Part A (20 mins.)
In this exercise, we’ll imagine that you’re planning to donate to a charity to improve global health, and explore how much you could do with that donation.
GiveWell is an effective altruism-inspired organization which attempts to identify outstanding donation opportunities in global health and development. Using this tool to estimate your future income and Givewell’s reports on their top charities, try and work out what you could achieve if you donated 10% of your lifetime income to one of these charities.
If you’re short on time, here’s a sheet with information about three top GiveWell charities. If you’d like to explore further, check out GiveWell’s cost effectiveness models.
Complete this exercise for three GiveWell charities, writing down your answer like, e.g.:
Malaria Consortium: X cases of malaria prevented, with an estimate of N deaths averted
Part B (10 mins.)
In the last section, you ended up with a few different options. Now imagine you were given $1,000 to donate to only one of these charities.
There's a difficult judgment to be made now: since you have to pick, which charity would you donate to to do the most good?
Now write down your answer to the following questions:
Which charity do you pick to donate to? Why?
Part C (Optional, 10 mins.)
What are other decisions in your life that you might consider generating quantitative estimates and comparing outcomes for?
Part A.
This will not be fully theoretical: I've already been donating 5% for the last 2 year. First pick would be the Malaria Consortium. It seems to be very cost-effective ($5,000 per life saved on average, $7 ). It also has strong evidence of impact.
Second option would be the Against Malaria Foundation. It is pretty similar to the first choice in target, effectiveness and evidence of impact, but numbers are slightly worse (perhaps?). Cost per life is $2000 dollars more, which looks worse, but cost of output (per bednet output cost, as opposed to the consortium's children treated with a full course of medicine) is a bit lower, at $6. Also, working on prevention seems more far-sighted and perhaps controlable.
Third choice, Helen Keller International. Cost of outcome is practically the same as in the two previous cases, although it is much cheaper in cost of output (just $2 for supplements), but I am more uncertain about the specific results.
Part B.
For all the reasons exposed above, if I have to choose only one, it would be the Malaria Consortium.
Part C.
Generally, decisions relating to investments for retirement in 20 years's time. Perhaps I should also consider alternative jobs or job promotion through this quantitative mindset.