In a recent conversation, the question came up about how much effective altruism has actually done to raise money for charity, as opposed to just talking about donating more effectively. Since I didn’t know the answer to this question, I decided to do some research and this is what I found:
Effective Altruism Australia - In 2017:
345,168 children dewormed
370,280 children protected from schistosomiasis $396,859 distributed in cash transfers
$160,825 to help fund the largest universal basic income trial
85,865 people protected from malaria
Tax Deductibility: In many countries, including Australia, Canada and Germany, EA organisations have enabled tax deductible donations for top charities where this would otherwise not be possible
Charity Entrepreneurship: Already lead to the creation of two new charities: Charity Science Health: https://www.charitysciencehealth.com/
Fortify Health: http://www.fortifyhealth.global/
Raising for Effective Giving: https://reg-charity.org/ Ran the million dollar matching challenge in 2017. Matched $2,250,000 of donations for a total of $4,500,000 in donations to effective charities
The Life You Can Save: Moved over $3 million to charity in 2017
Effective Altruism Funds: Raised nearly $2.5 million for Global Poverty Charities in its first year and a half
Giving What We Can: 3500 members have pledged to give 10% of their income to the organisations they believe will do the most good with it. These individuals have self-reported as having donated $25 million in total so far, but I'm skeptical of the reliability of these figures as all it'd take would be one guy reporting $5 million as a joke or accidentally messing up and adding an extra zero to significantly mess up the results.
Founder's Pledge: Over $140 million dollars worth of equity pledged (in a legally enforceable manner) to charities by entrepreneurs (about 1/3 to EA charities) (https://techcrunch.com/2016/09/21/y-combinator-signs-up-to-founders-pledge-charity-scheme-for-social-causes/, https://80000hours.org/2016/12/has-80000-hours-justified-its-costs/#founders-pledge)
(I originally published this on Facebook back in August, so this may be slightly out of date. I don't discuss animal rights or existential risk specifically because many people, especially those outside of EA, don't care about these)
This post may have remained on Facebook were it not for the support of the EA Hotel
https://www.effectivealtruism.org/impact/
It would be nice if someone updated it regularly and had a note about when it was last updated on the top of the page. For example, according to Julia Wise there were 3855 Giving What We Can members at the beginning of 2019, whereas the number here is outdated with 1800+ members.
Interesting question! I think Givewell's estimate for how much money they've directed over the years should be counted in some way as well.
Small typo: "one" should be "on"
Always great to see the work that comes out of EA Hotel!