I'm about to start a new job, so I will be able to donate a lot more money to charity in the coming year, but I'm really confused as to where I ought to donate. Some information about my situation and beliefs:
- I'll be earning about $100,000 after taxes, so I anticipate that I'll want to donate between $1,000 and $5,000. I also run annual birthday fundraisers every October from my Facebook account - this year, I pulled in $400 for the Clean Air Task Force. I try to pick charities that are both high-impact by EA lights and within popular causes like climate change, so I'll be able to spend more of my own money on more neglected or obscure causes.
- I believe that future generations and animal lives have value. This makes me think that I should donate to organizations like the Wild Animal Initiative and Fish Welfare Initiative, which may be able to help billions of animals going into the future.
- Although I care a lot about existential risks, I worry that a lot of longtermist funding is going toward AI safety, and not enough EA funding is going toward more neglected and obscure x-risks, such as the ones on this list. I would like to see more research into how x-risks compare against one another to help with prioritization, and I would like to fund more work on underfunded areas like s-risks. Also, I'm hesitant to donate to the LTFF because it seems over-weighted toward AI safety, but I'm open to being persuaded that I should still donate to it or that AIS is underfunded.
- I'm interested in funding "broad longtermist" interventions - ones that make society better able to deal with future challenges in general, like better institutional decision-making, reducing great-power conflict, and protecting liberal democracy. Ben Todd notes (10:34 in this talk) that this category is greatly under-resourced. I care about liberal democracy for longtermist as well as non-EA reasons, and although it seems like it's already really popular, I'm not confident that the existing funding is going to the best interventions.
- I'm also interested in longtermist interventions to reduce global poverty and promote economic growth - maybe something like the Center for Global Development?
I would appreciate any advice as to where I should donate and what proportions I should allocate to each org in the coming year, given what I've said here.
Hey, sorry, I totally forgot about this until I stumbled across this recent discussion on donating to help with the situation in Ukraine earlier this week. I've pasted a bibliography of relevant papers below.
Aker, Jenny C., Paul Collier, and Pedro C. Vicente. “Is Information Power? Using Mobile Phones and Free Newspapers during an Election in Mozambique.” The Review of Economics and Statistics 99, no. 2 (May 2017): 185–200. https://doi.org/10.1162/REST_a_00611.
Armand, Alex, Alexander Coutts, Pedro C. Vicente, and Inês Vilela. “Does Information Break the Political Resource Curse? Experimental Evidence from Mozambique.” American Economic Review 110, no. 11 (November 1, 2020): 3431–53. https://doi.org/10.1257/aer.20190842.
Banerjee, Abhijit, Nils T. Enevoldsen, Rohini Pande, and Michael Walton. “Public Information Is an Incentive for Politicians: Experimental Evidence from Delhi Elections.” Working Paper. Working Paper Series. National Bureau of Economic Research, April 2020. https://doi.org/10.3386/w26925.
Besley, Timothy, and Robin Burgess. “The Political Economy of Government Responsiveness: Theory and Evidence from India.” The Quarterly Journal of Economics 117, no. 4 (November 1, 2002): 1415–51. https://doi.org/10.1162/003355302320935061.
Bruns, Christian, and Oliver Himmler. “Newspaper Circulation and Local Government Efficiency: Newspaper Circulation and Local Government Efficiency.” Scandinavian Journal of Economics 113, no. 2 (June 2011): 470–92. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9442.2010.01633.x.
Casey, Katherine. “Crossing Party Lines: The Effects of Information on Redistributive Politics.” American Economic Review 105, no. 8 (August 1, 2015): 2410–48. https://doi.org/10.1257/aer.20130397.
Conroy-Krutz, Jeffrey. “Media Exposure and Political Participation in a Transitional African Context.” World Development 110 (October 2018): 224–42. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.worlddev.2018.05.002.
Drago, Francesco, Tommaso Nannicini, and Francesco Sobbrio. “Meet the Press: How Voters and Politicians Respond to Newspaper Entry and Exit.” American Economic Journal: Applied Economics 6, no. 3 (July 1, 2014): 159–88. https://doi.org/10.1257/app.6.3.159.
Enikolopov, Ruben, Maria Petrova, and Konstantin Sonin. “Social Media and Corruption.” American Economic Journal: Applied Economics 10, no. 1 (January 1, 2018): 150–74. https://doi.org/10.1257/app.20160089.
Enikolopov, Ruben, Maria Petrova, and Ekaterina Zhuravskaya. “Media and Political Persuasion: Evidence from Russia.” American Economic Review 101, no. 7 (December 1, 2011): 3253–85. https://doi.org/10.1257/aer.101.7.3253.
Enríquez, José Ramón, Horacio Larreguy, John Marshall, and Alberto Simpser. “Online Political Information, Electoral Saturation, and Electoral Accountability in Mexico.” SSRN Electronic Journal, 2021. https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3897408.
Ferraz, Claudio, and Frederico Finan. “Exposing Corrupt Politicians: The Effects of Brazil’s Publicly Released Audits on Electoral Outcomes.” Quarterly Journal of Economics 123, no. 2 (May 2008): 703–45. https://doi.org/10.1162/qjec.2008.123.2.703.
Gao, Pengjie, Chang Lee, and Dermot Murphy. “Financing Dies in Darkness? The Impact of Newspaper Closures on Public Finance.” Journal of Financial Economics 135, no. 2 (February 2020): 445–67. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jfineco.2019.06.003.
Grácio, Matilde, and Pedro C. Vicente. “Information, Get-out-the-Vote Messages, and Peer Influence: Causal Effects on Political Behavior in Mozambique.” Journal of Development Economics 151 (June 2021): 102665. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jdeveco.2021.102665.
Grossman, Guy, and Kristin Michelitch. “Information Dissemination, Competitive Pressure, and Politician Performance between Elections: A Field Experiment in Uganda.” American Political Science Review 112, no. 2 (May 2018): 280–301. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0003055417000648.
Larreguy, Horacio, and John Marshall. “The Incentives and Effects of Independent and Government-Controlled Media in the Developing World.” In The Oxford Handbook of Electoral Persuasion, edited by Elizabeth Suhay, Bernard Grofman, and Alexander H. Trechsel, 589–617. Oxford University Press, 2020. https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190860806.013.13.
Larreguy, Horacio, John Marshall, and James M. Snyder. “Publicising Malfeasance: When the Local Media Structure Facilitates Electoral Accountability in Mexico.” The Economic Journal 130, no. 631 (October 16, 2020): 2291–2327. https://doi.org/10.1093/ej/ueaa046.
Moskowitz, Daniel J. “Local News, Information, and the Nationalization of U.S. Elections.” American Political Science Review 115, no. 1 (February 2021): 114–29. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0003055420000829.
Pande, Rohini. “Can Informed Voters Enforce Better Governance? Experiments in Low-Income Democracies.” Annual Review of Economics 3, no. 1 (September 1, 2011): 215–37. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-economics-061109-080154.
Reinikka, Ritva, and Jakob Svensson. “Fighting Corruption to Improve Schooling: Evidence from a Newspaper Campaign in Uganda.” Journal of the European Economic Association 3, no. 2/3 (2005): 259–67. http://www.jstor.org/stable/40004969.