.

  [00:39:01.940] - Jason

  And I think that kind of certainty. When I'm talking about certainty, I'm talking about as certain as we can be based on the best evidence that's available. And so only when that kind of certainty is available would I say that that's one of these interventions that I would really focus on getting to clearly above and beyond, like a development think tank or something. The other thing I want to say.

  [00:39:26.020] - JD

  Sure, you have another point. I have a follow up question on this point. Maybe yeah, you can go back and ask this first. A common example of this is malaria nets, which we have a very high degree of certainty, works effectively in the same space. In the health and poverty space, we have another intervention like Deworming, which some evidence says is extremely effective, maybe many times more effective than malaria nets, but other evidence points to it not being very effective. So what do we do with something like this? It's not completely out of the blue or completely inconceivable that by giving people deworming tablets and freeing them from parasitic worms, that we do improve their health and their performance in school well enough that they have increases in education and increases in health and just massive benefits from just a $1 tablet. Do we just say, oh well, we can't be too sure, it's not an almost certain bet, so we should just put everything in malaria nets?

  [00:40:32.970] - Jason

  I would say yes in that example. And that's because in that case, with a Deworming case, I've heard numbers all over the place, but someone could say we have a 50% confidence that this has ten times greater benefit than bed nets. Let's say, well, that doesn't mean anything to me because 50%, where are you getting that number? That's not an evidence based number, that's not a randomized control trial number, that's not an objective number. It's in many ways kind of a guess. And so you could get that number by saying there was one really good study that did show this benefit and there was another study that didn't. And we're just averaging the two benefits or we're just saying that we have a 50% confidence that the one study was right and the other one was wrong. Which if you look at where studies were done and which populations they were done on, there could be very good reasons why one study showed a benefit and the other one didn't. And you're not doing this bad math by averaging these results, right? And it's only when you average the results or when you use a really shady 50% statistic would you say that, well, if I give twice as much to Deworming, it's going to have the same benefit as giving half as much to bed nets?

  [00:41:48.940] - Jason

  Right? And that's the problem with those very low or very subjective kind of percentages. Which is why I think it's much better to focus our resources on the things that do have higher percentages, much higher percentages and much better evidence behind them, even though it could be true, but it could be definitely not true that other interventions do not. Now, I've given to Deworming initiatives myself, so I don't think that this is a terrible thing to do or bogus thing. It's just that I don't feel we have any right to do a lot of mathematical wrangling and a lot of subjective percentage introduction into these arguments to say that we should do one, we should do that instead of the other.

  [00:42:35.490] - JD

  So thank you for that, that's helpful. I suppose to me it gets a bit confusing. When does being a little bit uncertain disqualify an intervention from being effective? Sorry if this is a bit semantical, but if we're 90% to 100% sure that one organization does some service A really well, but we're only 50% sure charity B does this service ten times as well. I mean, it sounds like if you do the math, that is pretty strong argument to consider charity B, if you're comfortable with that uncertainty, it sounds like what you're saying is something like, well, in this case, charity B by being less certain, has other complicating factors that maybe imply we can't even be 50% sure. We really have no clue at all.

  [00:43:24.100] - Jason

  Right, that's what I would say. I would say where is that 50% coming from? Was that objectively proven by some high quality research study that 50% of the time this intervention is as beneficial as we're saying that it is? Or are we again just averaging studies, taking the number of studies that say it's good versus bad and averaging them? If the 50% number is 95% accurate according to evidence base, then we can do the mathematical calculations on it and say we should give twice EAS much to that intervention, right? But if it's not if the quality of that 50% number is not as high as the quality of the 95% number of the bed net charity, let's say, then we have no business doing any sort of mathematical computation on that 50% number. To say that it's likely EAS if we give twice as much or twice as much of the time to have the same benefit. Right. And that's the problem, is that these 50% numbers I'm seeing or these low.

  [00:44:26.850] - JD

  Degrees, oftentimes much smaller than 50% right. For many of these long standing no.

  [00:44:31.850] - Jason

  I know, I don't know where these numbers come from. It's kind of like saying we've calculated that there's a one out of six chance of some significant catastrophic existential risk happening in the next 100 years. Well, that would mean that if you do the bad math, that would mean that if we give six times as much to x risk type things, we're more likely to have a much higher impact. Well, I need to know where that one out of six number came from. Is the quality of that calculation as high as the quality of the calculation that says that if I give my money to bed dents, let's say it's going to improve mortality by this much right now? If it is, if we can objectively agree on that, and if the body of evidence suggests that that one out of six number is in fact objectively as high confidence as the bednet intervention, great. I'm more than happy to do the math on that then and to do what you kind of were talking about in going for the higher reward with that statistic. But that number has to be proven just as much as the other one for me to care about it.

  [00:45:40.250] - JD

  What are some examples of some very low probability outcomes that you think are well established, so well established that even though it's very low probability we should focus a lot of resources on it. Maybe that's an upside from a program of some charity or maybe some risk of downside like from some kind of catastrophic risk. Are there any low probability percentages that you do put a lot of faith in?

  [00:46:05.670] - Jason

  No to me, and this is just me. So I'm not saying everybody has to think this way, but as long as there is significant room for funding and very high probability, evidence based, long term established approaches to relieving both present and future human suffering really? Or causing development that benefits both present and future humans, I see no reason to give to far less certain causes. Because it's a crapshoot. I mean, I have no idea really if these are going to be beneficial. And now if it were saturated, if these other markets were saturated, where I couldn't have the benefit to prevent malaria or to provide clean water or to provide highly effective evangelism discipleship and church planning around the world, IFP those were all given and covered, then absolutely. I would start giving to some of the less certain things because that's my best bet at that point. But since I've been alive, I don't think any of these high impact places to give money are saturated. And I don't have an infinite number of resources. So I have to decide where my finite resources go. And to me, and I think this is biblically congruent as well, it makes more sense to give toward the interventions that are helping the most people with the highest degree of evidence.

  [00:47:42.550] - Jason

  And people can disagree with that. I totally get if they do. And some people ara just maybe more high risk, high reward folks. But I think the key question is to ask how confident AMF I in the statistic that I'm doing math on that? How confident am I in that low percentage? Is that low percentage as well established as the high percentage for the other cause? Because if it's not if it's not as objectively established, then my math ratcheting up, my giving to multiply that benefit is not at all reliable, and I don't think that it's a good guide for giving in that case.

  [00:48:20.990] - JD

  Real quick, what are some concrete examples of high likely hood of success programs or charities that you would recommend in a heartbeat?

  [00:48:30.930] - Jason

  Southern Calendar International, I think the Vitamin A prevention supplementation program they have has been very well established by a lot of research. It's probably one of the best established interventions in organizations out there. It's easy to administer, incredibly easy to measure, a lot of different outcomes, not just mortality, but blindness and quality of life issues and all that kind of stuff. Since you're dealing with a problem that is not difficult to measure, which is blindness or partial blindness at least. Obviously, the malaria prevention programs like Malaria Consortium and Against Malaria Foundation have been highly studied as well. There's some very exciting new ones coming up with vaccination programs. I will be curious to see what kind of a long term impact those have because they highly depend on a lot of different social factors for them to work, which all of them do. But I think those three in particular, I think on the more Christian discipline side, evangelism, discipleship and church planting, really, all of the high impact organizations. As far as I would love better research on these, but as far as the best research that we have, all of them adopt a very indigenously driven approach that involves a lot of multiplication, a lot of retrospectively evaluating.

  [00:50:00.510] - Jason

  Discipleship programs where you're not looking for converts or raised hands or even baptisms, but where you're actually looking for people who complete discipleship programs over a period of months and where you're looking for actual churches that are meeting and gathering. It's a no brainer. I mean, obviously long term indicators of impact are much better than short term ones in any sort of type of cause or approach that you're measuring. But of those, to me, faith comes by. Hearing has been the stand out for me there and also the Jesus Film Project, which many people are very familiar with. I think there's better evidence that better research that needs to be done on those types of disciplines and metrics. And again, these are not the be all, end all of it. And I always am learning and growing. And so I expect that the organizations I would have answered your question with will be different in five years and that's okay.

  [00:50:55.250] - JD

  But yeah, the marginal impact of money donated to those health charities you mentioned has been well studied. The marginal impact of money donated to Faith Comes By Hearing and to the Jesus Film Project I haven't seen too well studied. If I were to donate say, $10,000 or some other amount to one of those charities now, what can I expect on average in terms of outcomes?

  [00:51:21.370] - Jason

  Yeah, I think it depends on what metrics you're looking for. The reason I mentioned those organizations in particular is because they're well established discipleship and multiplying strategies. And so their focus is to have a sustainable indigenous approach that does not depend on any sort of Western boots on the ground, so to speak. Which is great, because most Christians are not in Western countries anyway. But that allow the least reach people to be reached through various means that are not traditional, like through the media of Film with Jesus Film Project and the media of audio Scripture with Faith Comes By Hearing, which covers a huge population, the illiterate population, the population of people that really can't understand kind of a typical Bible but can understand story. It allows those people to be reached, which is great from an effectiveness standpoint because you're not reaching people who have already been reached by a more traditional means. So EAS far as what you can expect faith comes by hearing throughout the pandemic has been pretty consistent that it's almost dollar for dollar not quite, but it's close to that where for every dollar or two that you spend someone is hearing the gospel indicating a desire.

  [00:52:44.330] - Jason

  It's usually through audio scripture indicating a desire to continue learning about that and then completing a specified discipleship type of program. And for most of the organizations that I would recommend from that kind of a cause, that's exactly what they do. So what I want to say very carefully is something you already alluded to. I don't have the quality of research that I would like to have with these charities to be able to say that I could very confidently tell you that this is going to happen. But what we do have is retrospective third party survey data and exploration that at least third parties have gone in and confirmed that this EAS truly happened in these communities and that per dollar of budget that's being supplied to these organizations, this is what's come of it. And so I think the research that needs to be done yet is to specify which metrics and make them uniform that we're measuring from these organizations. So what is discipleship? Entail. Like, what is completing a discipleship program entail? Or what does it mean that somebody has planted a church, right? There needs to be some sort of uniform metric, and then we can go in as a research group and say we can actually measure this uniformly across the board and use the same criteria to be confirming that this is happening with these different organizations.

  [00:54:16.120] - Jason

  And the third part of that is you have to isolate an organization's impact. Obviously, if they've got 20 financial partners or 20 ministry partners who are all claiming that these same numbers, that's a problem, because their impact then is only one 20th of what they're claiming it to be, right? And so you've got to make sure that that organization's isolated impact is being either fractionated from the total impact or it's being actually measured in isolation at the time of measurement. And so if you can do that, great, but I agree with you completely. My confidence in those approaches is by necessity much less, but it's the best data I have, and it's something Jesus commands us to do. So I got my hands tied, but I'm okay, because if I have to do it at all because Jesus commands me to do it, then I may as well use the best stuff that we have and continue to advocate for better research.

  [00:55:14.450] - JD

  If you don't mind me asking, where is it that you and your family have personally decided to give, maybe not for all time, but at least in the last year or two?

  [00:55:23.350] - Jason

  Yes, sir. We have five monthly partners and then we use one time giving us strategically as we can to provide counterfactual matches, to donate to match campaigns, to get other people to give or to give to meta, which, if you're not familiar with that is to give to research efforts themselves, to make sure that we have good quality research to continue basing recommendations off of. So right now, we use one time giving after tax time. The way that my taxes work is, unfortunately, I'm almost forced to get a refund, which seems like a good thing, but we all know that we don't want to do that if we don't have to. But there is a chunk of money that comes in end of April or beginning of May that we typically would fund meta or research initiatives with, whether that's give well, whether that's other research organizations like ROI ministry or something, that's one thing we do use that for. But our regular donations go to. There's no right way to do this, but we thought we'd apportion them according to how Jesus kind of spent his own time, which was about a third doing evangelism, about a third specifically discipling and really growing people in the faith, and then a third doing just healing and humanitarian work.

  [00:56:38.350] - Jason

  And so that works out to be the organizations we give to, which, again, will change. In fact, very soon they're going to change as we have new data coming in. But currently that works out to be faith comes by hearing as more of an adult evangelism and discipleship the Mailbox Club more engaging people under 18 with evangelism and discipleship programs neverthurst. Which kind of does a combination really cool, unique way of bringing clean water through local church leaders in the most arid, needy parts of the world. So that's a humanitarian primarily, but with a church based kind of a ministry component to it. And then Living Goods, which is a multifaceted organization that's probably one that will change, but it has been fantastic for at least the last few years. And they train nurses and community health workers in underserved countries to be able to go then provide basic health care to people who have no access to it. And then finally against Malaria Foundation, which we've talked about already a little bit, and then Give directly, which is direct cash transfers that will also likely be one that changes soon. And this is not the right list, of course.

  [00:57:56.700] - Jason

  It's just a list that tries to take all of these EA principles and using the best data we can, put them into a biblical context that kind of would reflect kind of how Jesus spent the resources available to him.

  [00:58:11.050] - JD

  We've talked a bit about EA or Effective Altruism, which is about using evidence and reason to find the best ways to do good, especially in charity, and then to just make informed decisions based off of that. You've done a lot of research into charitable effectiveness for your evaluations at Bless Big. You've also been very cooperative in the space. You've had discussions with Charity Navigator and others recently. Were you at all a part of them becoming, quote, EA informed?

  [00:58:36.470] - Jason

  Yeah, actually it's kind of exciting. But I was and not just with them. I've also been invited into discussion with GiveWell, not to change their system or anything, but to both of these groups. To their credit, GiveWell and Charity Navigator have been very open to seeking out community people in the community who are giving and who have kind of done a lot of research and exploration into this. And they actually listen to you like it's not just a formality. So I've been able to meet twice, been invited with a small group of other individuals to meet with the Charity Navigator's ratings team and to all together kind of say, hey, what do we need to be thinking about, talking about? And they have actually made changes to their rating system as a result of that. Very clearly. Not just because of me, I'm not saying, but as a result of those 20 people that were part of that conversation, they have truly changed how they've done that. And in the next six months, this month and then in March especially, their trend has been toward more impact and outcomes, evidence as much as it can be.

  [00:59:44.320] - Jason

  Of course, they evaluate a bajillion different organizations and so it's a huge job. But they've been phenomenal to work with and they've been very receptive to kind of people like us in this space who have really looked at a lot of that stuff. And it's not that I have a mountain of data to give them, but it's more just really working through principles that need to be included in their evaluation system. And same with GiveWell, I mean, just very willing to reach out and to say, hey, what are people thinking as far as what's important to create high impact kind of giving? Especially when GiveWell went down to just four organizations recently. As far as the recommendations, that's right. When I talked to one of their reps and we talked about the pros and cons of that and what that means for room, for funding, what that means for people who will only gift organizations that aren't in their specific kind of lane, what that means for uncertainty and how certain they need to be to recommend organizations. Those conversations are very open and very welcome and they are continually in a place of flux trying to figure out how to the level of uncertainty they have for organizations they've dropped is much higher than the level of uncertainty we were talking about earlier.

  [01:01:07.870] - Jason

  But still they have very high standards. And so how do they communicate organizations to people that are at the 90% level of certainty, not the 50%, even though they want to only communicate the ones that are at the 95% level of certainty, right, let's say. And so those are really great conversations too. So I found these people to be very open minded. I've learned a lot from them, which has been fantastic, of course, because they just have so much knowledge that I don't have. And it's been really fun. It's been really fun.

  [01:01:36.420] - JD

  What are some things you've learned from Charity Navigator and from the Giveaway team?

  [01:01:41.070] - Jason

  One of the biggest things is just how to engage. I mean, obviously these people are engaging donors all the time, right? And with Blessbig, of course, we want to engage potential donors, not for our benefits, we don't make any money, just like they don't off of it. But we want to be able to obviously unlock the potential of people and their generosity. And so they have been invaluable it's just a resource for saying, okay, what if I encounter this type of person? How have you best been able to engage that person? Or how do you even begin to approach larger donors? How do you even start those conversations with people? And if you've heard Will McCaskill or others in the kind of EA, the secular EA movement, I mean, that's the big question. They're always asking us, how do we get really rich people to give to these causes? Right? And I have no idea. I don't have any experience with that. And so it's really cool to learn from them. And that, I think, also just the transparency issue, especially with GiveWell, it's not human nature to acknowledge where we've fallen short, even if we're completely honest and totally by accident.

  [01:02:49.470] - Jason

  And so I think there's an accountability there that's like, okay, I need to be open and honest about just changes we've had to make and things like that. And so that's been helpful. But I think one of the biggest benefits of talking to these folks is just to find like minded people. It's very difficult to find people who are both very generous and also very open to changing where they give to give more effectively. It's not hard to find very generous people, but most of those people will only give to what they are to give to. It's not hard to find people who love science and who love research and evidence based practices, but it is hard to find people who love that and are willing to give money. And so finding both of those people at once, it's phenomenal. And it's just life giving to just be able to just feed off each other in these conversations. And that in itself is very necessary for people like us to continue giving what we do and to continue feeling encouraged to advocate, because it's really easy to say, well, I've tried. I can't get anybody to give, so forget it.

  [01:03:57.230] - Jason

  I'm just going to keep giving myself and then just wash my hands of the world. Honestly, it's really easy to do that. But when you talk to these people, you're motivated and encouraged to keep going. And hey, if that results in one other person in the next five years really adopting some of these principles, that's thousands of people that will be impacted as a result of that. And we're humans, we need that encouragement to keep going, right?

  [01:04:25.010] - JD

  We've talked a lot about Blessbig, about other well, Bless big, I suppose, is evaluates secular and Christian charities, charity Navigators and give, well, evaluate probably mostly secular charities. Are there any Christian charity evaluators in the space that you think listeners should be watching out for or are doing a particularly good job at measuring impact?

  [01:04:53.870] - Jason

  According to my standards as a physician and evidence, I would say no.

  [01:05:02.370] - JD

  What do we need for the future of Christian charity evaluators? What does that future look like? How do we encourage aspiring Christian entrepreneurs to build the next Charity Navigator? Or what improvements would you like to see? Even with Blessbig EAS, it grows and develops.

  [01:05:22.700] - Jason

  I think from an ideal standpoint, it would be a group of Christian researchers who are willing to be a think tank, a self sustaining think tank that people supporting meta research or getting other sources of funding could get. I think for them to agree on metrics of Christian disciplines like discipleship or church planning or whatever that might be, and then to actually go and do the primary research. Obviously, there's plenty of sample size out there. There's tons of organizations, there's tons of people that they're serving, the data is there waiting to be mined. It's just that I don't know that there's a body of researchers who really takes things seriously. From an evidence based standpoint, I do think that Christian organizations would be willing, especially the more effective ones, would be willing to subject themselves to that research because they've already been willing to subject themselves to a lower quality of research. And I think, too, they see what benefits that has for organizations in the secular space. Whereas if you have a very high ratings on GiveWell, or if you're recommended very highly by these other evaluators, you tend to get a lot more donations.

  [01:06:37.210] - Jason

  So I don't think that's the problem. I think just having the high quality body of researchers who can agree on metrics to go and then uniformly apply to organizations, that's the biggest thing. But I do think practically that's ideally, that would be perfect world kind of a thing. Practically people are working toward that. And I love them. I commend them highly because I'm not a primary researcher. But practically speaking, especially within the Charity Navigator space, they are continually moving toward a much more retrospective kind of impact focused field. And they also already have evaluation mechanism for both secular and Christian charities. And they are the only party that is really doing that, that I know of. I guess there are a few others that do include some Christian charities, but Charity Navigator by far is the widest net in regard to welcoming really any sort of nonprofit organization into their ratings. So from a practical standpoint, as they continue trending toward impact evidence and as they're already willing to evaluate any type of organization, I think in the shorter term, I'm excited about what they could offer us in terms of this research. It still won't be on the randomized control trial level, but the way that they're doing it, I have a very intimate knowledge of how they're going about their rating system.

  [01:07:58.250] - Jason

  The way that they're doing it is very give. Well, like, honestly, and it's exciting. It's something that I would consider to be very valuable once that information is out. And so other groups, like ROI Ministry, they do do good research, but it's not on the level of the double blind, randomized controlled trial type of research. It's much more a retrospective survey type of research. Which is valuable, because if I have a third party that can tell me that a number coming out of an organization is truly legit regarding how many people were baptized, how many churches have been planted in a regularly meeting? How many people have completed a discipleship program? I feel like I can trust those numbers enough to say that at least my money is producing that effect long term. I don't know specifically what completing Discipleship means. I don't necessarily know. But that's a reasonable, I think, quality of information for me to base giving off of something that I'm commanded to give to by Jesus. Right?

  [01:09:04.510] - JD

  So I want to transition for the next five or ten minutes to just talking about careers and how Christians who are at university or recent graduates can think about planning their career to have a huge kingdom impact. What would you recommend, generally speaking, for? I suppose if there are any medical students or premed students that they can reach out to our impact mentoring program and we can connect them with you directly. But in terms of general career advice for Christians who want to have a big impact, would you say maximizing salary to give away that is the path that people should be considering or are there other direct paths that you would recommend?

  [01:09:48.090] - Jason

  I would say you'd have to be very honest about what you're realistically going to do and I think there should be some evidence in your life that you're already doing it. So if you are going to pursue an earning to give type of approach which I think is very effective and impactful, I think there needs to be proof in the beginning of that journey that you're already setting aside money and already giving it high impact causes and not just for once or twice, but for a couple of years. You need to have evidence yourself that that is going to be a sustainable journey for you. And quite frankly, as a young adult you need to already have that in your brain for that to be a sustainable journey in you. And so if it is, or if it is in the next couple of years, if you're able to sustain that, even if it's a small amount, the amount doesn't matter right now. What matters is that you're setting an expenditure limit, giving the rest away and being willing to give it to high impact organizations you might not have a connection to.

  [01:10:48.110] - JD

  How do you go about doing that, setting that expenditure limit and just getting started? Is it really just a matter of sitting down, praying, just setting a goal and taking a leap of faith and revisiting that? Or how would you recommend? Let's just say someone who graduates from college, they go about setting up those norms for themselves.

  [01:11:09.430] - Jason

  Yeah, I think it's exactly what you said. The most important thing is to start you're not going to have it. Right. There is no right as far as what your expenditure limit is. There's not even a right EAS far as being 100% certain that everything you give is going to have the impact that you think it's going to have. Right, but what is important is living that mindset and having it be something that you're not just thinking about but actually doing. And the other thing I was going to say about your career pursuit is that it's important not just for yourself, but for all the people that are along with you in your program, in your major, in your friend group and your family. Think about it this way. No matter how effective your choice of career ends up being, if you put someone else on that path, even if you didn't have any answers, if you just got them thinking about those things at the same stage, you're at in your early 20s. Late 20s, whatever it is, and they go on in their career, you've potentially doubled your impact without having to do anything yourself.

  [01:12:15.070] - Jason

  Right? And so just getting someone to think along those lines at your stage of the game, even though you don't have all the answers, is important, but they're not going to think about it unless you're also doing it. And even if you're only given $10 a month, which I'm sorry if that's a huge amount of money to you, maybe it is. But even if you're only giving $10 a month to something that's high impact and that's all you can give, but you're doing it. The mindset is there and the example is there which the mindset will allow you to continue on that path, to continue growing it and changing it because it's already present. And the fact that you're doing it is what you need to be able to advocate for other people. Not just to show them that you're legitimate, but to give them an actual, concrete example to follow from someone they respect at a time in their life when it's easier to build a mindset instead of having to retract from the opposite mindset. Right? And so when you think about your career and what career you choose, the most important career advice I can say, and this is what I say to every single college and graduate student I shadow with or mentor or whatever it is, is to think about everything your job allows you to do.

  [01:13:26.790] - Jason

  Whether it's the work that it does, the advocacy opportunities it could give you, the prestige it gives you, the money it gives you, the time off it gives you. And to find out some of these things, you'll have to ask people in these careers, obviously, so that you have a realistic measurement of these things and then take those things and say, what could I do with each of those resources that's most effective? So you could end up going into literally any career you want. And maybe you're using the actual work you do as a time component to address needs around you that time is best at addressing. But you're using the money component to give to places high impact charities around the world where money does the best. And you're using your educational or advocacy component to really focus on the highest yield types of people that you have available to you to be able to start learning these principles and applying them. But you can see that if you're intentional with whatever job you're picking, you can actually utilize all of these things. Now, I do think that some types of actual work is is more effective than others and in 80,000 hours type of a website, it's going to be very helpful to you in regard to that.

  [01:14:41.050] - Jason

  But actual work, in regard to something like biosecurity kind of things or considerations or AI safety risk or honestly, what we talked about with development and global development and the think tank there, those can be incredibly impactful careers with the time that you spend. But you have to weigh that against what you think the impact of the money is that you're going to make what you can use your time off for the advocacy and mentoring that you do on the side of that too.

  [01:15:09.170] - JD

  So you mentioned particular fields or cause areas where people can dedicate their career towards, especially for direct work. Donations aside, is there a cause area for direct work that you think is potentially most impactful? Let's say someone is pretty cause neutral. They're very open to doing, to applying a wide range of skills to any cause that's most important for advancing God's kingdom. Do you think that person should go into missions or do you think they should instead pursue tackling extreme poverty or neglected tropical diseases? Or do you have a sense in terms of cause areas what you would find most exciting or what you think would advance Scott's kingdom most?

  [01:15:53.200] - Jason

  Sure. I'd have to start with a disclaimer that of course I don't have experience in a lot of these fields personally and so I wouldn't be able to say from a personal standpoint. But I think what I have seen from people who go out into the world, I do think research related fields where you are able to be a valid, authoritative spokesperson on where people who do have a lot of money can give that money. If I went into a different field, that's probably the field I would go into is where I would be a respected authority, like on a foundation or for other very largely funded groups on where money can be used effectively and somebody that would be looked up to in that field. Now of course there's no guarantee in that field, but if you think about it, there's plenty of money around and far more than you'll ever be able to make on your own. And so if you can be someone that can motivate others and this is exactly why the EA movement focuses on this. Their whole focus is getting rich people to donate to their causes and it's because I think that is probably the most effective use of someone's time if they have avenues to do that.

  [01:17:09.130] - Jason

  I can't speak with any sort of expertise on working in AI safety or biosecurity or things like that. So I don't want to say too much there. I think those are very admirable fields, as is the field of development. And if anybody feels like they were gifted and go into that area, I would totally encourage them to do so. And I would also if you've already proven to yourself in some ways that you walked the first few steps down that journey of earning to give and just making a ton of money, and you have a reasonable expectation that you're actually going to follow through with that. Yes, do that. Because you're going to be able to not just do it yourself, but also very easily advocate to other people in your space of how to do that too.

  [01:17:52.570] - JD

  So I think all those comments no, this is a comment that Bruce Friedrich, another guest on our podcast, made, which is if you if you pursue a very ambitious path and you make it into some kind of inner circle of large, givers or of directors. Then you're able to influence peers who have a similar command over resources in a way that makes you just it's a unique position to help others steward their wealth better. One that you might not have any other tips of how you might reverse engineer a career that would give you the rapport to advise larger donors.

  [01:18:30.770] - Jason

  I wish I had all the answers to that question. I would love to have all the answers to that question. I really do think the best thing you can do for yourself though, early on in your career, no matter what career you go into, is just that intentionality of setting an expenditure limit, learning about high impact charities and getting to them, to your capacity right now. Because no matter what career you go into, it's that intentionality of making your career into a high impact lifestyle where all those things are, where all those aspects of your career be using that way. And a lot of times you don't have control over what your career is. You could go for AI safety and do all the training and end up developing video games and there's nothing wrong with that. But a lot of times you just got to take the job you're given and then that kind of propels you into a pathway that it's hard to get out of sometimes. So even if you have all the right training for a certain career, it doesn't mean you're going to end up in that job that was going to save all these lives.

  [01:19:31.800] - Jason

  And so I think it's more important to learn how to look at a career in a holistic way that allows you to create a lifestyle of impact. Because no matter where you end up no matter where the demands of the company that you work for lead you, no matter whether or not you do end up in the actual work that allows you to do what? You thought you were going to do. You will have set the example and built a mindset that will perpetuate that sort of maximizing of resources in any job that you have. And more importantly, it will give you the authority and experience to network with the people who maybe do have the job you wish you would have had and be able to impact them. And I think just in the last few years, that has been the primary determinant of my own advocacy opportunities. It has not been my formal area of expertise. Nobody looks at a radiologist and says, oh, come talk to me about where to give effectively, right? That's not what happens. But they do. Look at what my wife EAS done together to create that lifestyle of impact and say, this guy has a lot of principles in play, that even though I'm a business person or a contractor or a financial advisor or a social worker, those principles he knows about, he's practicing, and he can talk to me about them.

  [01:20:53.200] - Jason

  And that has been far more, far more useful to me than going into the perfect line of work, hoping to get the perfect job, making the most perfect impact with my work. And also it gives you a lot of hope because guess what? It's really hard to prospectively pick the perfect line of work, and you don't have to, but you do have to have that mentality and that practice of putting those principles into play so that when you do reach whatever job you have, you will maximize the impact of each aspect of it.

  [01:21:26.330] - JD

  A final question. You said that your relationship with your father has shaped the way you approach money and stewardship. What was it that he did that influenced you so greatly in this direction? And do you have any advice for listeners who want to pass on radical biblical values about stewardship and about following Jesus to their children?

  [01:21:44.370] - Jason

  I think the most valuable thing about my father's example was that A, he did what I just said. He already was practicing giving. He didn't have the research component, he didn't have the evidence based component. But I knew that he valued giving and giving indiscriminately, not to where he was familiar or emotionally tied, but really anywhere in the world that he was like, oh, this is amazing, that kind of a thing. And he didn't advertise it all the time. We just knew it happened. We knew it was a priority. And that stuck with me as something that should be part of my life too. And of course, it coincides with what we're encouraged to do in the Bible. So I think really just having that constant presence of someone, I knew it was normal for them to give and just to give to wherever, right? Not just to places that benefited him or that was close to him. I think that was the biggest thing. And I think what's so important about that is that you can be that person for somebody else very easily. Trust me, they absolutely need the people in your life, absolutely need someone that's connected to them to show them an example of a giving, especially at a time in your life where people don't think about giving, like in your young adult years, but also b giving to places nobody else would think of giving.

  [01:23:08.830] - Jason

  And if they see the joy and the impact you're creating, if they see how fulfilling it is for you, if they see how excited you get working toward developing that journey for yourself, I mean, they're at the perfect time where they will find that exciting too. And I think as a teenager, seeing that happened, that was exciting for me. And so I think that same role model can be you for a lot of people, which is great.

  [01:23:34.690] - JD

  Jay, thank you so much for coming on. I really appreciate it.

  [01:23:37.800] - Jason

  Yeah, thank you. I appreciate it.

  [01:23:40.550] - JD

  Hi, listeners. I hope you enjoyed this episode. If you are listening to this and you say yes, I want to be radically generous. I want to show Christ's love for the poor and I want to be a wise steward of my wealth. Then I highly recommend you check out Jay's website, Blessbig.org or GiveWell, which has done considerable research, thousands, tens of thousands of hours on the most impactful charities that have the best evidence behind them in the global health in poverty space. Yes. Cannot recommend those enough. And for more discussions on what works and what doesn't in poverty alleviation, I recommend our other episodes with Paul Neehouse, Brian Figurt and Katie Fantaguzi. Great episodes. I encourage you to check them out.

---

Learn more

Global Poverty

Read our full report.