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

by Nick Cooney

Turns out much of the advice we've been given about how to make the world a better place turns out to be dead wrong. Donating to certain charities will do thousands of times more good that donating to others. Non-profits that choose to carry out one program instead of another will be hundreds of times less successful than they could be, regardless of how bright, hard-working, and compassionate their staff may be.

The majority of Americans are involved in charitable work. Most of us donate. Many of us volunteer. Millions go to work each day at a non-profit organization. By taking a more rigorous, calculated approach to charity, we can learn how to do dramatically more good. We can learn how to truly change the world.

This book shows you how. Drawing on fifteen years of non-profit experience, a working knowledge of thousands of academic studies on what drives charitable and behavioral decisions, interviews with non-profit and philanthropy professionals, and years of reading, writing, and lecturing on how to effectively bring about social change.

The first book to address how a whole host of psychological and social factors combine to drive us toward making bad charitable decisions, its unique content and frank approach will help it stand out in the field of non-profit and philanthropy books.

Genres: Nonfiction, Economics, Business, Self Help

195 pages, Kindle Edition

First published March 31, 2015

About the author

Nick Cooney is the founder and managing partner of venture capital firm Lever VC and the author of What We Don’t Do: Inaction in the Face of Suffering and the Drive to Do More (Regalo Press, 2025). His work has been covered in hundreds of media outlets including the Wall Street Journal, CNN, Bloomberg, Reuters, TIME, the Los Angeles Times, NBC, Forbes, and similar.

Nick is also the founder and board chair of Lever Foundation, a non-profit focused on advancing a humane and sustainable food system, and previously founded and co-founded the non-profits The Humane League and the Good Food Institute. He is the author of several previous books on how to effectively carry out charity work, including How to Be Great at Doing Good and Change of Heart, and advises on philanthropic giving. He lives in the greater New York City region.


Nick’s personal website is: http://www.nickcooney.com

His work websites are:
https://www.LeverVC.com
https://www.LeverFoundation.org

You can also see more about Nick at the following social media pages and links:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nick_Co...

https://www.linkedin.com/in/nickcooney1

https://www.facebook.com/nick.cooney1

https://www.instagram.com/nick.cooney2/

https://twitter.com/nickcooney2

https://www.amazon.com/Nick-Cooney/e/...

https://www.goodreads.com/author/show...

https://medium.com/@NickCooney

https://signal.nfx.com/investors/nick...

https://www.crunchbase.com/person/nic...

https://www.audible.com/author/Nick-C...

Reviews

[Jason Pettus · Rating 1 out of 5]

For what it's worth, I went into Nick Cooney's How To Be Great At Doing Good really wanting to like it; it's not only a passionate argument for why all of us should be more regular contributors of time and money to charities, but also a practical guide to figuring out which of two competing charities is more worth our time and money, a crucial part of philanthropy that I feel is missing in most people's lives. But my God, talk about the most egregious example I've ever seen of book-padding -- this is not just a magazine article padded out to the length of a book, but literally a blog post padded out to one, with only half a dozen lines of real, practical information buried within 270 pages of the most fillerific filler you will ever see. (For one very typical example, Cooney spends two entire pages telling us about a recent skiing trip he attended, just to make the point that deciding which charity to give money to is much like standing at the top of a ski slope and looking down at the treacherous run.) Plus, Cooney has a habit of making sweeping generalizations about charities, based on his personal opinions, that I didn't care for (he glibly declares at one point, for example, that all medical charities are inherently "worthier" than all arts charities, because fixing things that are wrong with the world is inherently nobler than adding something that didn't previously exist); and he also uses the book as an excuse to nitpick at charities he doesn't care for (he spends an entire chapter, for example, explaining why the Make-A-Wish Foundation shouldn't spend their money granting wishes), the exact kind of know-it-all do-gooder tsk-tsking that turns so many people off the entire idea of charity to begin with. Certainly Cooney's heart is in the right place, but this book is easily skippable, whose practical information can be completely and entirely summed up with, "Look at a charity's administrative costs closely before deciding to give them money."

Out of 10: 2.5

[Philip · Rating 2 out of 5]

Read Doing Good Better or The Most Good You Can Do instead, this book really does not compare favorably. Even though it is shorter than both MacAskill and Singer's books, the content still doesn't quite fill out the pages, with annoying repetition both of phrases from previous paragraphs and verbose summaries of points made in earlier chapters.

The preface tells the story of Schindler's regret of not having saved more jews from the Nazis, that "I could have got more out." The "get more out" quote is repeated throughout the book and gets very tiring. It's often not a very fitting analogy for giving to charities, and I find that Singer's hypothetical drowning child scenario is far more useful.

Finally, it's as if Cooney spends all of his effort trying to convince the reader to give, and doesn't spend enough time on the practical issues once you have been convinced. I think that MacAskill excels in this area, and that's the book I would primarily recommend.

[Daniel Hageman · Rating 4 out of 5]

A bit odd that Cooney could get through this book without directly mentioning Effective Altruism, especially given his emphasis on GiveWell and a variety of the top recommended charities. Aside from lacking a few valuable resources, though, this could be a great primer for the general public who might be interested in this space.

[Nick Cooney · Rating 5 out of 5]

Well I wrote it so of course I have to give it 5 stars :) But I think you will really love it, this is a good one! You can visit http://www.NickCooney.com to learn more and order a signed copy directly from the author (me).

[Sarah Brillinger · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an important read for everyone and I wish they taught this kind of common sense in school. I found the messaging in the book to be a little repetitive but maybe some people need to hear it over and over. ;)

[Aaron Gertler · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm a very committed effective altruist, and I think that Nick Cooney and I hold very similar beliefs. I enjoyed another of his books, "Change of Heart", almost without reservation. When this book is good, it is very good. I've saved many quotes for my commonplace book, and if I ever meet the author, I'll thank him profusely for the inspiration.

Unfortunately, when this book is bad, it is awful. I try not to use words like that lightly, and the awfulness is confined to a few pages -- but I've rarely had as strong a negative reaction to written words as when I was reading this book.

Cooney presents many original examples that made me think about familiar concepts in new ways. He's got a gift for clever metaphors. He's clearly someone who cares a lot about other people (and animals), and he's fairly careful with citations (always a good thing to see).

He also has a bad habit of not explaining himself before he makes statements like (paraphrasing) "you probably shouldn't be a doctor, because lots of people want to be doctors and you'll just be replacing someone else if you go into that field". It's a classic argument, but he tries to make it in less than a paragraph and most of the nuance goes out the window.

There's also this: "Believing that all charity work is equally important is like patting the backs of those relief workers who arrived with paint buckets and no food [in famine-afflicted Somalia] and telling them: 'Good work! Sure our children's bellies will continue to be swollen and their growth will continue to be stunted, but at least we'll have pretty buildings to look at.'"

Try as I might, I can't imagine this convincing anyone of anything. It's simply too nasty, too aggressive, and too smug. Worse, I *can* imagine talking to someone about EA in the future and having them bring up this sentence and telling me "after that, I decided that effective altruism wasn't for me". This passage, and a very few others like it, did a lot to weaken my enjoyment of the 200+ pages that are really quite good. (Until I reached the last few chapters, I was ready to give this 4.5 stars.)

No offense is intended to Nick here -- he's a fine author, and it's possible that the parts of the book that made me cringe were forced in by an editor or something like that. But this is emphatically not what you should give someone you hope to convert. Instead, if you are an effective altruist, read it yourself, extract the good bits, and try to forget the bad.

(If you aren't an effective altruist, consider buying William McAskill's book "Doing Good Better" or simply reading through this awesome FAQ.)

[Judith]

I registered a book at BookCrossing.com!
http://www.BookCrossing.com/journal/12549007

[Robin Tierney · Rating 3 out of 5]

Many interesting and good points, such as how common human bias towards caring more for people who seem more like kin often influences charitable giving choices...and the importance of looking at bottom lines, such as looking at the number of target audience members and the cost per target audience members helped. The info will seem basic to some more experienced philanthropic givers.

Some notes I took while reading:

How to Be Great at Doing Good
Nick Cooney

Bottom line of protecting/helping as many as possible.
Schindler wished he could have gotten more out - saved more Jews.

Education website, change behavior, decisions about rabbit give-up.

Base on cost per person helped.
Assessing the bottom line goal.

Biggest inefficiencies are in program budgets, not overhead.

Also raters skewed by own values.

Donors are like investors

Question ratings like Charity Navigator. Not looking at number helped.
Instead should rate on amount of good done per dollar spent.
Like Seva Foundation - blindness...mostly overseas, like Nepal cheaper for the surgeries.
AnimalCharityEvlauators.org

Not matter whether Sierra Club works to eliminate 100,000 or 10,000,000 tons of carbon emissions, but the skills of comms and fr staff at conveying a message to inspire giving, emotionally engaging and well-known.

HSUS can help more animals by spending on things others than direct animal care.
Give volunteer reward ctrs of brain, altruistic, give back, validate our worldview as correct.

Best way to get hotel guests o reuse towels was a placard stating most guests reuse towels.

Social norms bias (Normal natural necessary)

Copying has an evolutionary basis.
Knowing red cross, united way, salv army raise lots of $, we assume they're good places to donate. But that's b/c of bias towards popular and big.

When sign petition, more likely to donate. Inclined, habit of thinking yes.
Same with small gifts with name on them

Don't let passion be guide - theater.
Ask: what makes the world a better place.

In 2013, Americans gave $14.4 billion to arts and culture organizations. This is more than half the amount given to support public health. It's close to double the amount spent on protecting the environment and animals combined, even though we live in an era when environmental destruction and animal cruelty are occurring on scales unprecedented in human history. In 2013, Americans also gave $34 billion in donations to colleges and universities, all of which went on top of the money these schools already brought in from high student tuitions. If just a portion of those donating to the arts or to universities decided to put their money toward more urgent causes instead, imagine how much good could be done. Preventable blindness could be completely eradicated throughout the world. Schistosomiasis could be completely treated, sparing 200 million people a year. Hundreds of millions of animals could be spared from a a lifetime of terrible misery. Major inroads could be made toward protecting the health of the planet's ecosystems.

Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game, Michael Lewis, profiled Oakland A’s manager Billy Beane. knew his team would be outspent on recruitment, so used smarter decisions about which players to hire. Rather than rely on the conventional wisdom of baseball insiders, his team turned to statistical analysis. Found that things most coaches and scouts looked to in determining how valuable a player was, things like batting average and whether a player seemed to have all-around skills, were not the best indicators of how much good a player would do for a team. Instead, the A's found certain data points that were much better at predicting how valuable a player would be --for example, on-base percentage and slugging percentage.

Obama campaign used science to study demographics to a fine point, then after analyzing the data, determined those most likely to be undecided who could be persuaded to vote for Obama, more phone calls, mailings door-to-door visits used to determine which messages would be most effective at persuading undecided voters to lean toward Obama. Targets individual level in mailings, door knocks, calls with scripts and materials tailored to the groups -- Obama won nearly every swing state and cruised to re-election.

Author's point: learn how to do good instead of guessing how to do good.

Appeal to self-interest with environmental...but study messages. CUt down energy to save money, converse resource, help protect wildlife habitat?
Website layout among myriad influences.

Giving away anti-malaria bed nets for free vs. small fee was more effective at preventing the spread of malaria (Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab J-PAL at MIT economics dept.

Marriage equality: study: "fairness" more compelling than "equality" and images of committed gay couples doing typical things marie couples do was more effective than framing the issue around "rights".

Be aware and shun feel-good rhetoric (that's often self-centered). Instead: how to do the most good...what will improve the world the most?

Be aware of the psychological biases we have/part of human nature: peer pressure, looking down, limiting scope to kin and those like us...and in our country.

Face hard facts: how much good and to whom does arts/theater/university giving help? Where do those dollars go?

Measure per homeless person housed (or jobbed), per animal saved, per hungry child fed -- bottom line approach and base decisions around it.

By focusing donations on the orgs with the lowest cost per good done, we can accomplish most good and give nonprofits the incentive to be great.

There is an unfathomable amount of very real misery and suffering going on just outside the borders of our comfortable lives. Every charitable decision we make should be based on one question and one question only: Which choice will reduce as much of that suffering as possible.

[Joeri · Rating 4 out of 5]

If the goal of charity is to make the world a better place, it makes sense to ask ourselves how we could best succeed at it. The question will then not only be "how can I improve the world?", but: "how can I improve the world the most?"

Given the unimaginable amount of suffering in the world, thinking rationally on how we can reduce as much of that suffering as possible can lead to more improved wellbeing than when we only rely on guesswork. Applying scientific research, testing and evidence can guide us in this pursuit.

Through plain, understandable language and clear arguments, dressed with sometimes with very funny examples Nick Cooney convincingly shows how we can make smarter charitable decisions in order to do a great amount of good.

[Zak · Rating 4 out of 5]

I thought this book made a lot of great and easy to understand arguments on how and why we can improve our charitable efforts. Some of the messaging did get a little repetitive at times. And although I didn't find it condescending, I worry others might do.

Having already been exposed to a lot of these ideas in other books there was little that was new to me. But it did provide some useful analogies and reasonings for discussing with other people new to some of these ideas.

[Sirly-Ann Meriküll · Rating 3 out of 5]

Although the overall point is good the author spins too much around the same point with nearly identical examples.

[Ryan Sloan · Rating 2 out of 5]

Remember when you were writing an essay in school, looking at a page count that seemed unattainable because you didn't have that much to say? This reads like one of those essays, except it's a hundred pages longer. Perhaps it should have been an essay instead. Cooney repeats himself constantly (he basically retells the story of Oskar Schindler at least three or four times), and I found myself wishing he would get on it with it more than once. If you are unfamiliar with any of the literature on Effective Altruism, maybe you will get more out of this book than I did. I'd recommend reading Peter Singer's Famine, Affluence and Morality and combining that with a book on measurement.

[Teo · Rating 3 out of 5]

2018.07.06–2018.07.06

Contents

Cooney N (2015) (06:27) How to Be Great at Doing Good - Why Results Are What Count and How Smart Charity Can Change the World

Preface: Schindler’s Regret

01. Why Charity?
• Asking Why
• The Goal of Charity
• Barriers to Good
• The Challenge of “Why?”

02. Doing Good or Doing Great?
• A Tale of Two Charities
• Doing Good, or Doing a Lot of Good?

03. Facing the “Brutal Facts” on How Much Good We Are Accomplishing
• Gritting Our Teeth and Heading Down the Slope
• All Charities Are Not Created Equal
• Asking the Genie in the Bottle: Making Comparisons When Comparisons Seem Hard
• There Are Always Big Differences Between Charities
• Accepting the Fact That We Can Always Do Better
• It’s Always Subjective, and There’s No Way Around That
• But Wait ... Does That Mean All Theaters Are Doomed?

04. Chasing the Bottom Line: How to Do More Good for Less Money
• Defining Our Bottom Line
• Doubling Down on Saving Rabbits
• Where Following the Bottom Line Leads, and Why It Can Be Hard to Follow
• When Following the Bottom Line Means Making Big Changes
• Why We Lose Sight of the Bottom Line

05. Why Efficiency Means Everything for Donors (and Charities, Too)
• Bringing It Back to the Bunnies
• The Space to Be Human
• There Are Massive Differences Between Charities in the Same Field
• Coming to Grips with the Hard Facts

06. How We Can Drive Our Favorite Charities to Succeed
• The $1,500 Bottle of Soda
• The Free Market and the World of Charity
• Giving Non-Profits the Incentive to Be Great
• It’s Not All Donors’ Fault
• Unhelpful Advice
• A New Breed of Charity Advisors

07. Our Brains Don’t Want Us to Be Great at Doing Good, But We Can Outsmart Them
• What Charity Looks Like on the Inside
• Questioning Our Motives
• Looking Out for Number One, in More Ways Than One
• Our Biases Try to Rule Us, and This One Is Really Bad
• Empathy and Evolution
• More Biases and Other Mental Quirks
• Defeating Our Brains and Doing as Much Good as Possible
• Putting Our Self-Centeredness to Work

08. The Advice We Are Given About Charity Is Wrong—Here’s the Truth
• Following Your Passion Is a Bad Idea
• Being Great at What You Do Doesn’t Matter Unless You’re Doing the Right Thing
• Not All Charity Work Is Needed or Worth Doing Right Now
• We Have to Make Hard Decisions About Who to Help and Who to Ignore
• Doing Good Doesn’t Always Feel Good
• Charity Is All About Winning

09. Moving Forward with Humility: Admitting What We Don’t Know
• Knowing What We Don’t Know
• The Wonderful World of Science
• Learning How to Do Good Instead of Guessing How to Do Good

10. Nine Steps to Greatness
• 1. Get Serious
• 2. Never Forget the Goal of Charity
• 3. Shun Fuzzy Thinking and Feel-Good Rhetoric—They Are Self-Centered
• 4. Be Aware of the Psychological Biases We All Have
• 5. Be Willing to Face the Hard Facts
• 6. Define and Make Decisions Around a Bottom Line
• 7. Measure, Measure, Measure
• 8. Give Non-Profits the Incentive to Be Great
• 9. And Remember: Never Forget the Goal of Charity

Conclusion: The Joy of Great Charity

About the Author
References
Index

[Tim · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nick Cooney takes on charity from an angle that often gets overlooked. He wants to move charity in a more purpose driven direction, that I agree with 100%. However, I think some of his philosophical positions aren't as strong as they could be. The research was interesting, but I wanted him to go more in-depth with research on charities.

I found that this book focused way too much on animal rights ( I counted over 100 references ). Not that I am for or against animal rights, but I don't think it suits the title of the book. In that sense, the book needs to be a broader scope of charity. I do admire Cooney's passion for animals.

This book is worth the read. Cooney is doing some interesting work.

[Timo Brønseth · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great book that persuasively teaches how to actually do lots of good in the world instead of just deluding ourselves while feeling good about it. Easy to read and the important points are communicated with enough persuasive power such that they will be remembered at the times when it's useful to remember them (because what's the use of reading something useful unless we're able to remember it afterward?).

It's a great introduction to the core philosophy of the Effective Altruism movement, but I don't think it will be of much value to anyone already familiar with the movement.

[Ingeborg Slegers · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's a great quick read covering the basics of the non profit world and philanthropy. However, I feel the author leans toward a more dramatic writing style and does not have facts supporting his opinions. I would recommend it for the overall messages the author conveys.

[Rachel · Rating 2 out of 5]

I learned a lot but would have liked suggestions for small next steps to take. It was an interesting read and opened my mind to concepts I hadn’t considered.

[Timothy Wright · Rating 3 out of 5]

Geared towards donors. Offers suggestions on how to best use your donation dollars to do the most good, for the most affected, for the cause you care about.