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Glossary
From CharityScorecard
Here's a collection of acronyms, abbreviations, and special jargon that comes up when you start looking at international cost-benefit philanthropy.
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Acronyms and abbreviations
Terms
- 501(c)(3)
- A 501(c)(3) is a non-profit organization that is incorporated in the United States and has been granted tax exempt status by the IRS under the US Internal Revenue Code section 501(c)(3).
- Benefit-Cost Ratio (BCR)
- Once a CBA is done, the resulting BCR is calculated as the total benefits divided by the total costs. The BCR will be a unitless number, like "0.26", or "4.25". The bigger the BCR, the more cost-effective the project is. If the BCR is greater than 1.0, then the benefits outweigh the costs, and the project is cost-effective. If the BCR is less than one, then the costs outweigh the benefits, and the project is not cost-effective.
- Child Survival and Health Grants Program (CSHGP)
- CSHGP is a USAID program that funds projects that work to improveme in child survival and health outcomes.
- Copenhagen Consensus
- A project that tries to prioritize solutions to world problems. See also: Global Crises, Global Solutions. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copenhagen_Consensus
- Cost-Benefit Analysis (CBA)
- An analysis that weighs costs against benefits, usually with both costs and benefits quantified in the same measurement units, such as dollars. In contrast, see CEA.
- Cost-Effectiveness Analysis (CEA)
- An analysis that looks at results per unit cost, where the costs and the results are not typically not quantified in the same measurement units. For example, cost might be in "US dollars", with results in "number of lives saved". In contrast, see CBA.
- Cost of illness (COI)
- COI includes "direct costs", which are the costs associated with obtaining care (treatment, transport, special foods, etc.), and the "indirect cost" of the lost income resulting from the illness.
- Disability-Adjusted Life Year (DALY)
- A DALY is a unit of measurement that's widely-used when trying to measure health outcomes. DALYs are measured by taking into account the years of life gained and the years that are lived with some disability, with a weighting for the severity of the disability. For example, if a 35-year-old smoker quits smoking, they might gain 8 DALYs. A new national tax on cigarettes in some country might save 12,000,000 DALYs. See also: Year of Life Lost (YLL), the World Health Organization DALY definition, and the Wikipedia DALY entry.
- Discount rate (DCR)
- Discount rate is a term used by economists to talk about the rate used for comparing the value of a resource today to the value of a resource at some point in the future. Discount rates are usually expressed as percent values, such as 5% or 12%. Discount rates can be based on subjective factors (such as personal preferences about the value of having something now vs. waiting until later), or on objective factors (such as the rate of inflation, or the rate of return available on investments). See also: Skinner Fund discount rate.
- Donor Advised Fund (DAF)
- A donor advised fund is an investment fund run by a community foundation or other public charity. The donor deposits money in the fund by making donations to the organization that runs the fund. The donor can't ever withdraw the funds, but the donor can recommend that specific grants be made to eligible charitable recipients. The organization that runs the fund is free to accept or reject the recommendations, although in practice these organizations accept the vast majority of recommendations made.
- Effectiveness
- The effectiveness of an intervention is the benefit obtained in typical real-world circumstances. In contrast, see efficacy.
- Efficacy
- The efficacy of an intervention is the benefit obtained under ideal circumstances, like in a controlled study. In contrast, see effectiveness.
- Employer Identification Number (EIN)
- A unique number assigned by the United States Internal Revenue Service (IRS). Also called a Federal Tax Identification Number.
- Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO)
- A United Nations agency that works to make sure everyone has enough to eat. See also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_and_Agriculture_Organization
- Gini index
- A measure of the relative equality or inequality of income distribution within a country (or group of people). 0 represents a completely equal spread of income, while 100 represents a completely unequal spread where one person gets all the income. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gini_index and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_income_equality
- Global Crises, Global Solutions (GCGS)
- A book about the Copenhagen Consensus, edited by Bjørn Lomborg, published in 2004. See http://www.cambridge.org/uk/economics/globalcrises/
- Gross Domestic Product (GDP)
- GDP is the value of the goods and services produced in a country. See also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GDP
- Gross National Income (GNI)
- Gross National Income is Gross Domestic Product (GDP) plus net income from other countries (such as interest and dividends).
Heavily Indebted Poor Countries, as of 2005 ██ qualified for full HIPC relief ██ qualified for partial HIPC relief ██ eligible for HIPC relief but not yet meeting necessary conditions
- Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC)
- A set of about 40 countries identified by the World Bank's HIPC Initiative as candidates for debt relief. See also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HIPC
Human Development Index levels, 2003 - Human Development Index (HDI)
- A set of statistics published by the UN that measure average levels of well-being in different countries based on life expectancy, education levels, and GDP per capita. See also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Development_Index
- Infant mortality rate (IMR)
- The infant mortality rate (IMR) is the number of children who die before age 1 divided by the total number of children born. See also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infant_mortality_rate
- Internal Revenue Service (IRS)
- The IRS is the US government agency that collects taxes.
- International Dollars (Int$)
- A unit of monetary value, similar to US$, but which takes into account PPP as well as the exchange rate between a local currency and US$.
- IRS Form 990 (990)
- Form 990 is a tax form submitted by US Non-profit Organizations to the IRS. See also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IRS_Form_990
- Life expectancy (LE)
- Life expectancy (LE) generally means the average lifespan within a group of people. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_expectancy
- Low birth weight (LBW)
- A child has low birth weight if the child weighs less than 2500 g (5 lb 8 oz) at birth.
- Maternal mortality (MM)
- The mortality rate for women during or shortly after a pregnancy. See the Wikipedia entry for Maternal death.
- Millennium Development Goals (MDG)
- The Millennium Development Goals are a set of 8 goals that were included in the United Nations (UN) Millennium Declaration, signed by the UN member states in September 2000. See also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MDG
- Morbidity
- Morbidity usually means the relative incidence of illness in a population — for example, the number of people who have AIDS per 1,000 people in the population. See also mortality.
- Mortality
- Mortality usually means the relative incidence of death in a population — for example, the number of people who die of AIDS per 1,000 people in the population. See also morbidity.
- Non-exempt organization
- For donors in the US, a non-exempt organization is a non-profit which is not incorporated in the United States and has not been granted tax exempt status by the IRS under the US Internal Revenue Code section 501(c)(3).
- Primary health care (PHC)
- An infrastructure of basic health services, consisting of community-based services, health centres and local hospitals offering inpatient care.
- Purchasing power parity (PPP)
- A hypothetical exchange rate or conversion factor between currencies in different countries, used for adjusting GDP per capita figures to account for differences in cost of living. Local prices are expressed in Int$ after doing a purchasing power parity converstion. See also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purchasing_power_parity
- Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA)
- Sub-Saharan Africa generally refers to a set of 46 or 48 countries on the African continent. Sub-Saharan Africa includes almost all of the countries in Africa, excluding only the 6 or 7 northern most countries and the island nation of Mauritius. See also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sub-Saharan_Africa
- Under-five mortality (U5M)
- The mortality rate for children under age five. See the definition posted by the World Health Organization.
- United Nations (UN)
- The United Nations. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations
- United States (US)
- The United States of America. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States
- United States Agency for International Development (USAID)
- A US federal government agency that provides international development aid.
- United States dollar (USD or US$)
- The dollar is a unit of currency in the US. Within the US, dollar figures are is commonly abbreviated using the $ symbol, but the $ symbol can be ambiguous because different dollars are used as units of currency in many countries. The Charity Scorecard site also has pages which include figures in International Dollars (Int$). To avoid confusion, we've tried to avoid using the $ symbol by itself, and instead use US$, USD, or Int$. See also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_states_dollar
- Value of a Statistical Life (VSL)
- A crude estimate of the value to society of saving a life. VSL estimates are sometimes based on estimates of average wages and earnings, to assess society's loss of a productive worker. Or VSL numbers can be based on trying to empirically observe how much people actually seem to be willing to pay to avoid risks, either as individuals or as a society. For example, a civil engineer might use a VSL number when making a CBA estimate to decide whether to install a guard rail on the side of a highway. Studies often use different VSL numbers for people in different countries, but I would argue that ethically we should consider all people to have similar VSL numbers, without regard to race, sex, or nationality.
- World Bank
- The World Bank Group, which includes the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD), provides financial and technical assistance to developing countries around the world. The World Bank the International Monetary Fund (IMF) were established in 1945 and are based in Washington D.C. See also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Bank
- World Health Organization (WHO)
- A United Nations agency. See also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Health_Organization
- Year of Life Lost (YLL)
- A YLL is a unit of measurement for comparing health outcomes. YLLs are similar to DALYs, although they don't account for disability caused by disease.
Adding new terms
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Easy Instructions
To add a new term to the Glossary, follow these steps:
- 1. Check the spelling and capitalization of the term you plan to add. In this example, we'll use the term "Human immunodeficiency virus".
- 2. On the Glossary page, click the "edit" tab at the top of the page to begin editing.
- 3. On the "Editing Glossary" page, add a new entry for your new term. The first line of your entry should have a the term itself, with a semi-colon (;) in front of it at the start of the line. The second line of your entry should explain what the term means, and should have a colon (:) in front of it. Here's an example:
; Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) : HIV is the retrovirus that causes AIDS.
- 4. Press the "Save page" button.
Harder Instructions
If you follow the #Easy Instructions above, that will create a new entry on the Glossary page, but will not create a new page for the term itself. A better solution is define the new term on its own page, and then include (transclude) that new page on the main Glossary page. To do that, follow these steps:
- 1. Check the spelling and capitalization of the term you plan to add. In this example, we'll use the term "Human immunodeficiency virus".
- 2. On the Glossary page, click the "edit" tab at the top of the page to begin editing.
- 3. On the "Editing Glossary" page, add a single new line for your new term:
{{:Human immunodeficiency virus}} - 4. Press the "Save page" button.
- 5. On the Glossary page, there will now be a new link for your new term, and the new link will look like this: Human immunodeficiency virus. The new link will be positioned oddly, but don't worry about that (it will be appended to the end of another entry rather than starting on its own line). Click on the new link.
- 6. On the "Editing Human immunodeficiency virus" page, enter this text:
{{Term |
| term = Human immunodeficiency virus
| abbr = (HIV)
| desc = HIV is the retrovirus that causes AIDS.
}}
- 7. Replace the values in the template above with the term, abbreviation, and description for the new term you're defining. If your term doesn't have an abbreviation, just leave that entry blank.
- 8. Press the "Save page" button.
Creating REDIRECT pages
If the term you added has an abbreviation, you may want to create a separate page for the abbreviation in addition to the new page you just created for the term itself. So, in addition to the new page named Human immunodeficiency virus, you can create a new page named HIV that automatically redirects people to the Human immunodeficiency virus page.
To create a redirect page:
- To create a redirect page named "HIV", go to the URL address bar of your web browser and enter:
http://www.charityscorecard.org/HIV
- That will take you to a newly created page named "HIV". The body of the page will say something like "(There is currently no text in this page)".
- On the "HIV" page, click the "edit" tab at the top of the page to begin editing.
- On the "Editing HIV" page, add a single new line:
#REDIRECT [[Human immunodeficiency virus]]
- Press the "Save page" button.
- To test your new redirect page, go to the URL address bar of your web browser and enter:
http://www.charityscorecard.org/HIV
- Even though you gave the URL of the "HIV" page, the browser should take you to the "Human immunodeficiency virus" page.
