Just some thoughts on giving now instead of later.
I have a bias towards giving now. On account of there is suffering occurring now, and telling someone that help will come later, the lifeguard will come later, justice will come later, pain-relief will come later or start-up funding will come later doesn't seem that helpful.
In fairness, I certainly can see cases for giving later.
I think of TB, the current DOTS program has its limitations.
Directly observing medication intake over months has it's problems. In comparison to later funding the distribution of a fictional one jab vaccine for adults.
Yet, doing nothing about the TB cases now seems to me unhelpful.
Give later, invest to give, and earn to give I find too slow.
There's no doubt they all have their merits.
Giving later when one is more familiar with an issue and effective solutions. Invest to give, ongoing funding to give to new charities or to respond to things like the COVID-19 pandemic. Earn to give, when one has more income to make a greater impact.
My thinking {and I can be wrong} is that at some point we have to act.
We can't just keep waiting to make a decision or for more research.
There may always be that fog of solutions.
Just like the fog of war, when you may not have the complete picture, but need to act.
There is hopefully enough research in fields like global health and global poverty to achieve more good now.
I'm okay with the donation being a drop in the bucket. A donation of even one billion dollars would be a drop in the bucket. When I think about the money from charities, foundations and governments for social issues, but that’s okay.
A small amount of help now is better than no help at all.
So, investing to give or earn to give doesn't appeal that much to me.
I can, however, understand a case for a Donor-Advised Fund to provide ongoing funding.
My focus is currently on global poverty and global health. So, perhaps other causes are more suitable to give later.
I think {rightly or wrongly} that global poverty and global health need giving now.
Be it ensuring early intervention for families before the trap of intergenerational poverty.
The need to stop jobs depleting in an area now to stop the disintegration of that community, and the harder work to undo the problems.
The need to reduce poverty now to stop the delinquent behavior that can come from being in a low-socioeconomic and jobless community.
Stopping people being homeless now spares the emotional damage of homelessness and the increased cost of helping later.
The cures, existing and improved treatments that need to be given to people as fast as possible. And the thinking is also people shouldn’t have to wait a second longer for liberation.
This is meant to be my decision to give now (and not to say it’s the only way others should give).
I do, however, wonder what incentives there are to increase giving now by people that need incentives to do so.
David
I agree that global health and poverty need giving now, and admire your willingness with being OK to create a drop in the bucket!
I'm working on interventions that interrupt inter-generational poverty / the poverty cycle, and some excellent USAID health research has identified infant cognitive stunting as a key lock on intergenerational poverty in Africa, and aflatoxin B1 as a key cause of that stunting, along with smoke, lead and malnutrition of mothers and adolescent girls.