The biggest charitable giver in the United States is not Bill Gates or the Walton family or even Mark Zuckerberg.

It’s you.

Last year, individual Americans gave 72 percent of all charitable gifts. They gave $282 billion to churches, arts groups, programs to help the poor and a myriad of other causes, according to the Giving Institute, a Chicago-based philanthropic organization.

But how much good did those dollars really do? Do we even know? And what if more of that money was channeled to charities that had the evidence to back up their work?

GiveWell demands hard evidence that the organizations it recommends are effective (usually relying on academic studies to prove it); makes sure they are cost-effective; evaluates whether the group is transparent both with GiveWell and the public; and figures out whether the charity has room to accept more donor money to increase capacity ...

We should demand more accountability and transparency from all charities, whether they are working in Milwaukee or Bangladesh. Can they back up their claims with hard evidence? If not, why not? And if not, should we support them?

In GiveWell's original business plan (still available on its website), the founders proposed to redirect dollars to where they would do the most good and encourage competition to "find the best ways of improving the world."

"We don’t expect to reach all of or even most donors in the short term," they wrote. "But … helping just a portion of them to give better could dwarf the impact of the world’s largest foundations."

That remains a worthy goal.

Read the full article about charitable giving and its effect by David Haynes at Tallahassee Democrat.