On Monday 4th of March, the Centre for Practical Ethics hosted a joint lecture on the evaluation of the effectiveness of charitable organizations, given by Toby Ord and Harry Shannon. Their lectures and ensuing discussion covered a range of different topics, including the numerical methods for assessing the effectiveness of a charity, the philosophical concepts that underpin the concept of effectiveness in charitable giving, and the moral implications of various methods of allocating money to these organizations.

You can listen to the podcast of the seminar at this link.

Toby Ord is a research fellow in philosophy at the Future of Humanity Institute, and also the founder of Giving What We Can, an organization that promotes charitable giving and evaluates charities based on their cost-effectiveness.

Harry Shannon is a medical statistician at McMaster University, who is currently visiting Oxford Brookes university.