Please note: this content is not actively maintained. HELP USA, Inc. Affiliates applied for a grant GiveWell offered in 2007, but did not receive the grant. The information below explains why.
HELP USA, Inc. Affiliates applied for our funding and recommendation in Cause 4: K-12 Education, but did not advance past our Round 1 screen, which aimed at finding charities with strong self-documentation (based on our principle of focusing on already-proven programs). Note that unlike other evaluators, we focus on finding and examining the strongest charities, not on providing equally thorough ratings to each one. More on our process is available at this link.

Specifics of why HELP USA, Inc. Affiliates did not advance

We used the following principles in conducting our Round 1 screen of Cause 4: K-12 Education:

1. Focus on data reflecting academic performance, such as graduation rates, college enrollment rates, attendance, grade promotion, and test scores. While data like this is very far from perfect in indicating how well children are learning and what is happening in terms of their life opportunities, we feel that if a charity's activities are indeed leading to improved academic ability and understanding (especially math and reading), this should be reflected in improved performance on hard measures, as well as other benefits.
2. We are looking for an organization that can strongly demonstrate its impact. We have not seen strong evidence linking factors such as self-esteem to academic performance, and so while improving children's self-esteem may be valuable, we are not convinced that it is a way to help close the achievement gap. Similarly, we do not believe that survey data showing self-reported attitude change is convincing evidence of improved academic abilities and performance.
3. Look not just for improvement, but for improvement above and beyond what might be expected without the organization's help. It isn't enough to see that test scores improved over some time period; NYC test scores have improved citywide over time, and this could be due to a variety of reasons that have nothing to do with nonprofit interventions. To us, evidence that a program worked means evidence that the participants outperformed some comparable "comparison group."
4. Look carefully for selection bias. We believe that child and family motivation are extremely important in education. Many studies using a "comparison group" are comparing voluntary participants in a program to non-participants, and the differences they pick up could therefore be driven by differences in motivation. The strongest organizations we reviewed showed or referred us to evidence that is at least attempting to assess the impact of their program above and beyond a tendency to attract more motivated students; some accomplished this through randomization, others by selecting their clients in a way that seems unlikely to involve selection bias; others by comparing changes in test scores between their populations and "control groups" (this method is more problematic than using randomized design, but less so than simply looking at whether their students outperform others).
5. Require evidence that a program has worked before. Some applicants submitted extremely rigorous, methodologically strong studies showing practically no difference between their participants and a control group. We believe that this sort of self-evaluation and documentation is valuable, but we are looking for proven, effective, scalable ways of helping people, not just strong research techniques.
   (As a note, no afterschool/summer programs demonstrated improved academic outcomes either for their own program or for a very similar one, and we haven't encountered any independent evidence that afterschool/summer programs in general (whether academically or recreationally focused) have consistent impact on academic performance.)

It's possible that HELP USA, Inc. Affiliates has the information we want, and didn't send it due to misinterpretations of our application, time constraints, or other reasons. But due to time constraints of our own, we opted to focus on the applicants who seemed most promising.

Application materials submitted by HELP USA, Inc. Affiliates

• 13-3808013 - CAUSE 4 - ATTACHMENT.BBBS Impact Report.pdf
• 13-3808013 - CAUSE 4 ATTACHMENT.Evaluation.doc
• 13-3808013 - CAUSE 4.Proposal.doc
• 13-3808013 CAUSE 4 - ATTACHMENT.BUDGET.xls

More information

• Click here for a complete list of charities we have evaluated.
• Click here for an overview of our findings in the area of improving equality of opportunity in the United States.
• Click here to see our top-rated charities.