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Summary
Reflections on Chapters of Doing Good Better by William MacAskill. Why We Read This Book Doing good better* because it was part of our local Effective Altruism reading group forum at the PLATEAU STATE UNIVERSITY. We chose this book to better understand how the EA framework moves beyond emotional responses to philanthropy and toward a more rigorous, evidence-based approach to creating real-world impact. We wanted to understand how the EA framework approaches the problem of doing the best with limited resources: a question that, honestly, that is very crucial in every decision that we make in our professional life.
KEYNOTES:
You Are Richer Than You Think:
In the introductory part of the book, MacAskill argues that our emotional responses often lead us to support visible, high-profile projects rather than those that are objectively most effective. He highlights how projects like the PlayPump were widely supported because they felt like a good idea, despite failing to deliver meaningful outcomes for the communities they were meant to serve. This challenged our tendency to prioritize projects based on their immediate, visible appeal. In Nigeria, we frequently see development programs evaluated by "activities completed"—such as how many pumps were installed—rather than by the long-term health outcomes achieved for the beneficiaries. Chapter One, titled “You Are the 1 Percent,” was a striking opening, and it have a more to think about than initially expected.
Most of Us Are Already Among the World’s Wealthiest
The author's central argument in this chapter is that people in relatively higher-income countries have far more capacity to do good than they typically acknowledge. He presents data showing that an annual income of around $52,000 places a person in the top one percent of global income earners, and that even someone earning at the United States poverty line is still wealthier than roughly 85 percent of the world’s population. These figures are adjusted for purchasing power, meaning they account for cost-of-living differences across countries.This idea matters because it reframes the question of charitable giving entirely. It is not a question of whether someone can afford to give, but of how much good a given amount of money can accomplish when redirected toward the world’s poorest. In the Nigerian context, this framing resonated with me. Many professionals and civil servants here in Nigeria would not think of themselves as wealthy, especially given the economic pressures of everyday life. And yet, relative to the 1.22 billion people living on $1.50 a day or less, many of us are in a position of comparative advantage that we rarely stop to examine.
The 100x Multiplier — Money Travels Further Than We Imagine
The concept he calls the “100x Multiplier” is the one idea in this chapter that we found both intellectually compelling and practically grounding. He draws on research showing that the relationship between income and wellbeing is logarithmic: doubling income always produces roughly the same increase in happiness, regardless of where someone starts. What this means in practice is that a modest sum transferred to someone living in extreme poverty produces approximately 100 times more benefit than spending that same amount on yourself, if you are already comfortably situated.This chapter, illustrates this with a useful analogy: imagine a happy hour where a beer costs you five dollars for yourself, but you could buy the same beer for someone else at five cents. Most of us would become very generous indeed. His point is that this is, in effect, the situation we are already in. We found this illustration unusually clear for what could easily have become a dry economic argument. It makes the case for giving feel less like a moral lecture and more like an invitation to act rationally on information we did not previously have.
The “Earning to Give” Strategy
William described the life of Dr. Greg Lewis who should have come down to Ethiopia but stayed and practiced in the UK while using what he earned in the UK as charity in the undeveloped countries like in Ethiopia. This perspective provides a refreshing alternative for professionals who want to contribute to social good but may feel their specific skill set is better utilized in the private sector. It suggests that our career path should be viewed as a tool to maximize our lifetime contribution to the world, rather than just a pursuit of personal passion. Connecting this to our Context reading Chapter One through the lens of our collective work as administrators, students and NGOs, we kept thinking about how resource allocation decisions are made in our country, Nigeria. So much has been by both institutional and individual but are directed by familiarity and proximity. We give to causes we can see, to communities we already know, to people whose suffering we have encountered directly. MacAskill is not dismissive of this impulse, but he asks us to interrogate whether proximity is a reliable guide to impact.In some organizations, they regularly encounter communities in the Middle Belt (one of the regions in the country) where basic health needs go unmet. The gap between what is available and what is needed is stark. His framework would suggest that directed, evidence-based giving, no matter how modest it is in scale, could produce significant outcomes in contexts like ours, precisely because the baseline is so low. This is not theoretical to us. It is something we see in the field planning we do. The question this chapter raised is not whether giving matters here, but whether the giving is being targeted with enough intentionality.
Critiques and Open Questions
We do not disagree with the writer's core argument, but we found ourselves asking a question the chapter did not fully address: what assumptions does this framework make about the stability of the contexts into which aid is directed? The 100x Multiplier assumes that money arriving in poor communities will translate relatively cleanly into improved wellbeing. But in environments with weak institutions, limited accountability, or active conflict, that chain of causation is far less certain. Nigeria is not a single story; the conditions in Lagos are vastly different from those in parts of Plateau State or the Northeast.Also noticed is that the book is careful to avoid inducing guilt, which one can appreciate. But there is a tension in the chapter between the descriptive claim (you are wealthier than you think) and the normative one (therefore you should give). He gestures at this tension without fully resolving it. The book promises to address how to give effectively in later chapters, and it was suspected that is where the real test of the framework lies.
Conclusions
Doing Good Better forms the foundation of the concept and principles of Effective Altruism. It helps readers to have a full understanding of what truly helping others means, and offers a framework of giving more informed and impactful choice about giving, career and everyday actions.
Discussion Questions
1. How can the 100x Multiplier concept be applied in a country like Nigeria where there is income inequality even domestically?
2. MacAskill argues that proximity-based giving is not a reliable guide to impact. Is it possible to preserve the relational and community dimensions of giving while still being evidence-driven? How have others navigated this?
3. For those of us working in faith-based organizations, how does EA principles interact with the motivations that drive religious giving? Is there a version of this framework that accounts for non-consequentialist values?
GROUP LEADER: Mrs Deborah Lahnan
GROUP MEMBERS: Angela Imor ObotZwalde Pontim BitrusDungum DomnanAbdLateef AbdAzeez. TemitopeWalar Mathias Panpak
