Summary

• In this post, I hope to inspire other Effective Altruists to focus more on donation and commiserate with those who have been disappointed in their ability to get an altruistic job.
• First, I argue that the impact of having a job that helps others is complicated. In this section, I discuss annual donation statistics of people in the Effective Altruism community donate, which I find quite low.
• In the rest of the post, I describe my recent job search, my experience substituting at public schools, and my expenses.

Having a job that helps others might be overemphasized

• Doing a job that helps others seems like a good thing to do. Weirdly, it's not as simple as that.
  • While some job vacancies last for years, other fields are very competitive and have many qualified applicants for most position listings.
    • In the latter case, if you take the job offer, you may think you are doing good in the world. But if you hadn't taken the job, there could be someone in your position doing nearly as good as you (or better, depending on if you were overstating your qualifications.) 
    • In animal welfare in particular, jobs get many applicants.
      • Lauren Mee, from Animal Advocacy Careers, on the podcast How I Learned to Love Shrimp: "...there's an interesting irony in the movement where there is actually a lot of people who are interested in working in the movement and not enough roles for all of those people."
  • There is some social pressure within and outside of the Effective Altruism community to have a meaningful job where you help others.
• Although there is a lot of focus on impactful careers, Rethink Priorities' 2020 Effective Altruism survey found that around only 10% of non-student respondents worked at an Effective Altruism organization.

Donations are an amazing opportunity, and I think they are underemphasized

• I was confused to find that most people I talked to in Effective Altruism settings did not seem to be frugal or donate very much.
  • It seems that this is correct. In the 2020 Effective Altruism survey, among respondents who opted to share their donation amounts, donating $10,000 annually would place you within the top 10% of donors. The median for these respondents was close to $500 per year. (Mostly, they donate to global poverty.)
• A lot of people in rich countries have flexibility in where their money goes. This money could be put toward their best bets of doing good in the world. 
  • Which is more likely to do good: going out to eat, or helping to fund an effective charity?
    • It seems to me that you would have to think that the most effective charities are not that effective or that your contributions would be too small to make an impact to choose the former.
      • To understand more about the effectiveness of charities, I would highly recommend talking to someone from the charity and asking your specific doubts. 
      • As for small contributions, I am not exactly sure how to think about them, and hope to write about this topic in the future. However, it seems to me that many charities make purchases in the thousands of dollars, which could be an achievable amount to donate over a year. For instance, Fish Welfare Initiative's 2024 budget includes numbers in the thousands.

I used to really want an animal welfare-related job. Then I wanted to donate more. Now I am a substitute at a public school

• I graduated in May of 2023 and have since been interested in an animal welfare job. 
  • I have applied to a handful of these positions, realizing over time that the applicant pools were larger than I thought; the researcher position at Animal Charity Evaluators had 375 applicants. 
• After moving back to a more rural area to be around friends and family, I looked into businesses that match the donations of their employees. 
  • I found out that GAP subsidiaries, like Old Navy, apparently match the donations of full-time employees up to $15,000 per year. 
    • Double the Donation currently has a search feature to search for employers’ donation match policies.
    • I also found this somewhat outdated pdf that shows some data about employers that donation match.
  • The Old Navy in town seemed to be hiring, and I dutifully submitted my application, thinking that I could give around $30,000 per year to an animal welfare charity. 
  • After visiting the Old Navy and hearing that there were many applicants, I soon applied to however many job openings at local universities that I could. 
  • Still, $30,000 stuck around in my mind. If I donated that much per year to one charity, it seemed very likely to me that it would make some impact, as they may even be able to hire another staff member.
• Along the way, I thought that substituting at the local public school districts might be a good option for making income as I waited for interviews and an offer
  • One of the nearby school districts had an incredible turn around, getting me in to do paperwork and fingerprinting the next week. 
  • There was no interview, no questions about my intentions, and no requirement of a teaching certificate. 
  • The morning of my paperwork completion at the office building, they checked the calendar to see when I could start subbing. 
  • I started the very same day, assisting with special education students at the middle school.
• Although initially overwhelming, I find substituting to be a usually very nice experience. Most availabilities are to substitute for special education paraprofessional assistants, and the day usually involves working with a variety of students with varying levels of disability in different classrooms. 

I live frugally and donate

• Substituting a full day in this school district pays $120 per day. 
• With my lifestyle and privileges, it is very easy for me to survive without working everyday (which is not an option because some days there are no substitute availabilities.) 
  • Monthly, I pay around $550 for rent and utilities, $50 for food, and $100 for gas. I also spend around $30 on various dance events per month. My phone bill, health insurance, and car insurance are all paid by my family, to whom I also owe the honor of also having no student loans. 
  • I make a point to live very frugally. When making friends, I decline offers to go out to eat and suggest instead that we could cook together, go on a walk, or play Minecraft. (In my experience, Minecraft with friends is a very cost-effective intervention for human happiness.)
• I currently donate around $300 per month, split between two animal charities.
• It seems pretty obvious to me that I should aim to be frugal: would this dollar be better spent on me or on farmed animals? This is a high bar that I have gradually shifted my actions toward. 
  • It has also afforded me some more clarity on things that I really enjoy. 
    • When going swing dancing, I am often beaming the whole time and making friends I wouldn't have met otherwise. For me, a $15 dollar meal at a restaurant does not hold a candle to the joy of a $5 dance. 
• Although I have a low cost of living that could easily be paid for by substituting, I have aimed for a full-time job with pay of around $20 per hour, which would allow me to donate around $30,000 per year.

I have been disappointed in my ability to find a job that would allow me to donate more

• My job prospects have continued to whittle away at my hopes for donating $30,000/ year.
  • My first interview was for a job that would have paid well but that I feared would make me depressed. 
    • Because the job had a detailed list of vague duties, I asked them to clarify what I would spend most of my time doing. They informed me that I would be in a room, alone, typing written numbers and words onto a computer. After talking to friends and family who know my propensity for loneliness-induced depression, I told them I was no longer interested in the position. 
  • My next interview went very poorly. They expressed concerns that I may not be suited for the job because it required a strong work ethic and an ability to stay awake and motivated at odd hours. I had not expected this amount of negative interaction, as I was interviewing to be a custodian. 
    • I literally watched as one of the interviewers sitting close to me rated my responses on a scale of 1-5 (for your information, I got 2's and 3's).
  • Last week, I had an interview that truly warmed my heart. It was for a full-time position as a paraeducator at an elementary school for around $20 per hour. 
    • I had gained experience over my weeks of substituting, and they even expressed in the interview that multiple positions were available and had been for over a year. 
    • I asked them if they had any concerns about my ability to do the position, and none were voice. 
    • A week after, I got a call from one of my interviewers and was informed that I had not gotten the job, which made me very sad. 

It's okay

It can be really hard to get a job. It is not realistic that everyone in the Effective Altruism community could have a job related to these specific cause areas. Whether you're working directly on causes you care about or not, donating is better than many ways people use money. 

Some standards don't seem that high, like getting an animal-related job or one at Old Navy. When these seemingly modest goals are out of reach, all you can do is what you can. That is good enough for now.

Additional reading

Information relevant to these topics:

• Abraham Rowe’s explanation of why it is better for charities to have many smaller funders
• Joey’s post about how funding gaps vary in severity across cause areas and organization size
• Vipulnaik’s post of donation advice and how to donate more

Expressions of similar ideas:

• Luke Freeman’s summary of why donation is important and how Effective Altruism has changed its culture around donation
• An anonymous account of the difficulty of getting a job at Effective Altruism-related organizations
• Sjir Hoeijmakers’s post about how giving significantly should be common within Effective Altruism

Thank you to Ren and Aengus for helping me refine this post.