Agree that if your goal is to support the provision of basic education to a few more people, give it to a small school in an out of the way place. That’ll do more good than giving it to e.g. Harvard.
If your goal is to change the world for the long run, give it to people who’re changing the world for the long run.
IMO the fact your money is a drop in the BMGF (or whoever) bucket is immaterial. Compared to the total charitable giving of the world, or compared to the total economy of the world, it’s an even tinier drop in a much larger bucket.
Saying you want to make a visible impact is confusing how obvious it is with how beneficial it is. Obvious may well *feel *better. It’s certainly why colleges are full of buildings named “<Some Rich Guy> Hall”. It makes <Some Rich Guy> feel much better about making his donation. I argue that obvious may not *do *better.
Think about it on a dollar for dollar basis: If you had one dollar to give to a charity, where would you donate it? You’d pick the charity that you are most sympathetic to, whether that’s AIDS research, hunger in Africa, Jerry’s Kids, or the group that trains monkeys to help disabled people. Whichever. It’s up to you. But you did your research, and that charity was chosen.
Then, you’ve already made the decision which charity is most important to you. The only time that decision matrix will change is if a significant impact has been made. For example, you chose hunger in Africa as your most important charity. The only time that will stop being your most important charity is when hunger in Africa is not a problem anymore, or at least, it’s much less of a problem than it was. That, or another issue becomes more significant, such as the Impending Asteroid of Doom Deflection charity which was founded last week after some bad news from NASA.
The point is, it doesn’t matter how much money you donate, or how many times, you already decided what was most important for you when you donated your first dollar, so donate your remaining money to that issue. Things might change, but for big charities like cancer research or third world poverty, they won’t change enough to alter your original decision. Okay, if for some reason you picked trained disability helper-monkeys, even a few million dollars might be enough to make significant headway in that problem, which would cause you to reevaluate how you would donate the remaining millions. But if you chose something big, like AIDS research, just donate all of it to them. Spreading it out just does a disservice to the charity you find most worthy.
If you have a large chunk of money and are trying to figure out the best way to distribute it, I suggest consulting the Center for High Impact Philanthropy at the University of Pennsylvania.
I had some friends doing research there and it was truly cool stuff.
As a nonprofit development professional, my instinct wouldn’t be to give some random sum of money to an organization, but to first determine the need at each organization and distribute the money according to that need. While my organization would love a $1m donation, we don’t have any clearly outlined projects that would make immediate use of all of that money. (We did three years ago, during a $12m capital campaign to construct a new building, so timing also matters.) I think the impact is greater if the organization already has a plan for the funds, meaning they have already identified a need and figured out the steps needed to address it. This would ensure that the money is being used in a strategically relevant way.
If I ever have a large sum of money to give, I would want to be in on it from the ground up, from needs assessment to evaluation, but that’s because I’m a giant programming nerd. Maybe not everybody would be as interested in the mechanics of their dollars.
Consider the type of impact you want to make. Do you want to help an organization become more fiscally sustainable? Give them an endowment. (Personally I think gigi’s suggestion is excellent. Grant funding and individual donor funding is so tenuous that an endowment is one of the best ways to ensure longevity.) Do you want to help them make infrastructure improvements? Capital gift. Create a new program? Expand an existing program? Restricted gift.
I would definitely not give $100m to an organization the size of mine, because most nonprofits lack the expertise and capacity to deal effectively with that kind of money.
It can be a lot to consider, especially if you don’t have a nonprofit background, so once again, I come back to hiring a consultant.
Truly, if you have that much money to throw around, you have the money to consult an expert.
Take the $100 million and distribute it directly to whatever you consider worthy. I wouldn’t want to dilute it through 100 sets of overhead or even 1. Hell, give a $1 million to 100 individuals instead.
I would give it all to the my personal philanthropic foundation, investing it in securities so as to generate income with which to make grants on a perpetual basis to whatever charities that I and eventually my successors feel is the best charitable use of the money at that time.