Why DonorsChoose? Why not one of a trillion other charities? Is there any evidence that improving school supplies improves education? Is this a better idea than improving the teachers themselves (Teach for America) or reworking the schools (KIPP, Achievement First)?

Why not use a site like http://www.givewell.net to get real info on the best charities, instead of promoting whichever happens to catch your eye? Giving proactively is harder, but it's a better way to help people.

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Holden - there a bunch of great charities out there (maybe not the trillion you quoted). I don't think anyone is saying that one charity is better than the other. I'm sure the ones you mention are equally valuable for those they serve. I think Luxist is doing a good thing by promoting a few of them with their Charity of the Day. It's not just one charity that caught there eye.

As far as Donors Choose goes, improving school supplies so that students have their own books to read is going to improve the educational experience for those children. By the way, many of these projects are for the tools teachers need for themselves so they can take their teaching to the next level. I'd suggest dropping by the site (www.DonorsChoose.org) and seeing what type of projects exist.

In the end, all of these charities (DonorsChoose, Teach for America,KIPP, etc) are doing great things for all the different segments of education. Let's not slam Luxist for exposing some of them. If you feel so committed to some of these other charities, I'd suggest you email Luxist to consider them as a future Charity of the Day.

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Donor boy........ well said.

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"I don't think anyone is saying that one charity is better than the other."

If that's true, we have a real problem on our hands.

Do you think that one business is better than another? Obviously there's no "master ranking" - different businesses do different things - but the notion that they're "all doing great work" is pretty ridiculous, even if all of them are trying to (which they largely are).

The achievement gap is a notoriously thorny problem that has resisted well-intentioned, well-funded efforts again and again. To say "improving school supplies so that students have their own books to read is going to improve the educational experience for those children" as though it's a fact, requiring no support (when in fact I believe there is no support for this claim) is to dismiss one of the toughest and most important problems we have in our society with a cavalier negligence it doesn't deserve.

I'd like to see us acknowledge that most charities are trying to do incredibly difficult things, and things that matter - and just as with any other organization, we should approach them with skepticism and demand the best, rather than saying "eh, it's charity, I'm sure it's fine." I'd like to see us think at least as hard about giving as we do about consuming, at least.

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Just in case anyone is still reading this, you might want to know that the site that Holden #1 promotes and Holden #2 is so grateful for was, in fact, founded by Holden. It's more than a little disingenuous that he fails to mention that fact, and he's been doing it just about everywhere on the internet. You can read more about it at http://metatalk.metafilter.com/15547/

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