How To Be Great At Doing Good: Why Results Are What Count and How Smart Charity Can Change the World

How To Be Great At Doing Good: Why Results Are What Count and How Smart Charity Can Change the World

by Nick Cooney
Released April 2015
Publisher(s): Jossey-Bass
ISBN: 9781119041719

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Book description

Get ready to question everything you've been told about charity, and to find out how you can truly succeed at making the world a better place.

Many of us donate to charitable causes, and millions more work or volunteer for non-profit organizations. Yet virtually none of us have been taught what it means to succeed at doing good, let alone how to do so. In short, we've never been encouraged to treat charity with the seriousness and rigor it deserves.

How to be Great at Doing Good is a complacency-shattering guidebook for anyone who wants to actually change the world, whether as a donor, a volunteer, or a non-profit staffer. Drawing on eye-opening studies in psychology and human behavior, surprising interviews with philanthropy professionals, and the author's fifteen years of experience founding and managing top-rated non-profits, this book is an essential read for anyone who wants to do more good with their time and money.

  • Find out how Bill Gates and a team of MIT grads are saving thousands of lives by applying business principles to charity work - and how we can too

  • Peer inside our brains as we donate, and discover how the same chemical forces that make us crave junk food and sex can steer us toward bad charity decisions

  • See why following our passion and doing what we're good at can actually doom our efforts to improve the world

  • Learn how two seemingly identical charities can have jaw-dropping differences in impact, and find out how to pick the best one when donating

    • Sure to generate controversy among non-profits and philanthropists who prefer business as usual, How to be Great at Doing Good reveals that a more calculated, effective approach to charity work isn't just possible - it's absolutely necessary for those who want to succeed at changing the world.

    Table of contents

    1. Title Page
    2. Copyright
    3. Preface: Schindler's Regret
    4. Chapter 1: Why Charity?
      1. Asking Why
      2. The Goal of Charity
      3. Barriers to Good
      4. The Challenge of “Why?”
    5. Chapter 2: Doing Good or Doing Great?
      1. A Tale of Two Charities
      2. Doing Good, or Doing a Lot of Good?
    6. Chapter 3: Facing the “Brutal Facts” on How Much Good We Are Accomplishing
      1. Gritting Our Teeth and Heading Down the Slope
      2. All Charities Are Not Created Equal
      3. Asking the Genie in the Bottle: Making Comparisons When Comparisons Seem Hard
      4. There Are Always Big Differences Between Charities
      5. Accepting the Fact That We Can Always Do Better
      6. It's Always Subjective, and There's No Way Around That
      7. But Wait…Does That Mean All Theaters Are Doomed?
    7. Chapter 4: Chasing the Bottom Line: How to Do More Good for Less Money
      1. Defining Our Bottom Line
      2. Doubling Down on Saving Rabbits
      3. Where Following the Bottom Line Leads, and Why It Can Be Hard to Follow
      4. When Following the Bottom Line Means Making Big Changes
      5. Why We Lose Sight of the Bottom Line
    8. Chapter 5: Why Efficiency Means Everything for Donors (and Charities, Too)
      1. Bringing It Back to the Bunnies
      2. The Space to Be Human
      3. There Are Massive Differences Between Charities in the Same Field
      4. Coming to Grips with the Hard Facts
    9. Chapter 6: How We Can Drive Our Favorite Charities to Succeed
      1. The $1,500 Bottle of Soda
      2. The Free Market and the World of Charity
      3. Giving Non-Profits the Incentive to Be Great
      4. It's Not All Donors' Fault
      5. Unhelpful Advice
      6. A New Breed of Charity Advisors
    10. Chapter 7: Our Brains Don't Want Us to Be Great at Doing Good, But We Can Outsmart Them
      1. What Charity Looks Like on the Inside
      2. Questioning Our Motives
      3. Looking Out for Number One, in More Ways Than One
      4. Our Biases Try to Rule Us, and This One Is Really Bad
      5. Empathy and Evolution
      6. More Biases and Other Mental Quirks
      7. Defeating Our Brains and Doing as Much Good as Possible
      8. Putting Our Self-Centeredness to Work
    11. Chapter 8: The Advice We Are Given About Charity Is Wrong—Here's the Truth
      1. Following Your Passion Is a Bad Idea
      2. Being Great at What You Do Doesn't Matter Unless You're Doing the Right Thing
      3. Not All Charity Work Is Needed or Worth Doing Right Now
      4. We Have to Make Hard Decisions About Who to Help and Who to Ignore
      5. Doing Good Doesn't Always Feel Good
      6. Charity Is All About Winning
    12. Chapter 9: Moving Forward with Humility: Admitting What We Don't Know
      1. Knowing What We Don't Know
      2. The Wonderful World of Science
      3. Learning How to Do Good Instead of Guessing How to Do Good
    13. Chapter 10: Nine Steps to Greatness
      1. 1. Get Serious
      2. 2. Never Forget the Goal of Charity
      3. 3. Shun Fuzzy Thinking and Feel-Good Rhetoric—They Are Self-Centered
      4. 4. Be Aware of the Psychological Biases We All Have
      5. 5. Be Willing to Face the Hard Facts
      6. 6. Define and Make Decisions Around a Bottom Line
      7. 7. Measure, Measure, Measure
      8. 8. Give Non-Profits the Incentive to Be Great
      9. 9. And Remember: Never Forget the Goal of Charity
    14. Conclusion: The Joy of Great Charity
    15. About the Author
    16. References
    17. Index
    18. End User License Agreement

    Product information

    • Title: How To Be Great At Doing Good: Why Results Are What Count and How Smart Charity Can Change the World
    • Author(s): Nick Cooney
    • Release date: April 2015
    • Publisher(s): Jossey-Bass
    • ISBN: 9781119041719