For Thanksgiving, here are 23 things for which I’m grateful in 2023. Some are drawn from the world of philanthropy–so please read on if you are planning to make donations during the holiday season–while others are political or personal. In no particular order.

Philanthropy

Effective altruism: The brand has been tarnished, to say the least, by Sam Bankman-Fried. But the fundamental insights of the EA movement remain sound. These are people who are serious about finding the best ways to do good. If only they had more impact on the rest of philanthropy.

Give Well: Donating to GiveWell helps save lives. The organization does deep research into charities to find those that are most effective. All operate in poor countries, where the needs are greatest and your dollars go further.

Give Directly: A simple, beautiful idea: Give money to the world’s poorest people, and let them decide how to spend it. My favorite charity.

Giving Green: Which are the best nonprofits working to curb climate change? It’s a tough question to answer. The people at Giving Green have found organizations that have a big potential impact but are relatively neglected by donors.

Animal Charity Evaluators: Another meta-charity. This one recommends nonprofits, some quite small, that aim to reduce the suffering of farm animals.

Open Philanthropy: Guided by the principles of effective altruism, Open Philanthropy prioritizes causes based on three criteria: importance, neglectedness and tractability. I’ve found this framework incredibly helpful when I think where to donate, and also when I look for stories to cover as a reporter.

Arnold Ventures: Laura and John Arnold fund research and advocacy in such arenas as criminal justice, higher education and health care. Unlike many big foundations, they’re strictly non-partisan and evidence-based.

Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies: Since 1986, Rick Doblin & Co. have been working to make psychedelics safely and legally available for beneficial uses. That world is coming, slowly but surely.

Martha’s Table: I like to give locally and have long been an admirer of (and volunteer for) this Washington DC-based charity, which gave cash transfers to poor residents during the Covid pandemic.

Standing Together: I’m just learning about these Israeli and Palestinian peace activists. They say: “People don’t need to choose whether they are #freepalestine or #standwithIsrael, they need to stand with innocent people on both sides who want to live in peace and safety.”

Politics and media

Joe Biden’s big climate bill: The future of the planet will be shaped by China, which now emits more greenhouse gases than the US and EU combined, but we Americans need to do our part.

Reason magazine: Smart, libertarian takes on the folly of governments everywhere.

The Ezra Klein Show: The podcast has done great work on Israel and Palestine since October 7.

Freddie deBoer: An iconoclast and, easily, the smartest Marxist I know. He writes beautifully, too.

Andrew Sullivan: He’s been right about so many things: gay marriage, torture, Obama, Trump and the excesses of identity politics. What’s more, he’s never dull.

Matthew Yglesias: Pragmatic takes on policy and politics, with a high nerd quotient.

Personal

Adat Shalom Reconstructionist Congregation: My beloved religious community, which keeps me focused on the things that matter.

Montgomery County Road Runners Club: My running community for nearly 30 years. Yikes. We’re growing older together.

The psychedelics community: Open-minded, big-hearted people. My friend Charley Wininger says: “The best thing about the psychedelics community isn’t the psychedelics. It’s the community.”

My friends, and especially my gf: You know who you are.

My band of brothers, sisters-in-law, nieces, nephews and boyfriends: This year, 17 of us will gather for Thanksgiving dinner.

My daughters and their families: Sarah, Becca, Amy, Eric, Hudson, Sawyer, Max, Everly and Dori. My time with you brings me immense joy. I am so lucky to have you in my life.

When writing about foundations and nonprofits, I try to keep something in mind: Surprisingly few social programs are effective. When subjected to rigorous evaluation, most fail to produce "meaningful progress in education, poverty reduction, crime prevention and other areas," as Arnold Ventures puts it. This is one reason why my favorite charity remains GiveDirectly, which sends money to those living in extreme poverty, mostly in Africa.

Cash, at the very least, makes people a little less poor.

Few foundations, though, have funded direct cash transfers--until now. So I was heartened to learn last week that some big, influential funders are supporting programs to give away money, with no strings attached, to Americans suffering from the economic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic.

I wrote about this for Medium. Here's how my story begins:

The well-educated folk who lead America’s big foundations have over the years devised no end of theories about how to do what they do. Strategic philanthropy. Collective impact. Venture philanthropy. Big bets. Participatory grantmaking. Trust-based philanthropy.

Now, in response to the economic devastation caused by COVID-19, they are trying something completely different: Giving money, with no strings attached, to those who need it.

Foundations that are supporting direct cash transfers include Blue Meridian Partners (a funding collaborative) and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, as well as the foundations of Charles Koch, Pierre Omidyar, Steve Ballmer and Sergey Brin.

You can read the rest of my story here.

My wife Karen Schneider and I gave away about nine percent of our pretax income in 2019. Like most people, I delayed my charitable giving until the end of the year--a bad practice, because nonprofits have needs all year--so I’m just now writing my annual blogpost about where the money went. The Life You Can Save, a nonprofit inspired by the moral philosopher Peter Singer, has a calculator that recommends the percentage of your income that you should give, as well as an excellent list of top charities.*

My biggest gift went to GiveDirectly, which makes unconditional cash grants to people living in extreme poverty. Give Directly is my favorite charity. In 2018, I traveled to Rwanda to see how the organization operates and talk to recipients of its grants. I could say a lot about GiveDirectly but my biggest takeaway from the trip was this: The money that well-to-do Americans spend on a few restaurant meals, or for a single night in a nice hotel, is enough to make a meaningful difference to the life of a poor person in Africa. If you care about inequality--and it seems that more and more people do--there’s no better charity than GiveDirectly.

Next on the list is GiveWell, a donation platform that identifies and analyzes effective charities in depth. If you want to do the most good you can for each dollar that you spend on charity, GiveWell is essential. Most of the money it raises flows to charity that improve global health, in particular by helping poor people protect themselves against malaria.