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
Malaria Consortium: 1957 cases of malaria prevented, with an estimate of 30 deaths averted
Against Malaria Foundation: 27409 cases of malaria prevented, with an estimate of 25 deaths averted
Helen Keller International: 68522 annual doses of Vitamin A provided to children, with an estimate of 39 deaths averted
Part B
I would pick Helen Keller International to donate $1000 to because it is the most cost effective, saving 30% more lives than if I donated to Against Malaria Foundation.
Part C
Financial, career and what and how much to plant in my garden!