The GiveWell Blog

Our 2008-2009 recommendations for international aid are now available.

• Report homepage
• Recommended and top-rated charities

Highlights:

• We believe that health is the best area for an individual donor looking to accomplish concrete good. Many programs have strong and proven track records of success in international aid. This is largely not true of other areas. More at our cause overviews.
• The Stop Tuberculosis Partnership and VillageReach are the strongest options we’ve seen for an individual donor seeking a proven, cost-effective, scalable vehicle in international aid.
• Other recommended charities include The Against Malaria Foundation, Population Services International, Partners in Health, and The Global Fund to fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.
• There are many emotionally compelling areas - including surgical repair, clean water provision, economic empowerment (including microfinance), and education - in which we have not yet found a charity we can be confident in. We intend to continue exploring these areas, particularly economic empowerment.

Much more discussion to come in the following weeks.

Jeremy, a teacher, recently emailed us because he was interested in supporting charities that work on the problem of obstetric fistula. Fistula is a cause that I’ve written about before and is one that, emotionally, is extremely compelling.

I thought the email exchange with Jeremy was informative, so (with his permission) we’ve posted it here.

In brief, I think it provides:

1. A reasonable template for a donor thinking about supporting an organization that provides surgical care
2. An example of how a donor can care deeply about a specific cause and have an initial feeling about the best organization to give to but then benefit from thinking critically about his or her giving decision.

With all the people and organizations out there who would like more money, there’s something remarkable about the fact that the Gates Foundation is specifically asking people NOT to give to it (PDF) - and still couldn’t keep away over $10 million in donations in 2008.

Why the Gates Foundation doesn’t want your money

First off, I have a lot of trouble understanding the Foundation’s stated reasoning (PDF):

From time to time, people generously offer to contribute money to the foundation. We prefer that people give directly to our grantee organizations rather than to the foundation if they want to help advance the causes we’re passionate about. We have the stable funds we need to help us fulfill our mission, but our grantees often do not.

It seems to me that there are a couple of problems here.

• Is it desirable that the Gates Foundation’s grantees should have more “stable funds” than they do now? If so, why doesn’t the Gates Foundation give them these “stable funds” in the form of unrestricted grants? Couldn’t it, at the very least, use its “extra money” (the money that comes in as individual donations) in this way?

  How does it make sense for the Foundation to ask people to fund something that that they choose not to fund themselves? More broadly, how does it make sense for an organization to that exists for the sole purpose of giving away money as well as possible to be discouraging people from giving to it?

• The Foundation directs people to its list of grantees - in the form of a database of (currently) over 5,000 grants. How is an individual donor to cut through this information and figure out the best fit?

Speaking as someone who personally tried to do exactly this about 3 years ago, I can tell you that the information the Gates Foundation is providing is nowhere near sufficient to figure out which nonprofits would most benefit from my donation. I’m honestly surprised that the Gates Foundation is pointing people to pages like this one (and the other pages it links to) for information. The Gates Foundation has a large and well-credentialed staff devoted to researching where to give out money, yet they’re asking individuals to make the decisions themselves based on profiles that read like fundraising brochures?

The bottom line is that I don’t think the Gates Foundation makes a compelling argument that you shouldn’t give to it (so perhaps it’s not surprising that so many people have chosen to). To me, the strongest part of its case is the implication that it actually considers pages like this one to provide all the information and analysis a donor needs. If that were the case (and I doubt that it is), I’d definitely prefer to use my own judgment.

What does $10 million mean?

Sean hypothesizes that “this is direct evidence of individual donors’ increasing interest in impact.” I’m inclined to agree.

We often hear that donors don’t really care about having the most impact possible; they care about attending benefits, or dispelling the guilt/cognitive dissonance raised by an appeal, or identifying with a cause. We respond that at least some donors are motivated primarily by wanting to make the world a better place; the question is how many of these are out there (because we know that the total pie is quite large). And we honestly don’t know the answer to that question - better research is needed.

But now we know that 2008 saw at least $10 million come from people who could not have been motivated by social events (the Gates Foundation holds none and doesn’t allow fundraisers on its behalf), in-the-moment emotions (the Gates Foundation conducts no appeals and doesn’t have a particularly cute namesake), or identification with a pet cause (the Gates Foundation’s work includes U.S. education, international aid and more, and it doesn’t allow people to earmark for a specific cause).

The only reasoning I can think of for giving to the Gates Foundation is, “They’ll do a better job with this [in terms of making the world a better place] than I can, and that’s what I want even if it doesn’t come with the donor perks of a traditional charity.” If you disagree and can think of a less altruism-based reason, please share in the comments.

Of course, that $10 million could all have come from 1-2 people for all we know (especially since only $1.6 million came in the year before). More on this below.

Will the Gates Foundation help us learn more about these donors?

Correction (added 6/11/09): Sean Stannard-Stockton has pointed out that the Gates Foundation will be releasing the names and amounts for all donors who gave more than $5000, as required by law. Assuming this is correct, the remainder of this post (from here until the end) should be disregarded.

There is growing interest improving donors’ access to quality information. In order to do this well, it would help greatly to know whom to target - in particular, whether the lion’s share of “impact-focused” charity is coming from tiny, medium, large, or mega donors. At this point we know so little about this question that having the breakdown of donation sizes from the Gates Foundation would, I believe, add a lot to our understanding.

I believe the Gates Foundation could be a good citizen and helpful to the cause of improving philanthropy by releasing information on how many donations it received of different sizes. Aggregating them by “buckets” (<$100, $100-500, etc.) and keeping all names confidential would allow this information sharing without compromising anyone’s privacy. Will they do it?

One of the consistent refrains we’ve seen in aid literature is the importance of local participation/enthusiasm/ownership for aid projects. Many programs have been criticized for being too “top-down” (i.e., imposing outsiders’ designs on local communities), with the implication that more “bottom-up” programs (i.e., getting local people to participate in the design of execution of programs) would be more likely toi create real and lasting change. For an example of this reasoning, see this USAID review of Integrated Rural Development programs (PDF).

The basic reasoning makes sense, but making a program “bottom-up” is easier said than done. For an illustration of why, see this World Bank review of “community-based development,” a term referring to “projects that actively include beneficiaries in their design and management.”

The frequent tendency for participatory projects to be dominated if not captured by local elites is highlighted by several case studies. Katz and Sara (1997), in a global review of water projects, find numerous cases of project benefits being appropriated by community leaders and little attempt to include households at any stage … even well trained staff are not always effective in overcoming entrenched norms of exclusion. In a study of community forestry projects in India and Nepal that worked reasonably well, Agarwal (2001) reports that women were systematically excluded from the participatory process because of their weak bargaining power. Rao and Ibanez (2003) find that in the participatory projects in their Jamaican case study, wealthier and better networked individuals dominated decision making. In a similar case-based evaluation of social funds in Jamaica, Malawi, Nicaragua, and Zambia, the World Bank (2002) Operations Evaluation Department concludes that the process was dominated by “prime movers.”

Abraham and Platteau (2004) present evidence on community participation processes in Sub-Saharan Africa based largely on anecdotal evidence from their work in community-based development and on secondary sources. They argue that rural African communities are often dominated by dictatorial leaders who can shape the participation process to benefit themselves because of the poor flow of information. (40-41)

These notes capture a concern of ours that applies to all aid projects: while the goal is to help those in the most need, those with the least need may be most likely to have the resources, connections and free time to get the inside track on any particularly generous aid project. This is also a major reason to be skeptical of simple evaluations comparing “project participants” to “non-participants,” as many microfinance evaluations do. Project participants may simply be better off to begin with (and some studies show that they are, such as the Coleman study referenced on the previous link).

We don’t believe that a simple and straightforward way to overcome this challenge is available. That’s why, although we agree with the basic concept that local ownership will improve a project, we don’t tend to judge projects by their formal commitment to local ownership - i.e., we don’t favor programs that work in formal community votes, meetings, etc. over programs that don’t. The former could be improving local participation or transferring more power to elites; the latter could be generating local enthusiasm simply through a good match between what people want and what they’re being offered.

It’s easy to claim that one is involving community members, but the ultimate test is in outcomes - whether the project ran well enough and generated enough local participation to accomplish its ultimate goals (improved health, incomes, etc.)

I’ll be speaking on a panel, “Improving How we Give,” at this November conference. Should be interesting.

Has been released - available here (PDF). We haven’t read it yet, but recommend David Roodman’s summary. Based on other papers of Mr. Roodman’s that I’ve read, I believe he generally is a good bet to ask all the questions we would ask and then some, and do an excellent job putting his views in plain language.

This blog post is part of the Embedded Philanthropy Blog Series, sponsored by Telecom for Charity. The blog series was launched in May 2009 to highlight expert thinking and encourage discussions on the state of embedded philanthropy in today’s economy.

“Embedded philanthropy” (as defined by former GiveWell Board member Lucy Bernholz, via Tactical Philanthropy) is the practice of “building a philanthropic gift into another, unrelated, financial transaction.” The RED Campaign is probably the best-known example.

If you are thinking of participating as a consumer in embedded philanthropy, we urge you not to. Fundamentally, you are the one ultimately paying for the donation, as we discussed thoroughly here (if you don’t find the main post convincing, please see the comments as well).

Once you accept this claim, it appears that embedded philanthropy offers you, the consumer, no benefits, and has a couple of costs: (1) it narrows your options as a consumer (for example, you buy (RED) clothing instead of whatever clothing you want); (2) it narrows your options as a donor (i.e., the amount and recipient of your giving is determined by the company, not by you).

(2) is the more severe problem, and in some cases there may be ways around it. Telecom for Charity, the sponsor of this series, has informed me that its consumers can choose to donate to any charity of their choice (although I do not see this spelled out on its website). And with careful enough accounting, you can also make sure that your total giving for the year isn’t altered. But even in this best-case scenario, what’s the point? Why not just buy what you want and give what you want?

Much embedded philanthropy threatens to shift the choice of charity from individuals (giving for their individual reasons) to corporations (likely purely concerned with the PR aspects of the gift). All embedded philanthropy threatens to make donors feel they’ve “done their part” by signing up, instead of challenging themselves to give as much and as well as they can. No embedded philanthropy seems to offer genuine benefits to the consumer/donor. No embedded philanthropy can deliver on what I see as an implicit promise of “something for nothing” - the virtue of giving without the sacrifice.

Despite all this, embedded philanthropy may be a net force for good if it mobilizes enough giving that wouldn’t have occurred otherwise. It’s hard to turn our nose up at (RED)’s claim to have directed over $130 million to the Global Fund to fight Aids, Tuberculosis and Malaria (which we view as an unusually strong charity). (RED) has had an amazing amount of corporate and celebrity support, and I haven’t seen any other embedded philanthropy campaigns that appear to have had anywhere near the same impact.

We don’t pretend to know much about mass fundraising; we target the specific donors who seek to accomplish as much good as possible. Embedded philanthropy may be effective for the former; we feel it has little to offer the latter.

There’s news today that the Yellow Fever Initiative is facing a budget shortfall and may be unable to purchase needed vaccines in the near future (h/t Christine Gorman):

Emergency supplies of yellow fever vaccines are set to run out next year, and there is no funding to continue immunisation campaigns after that, World Health Organisation experts said on Tuesday.

The mosquito-borne yellow fever virus infects 206,000 people a year and kills 52,000, mainly in tropical regions of Africa and the Americas.

Recent outbreaks in Brazil, Central African Republic and elsewhere have drawn down the 6 million doses of yellow fever vaccine reserved for emergency response, and a $186 million shortfall has left the WHO unable to vaccinate high-risk people in Ghana and Nigeria as it had planned.
…
“For 2011, the Yellow Fever Initiative has no funding for either the emergency stockpile or the continued roll-out of preventive campaigns,” she told a news briefing in Geneva.
…
“As we look beyond 2009, we already see serious funding constraints,” Dr. William Perea, the WHO’s epidemic readiness and intervention coordinator, said in a statement after a two-day meeting of U.N. and aid groups.

Is there a real possibility of the program stopping because of lack of funds?

Is this the type of funding gap that will eventually be filled by donors (by governments or the Gates Foundation)? It seems like donors have a good deal of time before 2011 to give more money. Or, alternatively, can the WHO reallocate funds from a program that has adequate funds to the Yellow Fever Initiative which does not?

The history of Yellow Fever in Africa may shed some light on this:

Between the 1940s and 1960s, widespread mass vaccination campaigns in some African countries had resulted in the almost-complete disappearance of yellow fever. However, as immunization campaigns waned, a generation of people grew up with no immunity to the disease, and by the 1990s the number of annual cases had risen to an estimated 200 000 per year, with 30 000 deaths, and urban outbreaks were starting to occur.

Yellow fever had returned as a major scourge and, as urbanization progresses across Africa, the threat of a major epidemic looms ever larger. WHO estimates, for example, that this highly transmissible disease could infect around one third of the urban population, or up to 4.5 million people, in Lagos, Nigeria alone.

We’re interested in learning about programs that stopped because they just couldn’t raise enough money. Is that what happened with Yellow Fever? Are there other examples of this happening?

How can an individual donor support immunization programs?

I don’t know much about the Yellow Fever Initiative. How does it compare to GAVI or VillageReach (both on our list of top contenders to be a recommended charity in our upcoming report) as a means for donors to support expanded immunization programs, a proven, cost-effective method for improving health and saving lives in the developing world.

In 2007, GAVI supported the Yellow Fever Initiative with a grant of close to 60 million dollars. Is this grant subject to the same reporting and evaluation requirements of GAVI grants through its “regular” channels (which includes funding for Yellow Fever vaccines)?

There’s little information about the Yellow Fever Initiative online (its main page is here).

When we aim for something more ambitious than transferring our wealth to those in need, we’re often implicitly assuming that we have superior knowledge, compared to the people we’re trying to help. This seems to me to be the sort of thinking underlying this comment: “how does handing out cash build community, solve macro problems, provide a base for effective activism?”

One thing I believe the developed world can teach the developing world is facts about medicine. For example, many people in developing-world communities do not know as much as we do about how HIV/AIDS is transmitted, how diarrhea is contracted, and what to do about it. We can share and promote facts about these diseases that do not depend on local politics, customs, etc. (for example, wearing a condom drastically reduces the risk of transmitting HIV). So far, so good.

What else do we feel confident that we can teach the developing world?

Do we have superior knowledge of how to run a business? Within their political, cultural and economic environment?

Do we have superior knowledge of how to build a healthy civil society? Of how to run their community?

Before we insist on “teaching” others about these things, we have to ask why we think we have things to teach. I’m not convinced.

Good Intentions are not Enough gives some stunning examples of how charity can go wrong, and specifically points at the widespread emphasis on “low overhead” (which we have repeatedly criticized) as a culprit.

It’s worth noting that literal “administrative expenses” metric is often less harmful than the broader definition of “overhead.” For example, many evaluation and planning expenses can be and are classified as program expenses. However, the distinction is not always as clear to donors and even to charities as it is to accountants, so things that “feel like” overhead may be under-invested in even if they don’t affect the numbers on the Form 990.

Aid Watch raises an interesting question: why should nonprofits provide medical treatment, education, or anything else other than cash handouts to those in the greatest need?

I can only think of two reasons, both noted in the Aid Watch post.

Reason 1: perhaps charities can make better decisions on behalf of disadvantaged people than those people can make for themselves. It’s certainly possible - disadvantaged people may often be poorly informed or educated. Still, if this is the primary justification for a charity’s activities, doesn’t it seem like the burden of proof should be on the charity?

A standard evaluation of a program compares “participating in the program” to “not participating in the program.” Isn’t that too low of a bar? Year Up spends about $20,000 for every person receiving employment services. Wouldn’t an ideal test of Year Up be to hold a lottery where “winners” receive Year Up services and “losers” receive $20,000 each?

(As a side note, such an evaluation ought to see less attrition - if cash payouts are dependent on participation - and face fewer ethical objections as well.)

Reason 2: cash transfers would become a huge target for cheating. (I include the concern that “this approach puts women and children at a disadvantage, while men take and spend the cash” in this broad category - i.e., money failing to get to the people it is intended to benefit.) This is also a valid concern, but it does not apply only to cash transfers.

PeopleAid gives rickshaws to people in the developing world. Who in the area wouldn’t like to pick up and sell a free rickshaw? The same concern applies, in varying degrees, to a host of other goods provided by charities, including drugs, bednets, cellphones, spectacles, fertilizer, and credit. (Who wouldn’t want a loan with a below-market, donor-subsidized interest rate that could then be re-loaned for a profit?)

The more a charity’s goods/services are transferable, the more of a concern it becomes that anyone who can get their hands on one will want to … which, in turn, may mean that the people who benefit most from the charity’s services could be the ones with the greatest power, rather than the greatest need. If a charity is giving out transferable items - including loans - for free or at donor-subsidized prices, it’s essential to know how they control who has access to them.

The promise of cash transfers

These two concerns noted, giving out cash to low-income people does strike me as a potentially promising approach. If it could be done effectively and on a large scale - giving many disadvantaged people the funds to meet their own needs - then many other humanitarian organizations could get more of their funding from their clients, and less from their donors. Which would you bet on to get water to people in Kenya: an organization funded by wealthy Americans (motivated by guilt and the wish to display generosity, among other things), or an organization funded by Kenyan customers (motivated by a need for water)?

Why do cash handouts seem to be so rare in the charity world? Perhaps it’s because extensive experience and study have shown this approach to be inferior to others. Or perhaps it has more to do with the fact that giving out cash fundamentally puts the people, rather than the charity, in control.

I recently posted about a new, intriguing study on the Harlem Children’s Zone. It’s now been a little over a week since David Brooks’s op-ed brought the study some major attention, and I’ve been keeping up with the reaction of other blogs. Here’s a summary:

Methodology: unusually strong

I haven’t seen any major complaints about the study’s methodology (aside from a couple of authors who appear to have raised possible concerns without having fully read the study - concerns that I don’t believe apply to it). The Social Science Statistics Blog noted it as “a nice example of careful comparisons in a non-experimental situation providing useful knowledge.”

Many studies in this area - particularly those put out by charities - have major and glaring methodological flaws/alternative hypotheses (example). We feel that this one doesn’t, which is part of what makes it so unusual and interesting.

Significance: possibly oversold

David Brooks came under a lot of criticism for his optimistic presentation of the study, stating “We may have found a remedy for the achievement gap.” Thoughts on Education Policy gives a particularly thorough overview of reasons to be cautious, including questions about whether improved test scores really point to improved opportunities and about whether this result can be replicated (”Each school has an inordinate number of things that make it unique — the Promise Academy more so than most”).

Its “What should we learn from the Promise Academy?” series (begun today) looks interesting; it is elaborating on the latter point by highlighting all the different ways in which this school is unusual.

We feel that these concerns are valid, and expressed similar concerns ourselves (here and here). However, given the weak results from past rigorous studies of education, we still feel that the results of this study bear special attention (and possible replication attempts).

Teaching to the test?

Aaron Pallas’s post on Gotham Schools raises the most interesting and worrying concern that I’ve seen.

In the HCZ Annual Report for the 2007-08 school year submitted to the State Education Department, data are presented on not just the state ELA and math assessments, but also the Iowa Test of Basic Skills. Those eighth-graders who kicked ass on the state math test? They didn’t do so well on the low-stakes Iowa Tests. Curiously, only 2 of the 77 eighth-graders were absent on the ITBS reading test day in June, 2008, but 20 of these 77 were absent for the ITBS math test. For the 57 students who did take the ITBS math test, HCZ reported an average Normal Curve Equivalent (NCE) score of 41, which failed to meet the school’s objective of an average NCE of 50 for a cohort of students who have completed at least two consecutive years at HCZ Promise Academy. In fact, this same cohort had a slightly higher average NCE of 42 in June, 2007. [Note that the study shows a huge improvement on the high-stakes test over the same time period, 2007-2008.]

Normal Curve Equivalents (NCE’s) range from 1 to 99, and are scaled to have a mean of 50 and a standard deviation of 21.06. An NCE of 41 corresponds to roughly the 33rd percentile of the reference distribution, which for the ITBS would likely be a national sample of on-grade test-takers. Scoring at the 33rd percentile is no great success story.

One possible interpretation is that cheating occurred on the higher-stakes tests, but this seems unlikely since performance was similarly strong on lower-stakes practice tests (specifics here). Another possible interpretation is that Harlem Children’s Zone teachers focused so narrowly on the high-stakes tests that they did not teach transferable skills (as Mr. Pallas implies).

We haven’t worried much about the “teaching to the test” issue to date, if only because so few interventions have shown any impact on test scores; at the very least, raising achievement test scores doesn’t appear to be easy. But this is a major concern.

Another possible interpretation is that stronger students were absent on the day of the low-stakes test, for some irrelevant reason - or that Mr. Pallas is simply misinterpreting something (I’ve only read, not vetted, his critique).

Bottom line

We know that the Fryer/Dobbie study shows an unusually encouraging result with unusual rigor. We don’t know whether it’s found a replicable way to improve important skills for disadvantaged children.

We feel that the best response to success, in an area such as this one, is not to immediately celebrate and pour in funding; it’s to investigate further.

You donate some money to a charity in the hopes that it will (a) carry out a project that (b) improves people’s lives. In order to feel confident in your donation, you should feel confident in both of these.

In most areas of charity, we feel that people overfocus on “did it happen?” relative to “did it work?” People often worry about charities’ stealing their money, swallowing it up in overhead, etc., while assuming that if the charity ultimately uses the funds as it says it will, the result will be good. Yet improving lives is more complicated than charities generally make it sound (see this recent post of ours). This partial list of failed programs is made up entirely of programs that appear to have been carried out quite competently, and simply didn’t improve the lives of clients.

In international aid, the relative importance of “did it happen?” grows for a couple of reasons:

• International charities work far away and often in many different countries at once. It often isn’t feasible for their main stakeholders (Board members, major donors, etc.) to check that projects are being carried out.
• International charities are working within foreign political systems, cultures, etc. Materials can be stolen or misappropriated en route. Locals can take advantage of their superior knowledge and “game the system.”
• Many of the activities international charities carry out are proven to work (though many are not as well). Using insecticide-treated nets will reduce risk of malaria (more); an appropriate drug regimen will cure tuberculosis (more); vaccinations will prevent deadly diseases (writeup forthcoming). These claims have been proven and are essentially not subject to debate. This is not the case in the developed world - most of the programs charities work on have not been shown to improve outcome measures of health, standard of living, etc. (See, for example, this guest blog post.)

“Did it happen?” is a question that can largely be answered by informal, qualitative spot-checks. That’s why we would like to see more and better qualitative evidence. By contrast, to know whether a program worked, you need to somehow compare what happened to clients with what would have happened without the program - something that is often hard to have confidence in without formal outcomes tracking and evaluation.

Therefore, we believe that the role of site visits, qualitative evidence, spot-checks, etc. is likely more important in international giving than in domestic giving. In international aid, delivering proven programs (particularly medical ones) is a large part of the battle. In the U.S., most reputable charities are probably doing what they say they’re doing; the question is whether what they’re doing is effective.

At some point we’d like to investigate the idea of donating to research projects. Non-profit-motivated research is credited with many large and meaningful successes, both in medical areas (most recently, the development of a rotavirus vaccine) and in other areas (most notably, the Green Revolution).

There are serious concerns when donating in this area. For example, a recent working paper by Austan Goolsbee (h/t Greg Mankiw) argues that the additional dollar of U.S. research funding doesn’t lead to more research - only to higher salaries for the people already in the area.

One of the big challenges, it seems to me, will be coming up with ways to make good/educated guesses at which areas of research are funded to the point of diminishing returns, and which aren’t.

Key resources will be surveys such as the relatively new public survey of research & development funding for “neglected diseases” (h/t Malaria Matters), defined as diseases that predominantly affect the developing world. Data like this could allow a “rough cut” at which areas are over vs. under-funded: look at the proportion of dollars to the death toll, or DALY burden, etc.

Of course such a heuristic can’t capture the whole picture - certain diseases may be costlier to investigate, there may be more promising paths on some than on others, etc. Is there a better way to get at this question?

Why are people so excited about one study of one charter school showing improved performance on math tests? (Our coverage of the study here).

It’s because in academic circles, improving academic performance is seen as an extremely thorny problem with a very long list of past failures. (See pages 1-2 of the paper for an overview.) The very strong default assumption is that an education program will fail to improve performance. To the point where a one-time, one-standard-deviation bump in math scores is considered (by David Brooks) to be a “miracle.”

But you’d never know it from the world of education philanthropy. Attend any fundraiser or read any annual report and all you’ll hear is stories of success.

There’s a similar split between two worlds in international philanthropy. Academics nearly all stress the challenges, the frustrations, and the sense that progress hasn’t matched expectations. Talk to a charity and you’ll hear “success, success, success.”

Many people are incredulous that we recommend so few charities. I can only guess that that’s because they’re coming from the world of fundraisers, where every charity is assumed to be a success. In our world, “recommended” is the exception, not the default.