Where are you donating this year, and why? (Open thread)

I fulfil my gwwc pledge by donating each month to the EA funds animal welfare fund for the fund managers to distribute as they see fit. I trust them to make a better decision than I will on the individual charities' effectiveness since I don't have that much time/expertise to look into it.

I think the long-run future is incredibly important, and I spend my labour mostly on that. But my guess (though I'm pretty unsure) is that my donations do more good in animal welfare than in longtermism-focused things. Perhaps the new landscape should change that but I haven't made any updates yet.

I also admit to donating a bit extra to The Humane League because they are close to my heart and also seem really effective for animals.

I don't think about this that often, and there was part of me that didn't want to post this because it's not very rigorous! But also maybe others also feel that way and it feels honest to post. (If other people have takes on where I should donate instead though I'm open to hearing them!)

I took advantage of the Every.org Matching Challenge (thanks William Kiely!) and donated to:

• Happier Lives Institute because they've been doing some pretty amazing work recently and progressing GiveWell/EA thinking that has been unchallenged for quite a while!
• Animal Ask because research is often not very "sexy" and hard to fundraise for - yet I know these folks have done some great work in making animal orgs be more strategic with their campaigns.
• Wild Animal Initiative because the scale of wild animal suffering is pretty alarming and I went to some great talks by WAI about concrete things they're working on, as well as some pretty tractable-seeming interventions (which was my main doubt before).

I'll probably keep these recurring donations going for a bit too!

Probably will donate to a few other projects in the more community-building / EA infrastructure space, as well as x-risk focused, so suggestions welcome!

I'm currently planning to keep powder mostly dry, in order to flexibly support professional contacts who might be affected by recent events. If this doesn't come to pass, I will shift donations to next year, when it will be more tax-efficient.

(In the background, my recurring GWWC trickle goes 35% to Wild Animal Initiative, Center on Long-Term Risk, Nuclear Threat Initiative, and Charity Entrepreneurship, and 65% to various funds.)

This is pretty basic, but a majority of my giving goes to GiveWell; I find that I unfortunately do not have enough time in a day to carefully plan where I want to give, so most of it ends up to GiveWell to use at their discretion. I also think it's important to give full-time experts that power as calculating the effectiveness of certain programs or inititatives is just impossibly difficult and I just don't understand the math well enough (yet) to claim to be in a strong position to make this decision. 

Through Giving What We Can, I give (in equal amounts) to: the Animal Welfare Fund, the Against Malaria Foundation, Evidence Action, and the Good Food Institute. 
For the Animal Welfare Fund, it is my reasoning that animal suffering makes up a disproportionately large amount of the world's suffering. It seems extremely cost-effective based on what I know to alleviate that suffering. It is very likely that I will donate any extra money that I come into this holiday season via odd jobs, gifts from family, or just excess in my budget to the Animal Welfare Fund.
The Against Malaria Foundation is GiveWell's #2-ranked charity right now, so I figured that I could further my impact in malaria prevention by donating some money here.
I care a lot about proper education for a lot of reasons. It has done me a lot of good, but I also think it could be effective at lifting others out of poverty, breaking the cycle, perhaps alleviating global poverty and human suffering, and so much more. In the long term, having more educated people working on important issues would also be good for morally relevant beings as a whole. Seeing that deworming initiatives are effective at driving up school attendance rates in underdeveloped nations, I see this as a good cause to donate to. I do sometimes feel torn, because if deworming does lead to higher rates of literacy and spurs economic growth, this could lead to an increase in a demand for animal-based food products in nations that currently do not eat very much of them (this is a trend visible in all developing-to-developed countries except for India), which would increase suffering. However, it is probably better in the long run to move towards a more educated world with less global poverty than it is to maintain the status quo in this area; perhaps other nations will follow closer to India's trends or once these populations reach a certain widespread level of education demand for animal-based products will fall.
Anyone who has read this far can probably tell that animal suffering is the thing I focus on a lot. So I donate to the Good Food Institute in hopes that lab-grown meat and other plant based alternatives can reduce the consumer demand for factory-farmed and traditionally produced animal products.

Thanks for the initiative!

I have donated 10 % of my net income since I started working, and will be donating to the Long-Term Future Fund from EA Funds:

• I believe longtermist interventions are more effective than neartermist ones for the reasons described by Hilary Greaves here (I highly recommend watching the whole talk!). In short, I think:
  • The expected cost-effectiveness of interventions (including neartermist ones) is driven by their longterm effects.
  • One can better increase the longterm effects by explicitly focussing on them.
  • So longtermist interventions tend to be better.
• I like the grantmaking approach of EA Funds, as it accounts for:
  • Expected value.
  • Marginal impact and room for more funding.
  • Counterfactual impact.
  • Track record.
  • Information value.
  • Direct and indirect effects.

Malaria Consortium, New Incentives, GiveDirectly, and my local women's refuge (in descending order of donation size).
 

I'm a GWWC pledger so I donate ~10% of my income, and give every month to EA Funds with the following split:

(I might change this distribution, I haven't thought about it in a while - has anything important happened recently?)

There are probably benefits to giving a big sum at the end of the year, but I find it stressful to think through so I'll probably just keep doing this.

Thanks to everyone who has shared. Here's mine so far, ordered by recency:

• Our World In Data
• Healthier Hens
• Shrimp Welfare Project
• The Good Food Institute
• Faunalytics
• Mercy For Animals
• My local homeless shelter

Looking forward, I'm hoping to diversify more and add longtermist causes to balance out my main focus of animal welfare, and also donate less to organizations directly and outsorce more to groups like EA Funds.

I'd be open to any feedback. I'm also pursuing the further pledge, and would like to speak to anyone who has advice on choosing a manageable baseline. Thanks for creating this thread!

I'm donating to lobbying the Israeli government to various directions, which is, I claim, relatively neglected (there are definitely less than $200k/year going to these causes. It's not like the U.S where there are huge funds going in all directions), relatively high leverage (for the normal reasons that lobbying governments is high leverage), and I should write about it in length on the forum sometime (until then, I think I have added value in noticing these opportunities that EA funders are not even looking at).

I recently took the Giving Pledge, and I'm planning to donate 10% of my annual income to GiveWell this year. It looks like this year is a particularly good time to donate to GiveWell, as they are both more funding constrained than expected and have found more cost-effective opportunities that need funding. I think I'm going to donate to the All Grants Fund, because I'm excited about the prospect of evaluating and scaling new charities.

I'm  confused why almost all of the comments seem to be from people donating to many charities. For small amounts that an individual would donate, I don't imagine that diminishing marginal returns would kick in, so shouldn't one donate entirely to the charity that has the highest EV on the current margin?  

My husband and I are planning to donate to Wild Animal Initiative and Animal Charity Evaluators; we've also supported a number of political candidates this year (not tax deductible) who share our values. 

We've been donating to WAI for a while, as we think they have a thoughtful, skilled team tackling a problem with a sweeping scale and scant attention. 

We also support ACE's work to evaluate and support effective ways to help animals. I'm on the board there, and we're excited about ACE's new approach to evaluations and trajectory for the coming years.

- Top line, donate ~25% of income, matching 2021 in nominal (not inflation-adjusted, which I should start doing) dollars. 83% of the way there.

- Took GWWC in 2018, so there's a 10% floor for EA organizations.
 So far, Clean Air Task Force, GiveWell, and Against Malaria Foundation,
 split roughly 4:3:3. The thinking here --
1) GiveWell and AMF are pretty high on effectiveness lists and have been consistently so. It's easy to understand what they're doing and they're solid defaults.
2) Clean Air Task Force is a new thing for me, an EA-ish organization that takes on policy interventions and lobbying even. I do sometimes find it hard to figure out what they're doing as distinct from RMI or RFF, say; but they're well regarded in climate circles and recently in EA lists, so it was worth adding this year.
3) I've found it easier to start with donations where I can understand the impact. I'd like to build up ambition - both on the giving-amount and being-comfortable-with-failure axes, but have slowly done only the former. Would like to do the latter, Ackva's writing on this has been a good "do better" call for me.

Open questions -
 1) Giving Green recommended Evergreen Collective (the 501c3) but didn't take a position on the 501c4, Evergreen Action. What do folks think about them?
 2) How do you begin to evaluate lobbying for specific legislation or rule-making? First order effects are easy, but often what passes through a process only vaguely resembles what was advocated-for; there's a kind of "put the ball in play" effect I'm interested in capturing w/ this question.
 3) In the past I've given to Nuclear Threat Initiative and associated organizations (Arms Control Association, Center for Arms Control and Nonproliferation, ...), but I did so for reasons that had nothing to do with X-risk. How do you evaluate or compare anything in this space?

- I'm just a baby EA, so I do a lot of giving outside of EA. Remainder is primarily to US state-level climate policy organizations, roughly weighted by - 1) a state's grid emissions intensity; 2) organization's
 capacity to intervene in regulatory proceedings (evidenced by prior interventions); 3) my ability to evaluate the organization. Primarily focused on Fresh Energy (MN), Climate Solutions (WA), Montana Renewable Energy Association (MT), Western Resources Advocates (intermountain west). Two national organizations - Carbonplan and Union of Concerned Scientists. Former because the quality of the data they produce has caused some rethinking, latter for legacy reasons.
 

I've been saving up my donations for a few months to give a large amount at the end of the year and I currently give to global health charities (because that's what is tax deductible here in Australia).

I think for this donation I'll also support the Good Food Institute, StrongMinds and the Lead Exposure Elimination Project. (Even though I won't get a tax benefit)

Each of these orgs are doing really exciting work on different causes and I especially love that LEEP was started by people in the community as well as being on such an exciting trajectory!

For me, the best part of finally having started work after 6-7 years in higher education is getting to donate 10% of my income (£200/month), which compared to some people here is a very small amount but still feels like a satisfyingly big step up from my effectively nominal student giving. 

At the moment it all goes to GiveDirectly, chosen because I have (I suspect) a much higher uncertainty-discount rate than the median EA and I think there are hard-t0-measure benefits from their intervention that make it less suboptimal than many might think. 

My work satisfaction gets a non-trivial boost from knowing that it enables this impact, especially because it's not a supremely impactful job in and of itself. 

I'll be giving to the EA Funds donor lottery (hoping it's announced soon :-D )

I aim to continue giving to the Fish Welfare Initiative (FWI)! Occasionally, I might give to the Shrimp Welfare project or the Animal Welfare Fund. My reasoning for doing so is as follows:

1. The suffering of non-human animals is severely neglected. Within causes that help non-human animals, fish/shrimp/similar are further neglected. 
2. It is easy to help a large number of non-human animals with comparatively small amounts of money.
3. The Levels of Donation post — the amount I am currently donating doesn't warrant a thorough CBA.

I took the Try Giving Pledge a few months ago and plan to give somewhere between 2%-5% of my income this year! If you are a graduate candidate, an early career professional, or just generally new to giving, I recommend taking the pledge. I have been able to spend money on essentials, extras, and savings and still comfortably give $ to my favorite charities.

I randomly checked FWI's website before posting this, and it turns out they have a funding gap of $800K — consider giving here!

I hadn't donated for the last couple years despite having taken the GWWC pledge. This is because:

• It started to seem like I have sufficiently good judgement, domain knowledge, and connectedness* that my money would be most useful for making opportunities I have special knowledge of happen quickly, rather than donating to large existing opportunities
• I didn't happen to stumble upon anything especially good
• I kind-of procrastinated / got busy (without reducing willingness to give; I still planned to "catch up" on this giving)

The downfall of FTX and resignation of the Future Fund team make me think now is a good time for me to catch up on this backlog of giving, and maybe also do some of my coming years' giving at the same time. So I've reached out to ~6 (former) FTX regrantors I know to let them know I'm potentially open to donating to things they think are especially promising or urgent. 

*My evidence for this included being offered a role on the EA Infrastructure Fund, among other things.

I thought I'd mention one (relatively minor) part of my giving plan and solicit some feedback on the rationale. 

I had concerns with how GiveWell handled the discontinuation of standout charity status in late 2021, and said as much on their blog at the time. Given that GiveWell's decision was not based on any re-evaluation of the former standout charities, I felt that more should have been done to help some of those organizations transition to new sources of income. For some of them, a large portion of their revenue ran through GiveWell, so I treated this as akin to a situation in which an organization had suddenly lost a major donor. In an attempt to cushion this blow, I diverted some funds that I would have ordinarily given to GiveWell's top charities in 2021 and gave them to some of the former standout charities (generally via The Life You Can Save).

My question for feedback is (1) how much I should consider this sort of thing in making allocation decisions, and (2) for how much time I should apply this kind of "special consideration for a recently lost major donor" adjustment to an organization.

My standard 10% donation this year was mostly made before FTX events fully unfolded and went to (by descending "ticket size")

• A research project that was previously funded via EA Funds and had another funding gap. I know the people doing it and felt comfortable saving EA Funds and them the work of re-applying for another tranche, and I had a way of doing it tax-efficiently
• Future Matters Project, an organization that supports people, institutions and movements to address the major issues of our time by providing research and tools for effective movement building. I know the founder well, had done in-depth diligence on them last year for a bigger donation, and they were funded by EA funds in between, so I felt comfortable adding a bit more
• The Long-term Future Fund of EA Funds
• Givewell's top charities fund 

In the light of recent events, and because I also know some of the FTX regranters well whose proposals didn't get funded, I will likely pull forward some donations from the next year(s). I think this makes sense if the projects one funds are of a nature that still makes sense given what we now know about EA's total assets, and if giving more now doesn't materially affect one's runway (i.e., one still keeps a comfortable buffer).

Really excited about the work the Wild Animal Initiative is doing, so I will be donating to them. I'll also be giving to AMF. 

I just dumped $2k into AMF. 

• I was behind on taking 5% out of a bunch of invoices, and decided to catch up all in one place
• My direct work efforts have all been longtermismy the past year
• Historically, I've donated toward animals or future people. 
• Clear, legible wins for virtue signaling without mental gymnastics are desirable. I don't want to have to explain a 300 IQ plan that makes forecasting tech or game theory altruistic every time I want to make an attempt at transmitting the "things are broken, if I can try to help then you can too" core message to someone. 

Earlier this year I maxed out the Carrick Flynn donation, which in the most ancient and wisest words of whomever "seemed like a good idea at the time". 

The above two targets are money I made as a proof engineer at a defi startup. I took a paycut from there for work in the EA ecosystem, and I haven't decided yet if I'm gonna try to skim 5-10% off the top of my post-paycut money for more donations. 

I'm donating 10% of my pre-tax income this year, and most of it will be distributed to the usual suspects identified by GiveWell, Happier Lives Institute, and Animal Charity Evaluators. A small amount will be reserved for some local charities whose work I am familiar with. 

What I would love some advice on is ways to donate to Ukraine. There is probably no way to really know the effectiveness of any donations to Ukraine, but in general I think supporting the norm of respect for national sovereignty is actually quite important, apart from the (also quite important) humanitarian considerations. Does anyone have any thoughts?

 What would be a good place to donate to support organizations hurt by the FTX collapse? EA Funds?

Edit: More discussion here: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/xqfjevoDHvvRjPcPo/how-should-small-and-medium-sized-donors-step-in-to-fill

BTW I’m not necessarily endorsing donating to such a place, but if such a place existed and provided information about which organizations could benefit, it could affect donation decisions.

Against Malaria Foundation

I'm donating to the Good Food Institute for 2 reasons:

1: Moving the world more towards alt protein has a positive impact in many different areas including animal welfare, food security, pandemic prevention and climate change

2: I live in Switzerland and effective-spenden makes it bureaucratically easy and tax deductible to donate to them

In past years I've donated mainly to the Donor Lottery or EA Funds. However, I want to avoid donating through CEA right now until I have more confidence in their financial & legal stability post-FTX. Even absent that, I no longer want to donate to EA Funds because I object to their lack of transparency about what they do with donors' money.

This makes my job harder! I have to actually think about how to do the most good with my donation, according to my values. (Even more so because this year is by far my biggest pledge donation to date.)

In the end, I decided to go "back to basics" and donate to Animal Charity Evaluators' Recommended Charity Fund. I've had disagreements with ACE in the past, but it seems pretty clear to me that their current slate of Top Charities are all really excellent organisations, and the last few grant reports from the fund all seem quite exciting to me.

I'm very uncertain about this donation, since I generally donate to more longtermist causes, but for various reasons feel like this is the right way (or at least a defensibly good way) to go. (And if I am going to donate to more neartermist/GHW causes, I'm reasonably confident that animal welfare continues to be both more pressing and much more neglected than global human health.)

Plan is 

• ~16% to GiveDirectly (done)
• ~16% to GiveWell's top charities
• ~50% to Animal Charity Evaluators
• ~16% to Direct Action Everywhere 

The total will be about 10% of my annual income.

 the ^ is my approximate probability distribution about what the “right” cause is

My monthly donations go to GiveWell charities via One for the World, but if I'm able to make discretionary donations this year, they will go Generation Pledge and High Impact Professionals. In light of recent events, efforts to support more HNW and effective giving outreach (respectively) are doubly important, to diversify EA's funding base.

I love reading the responses in this thread :)!

I'm also a GWWC pledger, and throughout most of this year I've donated on a monthly basis to:

I'm now updating this to also include the Longtermism Fund.

I also reserve some funds to do more active (very small-scale) grantmaking. For example, I supported the 0.7% campaign and have made several smaller contributions to support local EA community building work. 

2 small donations through Effektiv Spenden.

• Their climate change fund - according to their description, this adds money to the organizations recommended by Giving Green and Founders Pledge. I don't prioritize climate change as a cause area, but I give a fixed amount per year to climate charities and Effektiv Spenden supports this one. Why? I do believe climate change is a big problem. Many people feel helpless about climate change, and by donating to a climate charity I can signal that there is a way to actually help - beyond consumption choices. This is also a donation I might be able to talk openly about.
• Their animal welfare fund - mostly ACE recommended charities. The animal welfare movement is quite funding constrained (I've heard from people from ACE that recommended charities usually(or never?) get their funding gap** filled completely) and evidence-based animal welfare is a new and growing field.

Unfortunately I will not move a lot of money this year, nor will I spend a lot of time thinking about my donations. But I am happy that I can do at least this little bit.

* I thought that, if everyone with an income similar to mine would do this, the climate would be in a better state, but I was wrong. I quickly fact-checked this. This article on nature.com says "The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) says that an annual investment of $2.4 trillion is needed in the energy system alone until 2035 to limit temperature rise to below 1.5 °C from pre-industrial levels.". I understand from the article this includes funding from governments and companies. I am not going to disclose my income and my donation budget here, but I can say that my donation is much less than a fair share of this 2.4 trillion. (It may be, if my donation is unusually cost-effective). - apparently it's damn hard to fix climate change.

** there may be difference between funding gap that the org believes they have themselves, and the funding gap that ACE thinks the org has. I mean the latter.

This year, I am giving $10K to Charity Entrepreneurship's incubated charities at their discretion as they know where it will best be placed after all counterfactuals have been calculated. I am giving here for a lot of reasons (CoI: I like them so much I am on the board):

• I think there is a lot of counterfactual value in supporting new EA startups with higher risk profiles, especially within CE, where there is a good rate of growth to GW Top Charity status.
• I like to fund stuff that isn't getting funded through the normal means to create more diversified funding in the EA space, which I believe is extremely important and more important than ever given the FTX situation.
• It is FUN to read project proposals and be a bit more involved early stage - feels more like venture capital than e.g. giving to AMF (although I wouldn't begrudge anyone giving to AMF by any means!)

I also gave smaller sums to other organizations this year - numbers rough as I don't have the donation receipt yet and am too lazy to look it up: $2500 to a mix of the following charities:

• Effektiv Spenden - they have a crazy multiplier on money in -> money raised so I think this is a great, leveraged way to donate.
• CATF
• AMF

I gave to CATF and AMF as well mostly to hedge on myself being too meta. I think there is a tough tradeoff between leverage in meta stuff and meta 1) being less clearly linked to actual impact and 2) the fear that donating to meta orgs, where I've been more at home over the past 6 years is more giving to my friends and keeping the money "in the family" than doing actual good. I think meta is still worth it, as evidenced by my donations, but I think this is a concern to take seriously.

Finally, I suppose I donate to my own org, High Impact Professionals, by taking a lower salary than I otherwise would as that makes more sense than taking a salary, getting taxed, and then donating back to my own org, at least if you think, as I do, that our org can do more good than the marginal dollar to the German/US government. I am a little bit biased on that one though.

Try something new this year

This year I am taking a new direction with my donations by giving to Stichting Effectief Doneren (English: Effective Giving Foundation). I may be preaching to the choir here, but regardless - I am very excited about what we are doing in the Netherlands and Belgium. We are looking for financial support - maybe you would like to help us?
At the present moment, we are 100% financially dependent on the EA Infrastructure Fund. One thing the SBF debacle has taught me is that diversification of funding sources can mitigate risk. We can make good use of the money to build a continuity reserve fund. Our current funding is guaranteed until April 2023.

The purpose of Doneer Effectief

We want to make it as easy as possible to donate or leave an inheritance to the most effective charities worldwide.

Retrospective 2022

• February: Establishment of Stichting Effectief Doneren (Effective Giving Foundation)
• April: Received ANBI status (Public Benefit Organisation), podcast series Effectief Doneren
• August: Appointment of our full-time director (me), external newsletter completed
• September: Several articles in Dutch media (in collaboration with The Dutch 10% Club)
• October: Launch of our new website (NL / EN) with donation platform for the Netherlands and Belgium 
• November: 300 donations, €60k in less than 2 months, 20 gift agreements signed, 7 contracts to leave an inheritance, 600 followers, 300 newsletter subscriptions, 5.000 unique website visitors per month, 10 volunteers, 5 ambassadors

Outlook 2023

• Expand our website with a user portal and donation dashboard
• Grow the giving community in collaboration with The Dutch 10% Club to 800 members (currently 100)
• Increase national media attention (carefully)
• Set up processes/workflows/educational resources for major donors
• Begin cooperation with the salary-gifting organisation The Social Handshake
• Receive CBF Hallmark
• Receive recommendations from GWWC and Founders Pledge

What you could do...

It would be fantastic if you'd like to support us! Don't hesitate to contact me at [email protected] or give directly via our platform to our 'start-up' foundation. Thank you for your attention.

I donate monthly to charities collectively chosen by my colleagues and friends, for four reasons:

• I believe in epistemic democracy
• I want to learn about others' priorities
• I want to encourage them to think about donating themselves
• I want to test my voting app (which I use for that collective decision)

So far, most of those donations went to public health charities like Doctors Without Borders or Malaria Consortium. If you want to have a say where my November donation goes: demo.vodle.it

2022 donations in USD:

5k to Maternal Health Initiative (new CE org, family planning in Africa)
5k to Vida Plena (new CE org, mental health in LATAM)
2k to Giving What We Can fund (short and longtermism causes)
2k to Cellular Agriculture Australia (developing cell ag industry)

Donated to own EA projects:

22k to GoalsWon (accountability coaching app, pro-bono for EAs)
1k to EA for Kids (EA storybook creation started)

Overall happy with the year, the best yet for contributions both directly and investing in own EA projects. Also thankful for all the collaboration and advice from the community.
 

While my work is focused mostly on longtermist interventions, most of my donations for the first half of the year were to Givewell as unrestricted donations. I also did a smaller amount of political giving to EA-aligned candidates, which was partially from my 10% of income dedicated to EA giving. (I split those political donations 50-50 between my bucketed EA spending and my personal spending.) I also gave a small amount to MIRI via every.org.

I have not yet donated all of my 2nd-half-of-2022 donations.

I used my employer's internal matching (1:1). 

Charities Donated (matched final amount)

1. GiveWell - 400$
2. GiveDirectly - 300$
3. Helen Keller International - 200$
4. Suvita - 300$

Total - 1200$ 

I have been donating about 80% of my income (about $1k/week) to the Consumer Power Initiative because the cause area of enabling consumers to discriminate in favor of effective charities is has extreme impact potential (trillions annually to effective charities could be transformative), is tractable (we can create companies that work for charities that can offer similar products at the same prices), and neglected (very little efforts and resources is being expended in this area).

If you want to learn more about our organization, feel free to check out my EA forum post and I'll link to a draft of our upcoming newsletter.

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/WMiGwDoqEyswaE6hN/making-trillions-for-effective-charities-through-the

https://docs.google.com/document/d/18WLCj956wK7AiEjQMKZR-u6Vo_JdDK9d/edit?usp=drivesdk&ouid=115772283013740692070&rtpof=true&sd=true

A list I'm considering for end-of-year donations, in no special order:

• Suvita
• New Incentives
• National Campaign on Dalit Human Rights
• The Shrimp Welfare Project
• The Degrees Initiative
• RESET alcohol
• Mercy for Animals
• LTFF
• StrongMinds (though see this comment)

I'm also very interested in the best ways to help people affected by recent events, especially ways which are more scalable / accessible than supporting personal connections.

I begin with splitting my donations between cause areas: currently, 60% to longtermism and 40% to animal welfare. And then I decide which funds/orgs to give to from there.

This month, that is:

30% Long-term future fund

30% Longtermism Fund (Longview Philanthropy)

30% Animal Welfare Fund

5% Faunalytics

5% Good Food Institute

I'm becoming more comfortable with 'diversifying' my donations; 2 months ago I was just giving to the Long-term Future Fund and the Animal Welfare Fund.

For me, I think a big reason I'm starting to diversify is that while I trust that the folks at all these orgs know how to spend money more effectively than I do, it perhaps makes sense to trust multiple teams of experts in case there's a more general failure at one of them. Hope that makes sense.

This year, I donated to NPR, Women's March,  Zendo Project, (started donating to them a few months ago), and UNHCR (started donating earlier this year).

I don't have large amounts to donate so I don't have much of a donation plan. My donation decisions are mostly whim decisions.

I first started donating to NPR because I was listening to their podcasts and listening to their radio station often. I still do, but not as often.

I first started donating to Women's March because I feel aligned with their socioeconomic goal of more equity.

Not sure why I started donating to Zendo Project. Maybe it is because it seems to me like work, research, use, etc. around psychedelics is difficult because of their legal status so donating would be more impactful than if they did not have such legal status.

Maybe the invasion of Ukraine primed some process inside of me that lead to me donating to UNHCR. I don't remember exactly what I was thinking. Maybe it had to do with the invasion getting so much news coverage.

Edit: I forgot to mention I have also been donating to HRC. I do this for the same reason as I donate to Women's March.

Thanks for this post! I'm donating to multiple charities via the platform I help run: Give For Good. Give For Good is a charity donation platform that turns every donation into a miniature investment fund for the charity that you choose. There are dozens of charities on the website on you can invest for any other registered charity by emailing them at [email protected]  

I'm supporting Dr. Jordan B. Peterson's cause. He's online lectures were very helpful for me and I am returning the favor so he can help more people.

https://jordanbpeterson.com