Effective giving
Effective giving
Finding effective donation opportunities, discussing giving strategies, and coordinating with other donors
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Quick takes
11
3d
1
I made two small donations via Every.org and regret it. By default, your profile and donations are public, and it's not immediately obvious (a privacy issue—especially if you make a potentially controversial donation as an individual), which I find unethical. Additionally, Every.org sends a lot of spam if you miss the opt-out button. These are known as UX dark patterns.
Next time, I'll email the charity to ask if I can use conventional payment methods (if the donation is large enough) or simply refrain from donating.
Being public about one's donations can be beneficial, but donors should have easy control over what they make public and what they don't. I encourage organizations to think twice before using Every.org.
Thankfully, our local effective giving organization and the GWWC platform don't have these issues.
79
4mo
1
As earn to giver, I found contributing to funding diversification challenging
Jeff Kaufmann posted a different version of the same argument earlier than me.
Some have argued that earning to give can contribute to funding diversification. Having a few dozen mid-sized donors, rather than one or two very large donors, would make the financial position of an organization more secure. It allows them to plan for the future and not worry about fundraising all the time.
As earn to giver, I can be one of those mid-sized donors. I have tried. However, it is challenging.
First of all, I don't have expertise, and don't have much time to build the expertise. I spend most of my time on my day job, which has nothing to do with any cause I care about. Any research must be done in my free time. This is fine, but it has some cost. This is time I could have spent on career development, talking to others about effective giving, or living more frugally.
Motivation is not the issue, at least for me. I've found the research extremely rewarding and intellectually stimulating to do. Yet, fun doesn't necessarily translate to effectiveness.
I've seen peer earn to givers just defer to GiveWell or other charity evaluators without putting much thought into it. This is great, but isn't there more? Others said that they talked to an individual organization, thought "sounds reasonable", and transferred the money. I fell for that trap too!
There is a lot at stake. It's about hard-earned money that has the potential to help large numbers of people and animals in dire need. Unfortunately, I don't trust my own non-expert judgment to do this.
So I find myself donating to funds, and then the funding is centralized again. If others do the same, charities will have to rely on one grantmaker again, rather than a diverse pool of donors.
Ideas
What would help to address this issue? Here are a few ideas, some of them are already happening.
* funding circles. Note that most funding circles I know r
70
8mo
4
David Rubinstein recently interviewed Philippe Laffont, the founder of Coatue (probably worth $5-10b). When asked about his philanthropic activities, Laffont basically said he’s been too busy to think about it, but wanted to do something someday. I admit I was shocked. Laffont is a savant technology investor and entrepreneur (including in AI companies) and it sounded like he literally hadn’t put much thought into what to do with his fortune.
Are there concerted efforts in the EA community to get these people on board? Like, is there a google doc with a six degrees of separation plan to get dinner with Laffont? The guy went to MIT and invests in AI companies. In just wouldn’t be hard to get in touch. It seems like increasing the probability he aims some of his fortune at effective charities would justify a significant effort here. And I imagine there are dozens or hundreds of people like this. Am I missing some obvious reason this isn’t worth pursuing or likely to fail? Have people tried? I’m a bit of an outsider here so I’d love to hear people’s thoughts on what I’m sure seems like a pretty naive take!
https://youtu.be/_nuSOMooReY?si=6582NoLPtSYRwdMe
36
4mo
1
I’d love to dig a bit more into some real data and implications for this (hence, just a quick take for now), but I suspect that (EA) donors may not take the current funding allocation within and across cause areas into account when making donation decisions - and that taking it sufficiently into account may mean that small donors shouldn’t diversify?
For example, the recent Animal Welfare vs. Global Health Debate Week posed the statement “It would be better to spend an extra $100m on animal welfare than on global health.” Now, one way to think through this question is “How would the ideal funding split between Animal Welfare vs. Global Health look like” and test whether an additional $100m on Animal Welfare would bring us closer to the ideal funding split (in this case, it appears that spending the $100m on Animal Welfare increases the share of AW from 0.41% to 0.55% - meaning that if your ideal funding split would allocate more than 0.55% to AW, you should be in favor of directing $100m there).
I am not sure if this perspective is the right or even the best to take, but I think it may often be missing. I think it’s important to think through it, because it takes into account “how much money should be spent on X vs. Y” as opposed to “how much money I should spend on X vs. Y” (or maybe even “How much money should EA spend on X vs. Y”?) - which I think closer to what we should care about. I think this is interesting, because:
* If you primarily, but not strictly and solely favor a comparably well-funded area (say, GHD or Climate Change), you may want to donate all your money towards a cause area that don’t even value particularly highly.
* Ironically, this type of thinking only applies if you value diversification in your donations in the first place. So, if you are wondering how much % of your money should go to X vs. Y, I suspect that looking at the current global funding allocation will likely (for most people, necessarily?) lead to pouring all your money into
75
1y
2
Marcus Daniell appreciation note
@Marcus Daniell, cofounder of High Impact Athletes, came back from knee surgery and is donating half of his prize money this year. He projects raising $100,000. Through a partnership with Momentum, people can pledge to donate for each point he gets; he has raised $28,000 through this so far. It's cool to see this, and I'm wishing him luck for his final year of professional play!
24
3mo
I am organizing a fundraising competition between Philosophy Departments for AMF.
You can find it here: https://www.againstmalaria.com/FundraiserGroup.aspx?FundraiserID=9191
Previous editions have netted (badum-tschak) roughly $40.000:
https://www.againstmalaria.com/FundraiserGroup.aspx?FundraiserID=9189
Any contributions are very welcome, as is sharing the fundraiser. A more official-looking announcement is on Dailynous, a central blog of academic philosophy: people found this ideal for sharing via e.g. department listservs.
https://dailynous.com/2024/12/02/philosophers-against-malaria-a-fundraising-competition/
These are relatively low-effort to set up - I spend maybe 10-20h a year on them. If you are interested in setting up a similar thing for your discipline/social circles, feel very welcome to reach out for help.
86
1y
6
Effective giving quick take for giving season
This is quite half-baked because I think my social circle contains not very many E2G folks, but I have a feeling that when EA suddenly came into a lot more funding and the word on the street was that we were “talent constrained, not funding constrained”, some people earning to give ended up pretty jerked around, or at least feeling that way. They may have picked jobs and life plans based on the earn to give model, where it would be years before the plans came to fruition, and in the middle, they lost status and attention from their community. There might have been an additional dynamic where people who took the advice the most seriously ended up deeply embedded in other professional communities, so heard about the switch later or found it harder to reconnect with the community and the new priorities.
I really don’t have an overall view on how bad all of this was, or if anyone should have done anything differently, but I do have a sense that EA has a bit of a feature of jerking people around like this, where priorities and advice change faster than the advice can be fully acted on. The world and the right priorities really do change, though; I’m not sure what should be done except to be clearer about all this, but I suspect it’s hard to properly convey “this seems like the absolute best thing in the world to do, also next year my view could be that it’s basically useless” even if you use those exact words. And maybe people have done this, or maybe it’s worth trying harder. Another approach would be something like insurance.
A frame I’ve been more interested in lately (definitely not original to me) is that earning to give is a kind of resilience / robustness-add for EA, where more donors just means better ability to withstand crazy events, even if in most worlds the small donors aren’t adding much in the way of impact. Not clear that that nets out, but “good in case of tail risk” seems like an important aspect.
A more
33
5mo
5
Anyone know any Earn-To-Givers who might be interested in participating in an AMA during Giving Season? If a few are interested, it might be fun to experiment with an AMA panel, where Forum users ask questions, and any of the AMA co-authors can respond/ co-authors can disagree.
Why? Giving Season is, in my opinion, a really great time to highlight the earn-to-give work which is ongoing all year, but is generally under-celebrated by the EA community. + Earn-to-givers might have good insights on how to pick donation targets during the donation election, and Giving Season more generally.
A Simple And Effective Way To End Global Poverty
The debate between philanthropists comes down to timing. Do I give almost all my income today to good causes? Or invest everything so that in 200 years, I'll be able to give 753,000X more, adjusted for inflation?
Long-term compounding is powerful, but life isn't lived in the future, and what if you get hit by a bus in one year or 10?
Here is my hybrid approach to patient philanthropy, using my personal favorite charity, GiveDirectly, as an example.
I am Adam Galas, aka "Dividend Sensei" on Seeking Alpha. I've spent seven years as an investment analyst studying the safest way to earn 10% to 13% long-term returns with recession-optimized blue-chip portfolios.
My personal portfolio, the Dividend Kings ZEUS Income Growth Portfolio, yields 4.1% and has historical and analyst consensus future expected returns of 12.3%, or 9.9% after inflation.
Starting at 0.1% of the portfolio value, I donated to GiveDirectly using 1:1 or 2:1 matching campaigns (leveraged to 2:1 or even 3:1 using Twitter campaigns), and I've donated $3,457 since 2021.
I've lifted 23 people out of poverty, and according to GD's most recent study (from Princeton, Berkley, and the University of California, San Diego), the economic impact was $24,851, adjusted for inflation, a 7.19 economic multiplier.
In other words, for every $1 I donated, there was $7.19 in inflation-adjusted economic benefit to people in Africa, and I changed the lives of two dozen people.
Each year GD has an annual match campaign, sometimes up to $1 million, and a 2:1 match (the next one starting Tuesday, December 27th, 2022.).
You can sometimes find matching campaigns on Twitter promoted by GD. Last week I donated $1K that was matched on GD's fundraiser page at 1:1.
Catherine on Twitter had a $10K matching campaign if you sent a screenshot of the donation receipt.
Peter then matched Catheryn's $10K with his own $10K.
So 3:1 match or 4X your donation.
And a 2.6X economic multiplier, according to their recent study.
This is why I love GiveDirectly; you can measure and track in a spreadsheet the exact impact, both in terms of human lives and economic impact.
$480 per year lifts one person out of poverty (last year, it was $420, high inflation this year).
The initial giving is small, and really I'm paying for it out of pocket from my income rather than selling out of the portfolio (especially in a 2022 bear market).
But let me show you the power of compounding over time.
The portfolio's historical returns are 12% to 13%, and a 10,000 Monte Carlo 75-year simulation shows an 80% chance of this portfolio generating 8.4% to 13.6% annual returns over the next 75 years.
Adjusted for inflation, that's 8.6% to 11.3%.
Let's be conservative and assume that the portfolio's future inflation-adjusted returns are at the low end of that range.
Next, let's assume that my family needs to also live off the portfolio, starting at 0.1% per year withdrawal rates and scaling up 0.1% per year to a maximum of 1%.
So eventually, 1% to live on and 5% per year for hyper-effective giving to the world's poor.
What will the effects be over time? Just take a look (not counting matching, which allows you to boost effectiveness by 2X to 4X).
Note all numbers are inflation-adjusted, so in today's money.
2025 (age 39): annual donation of $3,040 (6 people lifted out of poverty)
2025: cumulative inflation-adjusted donation: $4,942 (10 people lifted out of poverty)
2030 (age 44): annual donation: $20,279 (42 people lifted out of poverty).
2030: cumulative inflation-adjusted donation: $65,296 (136 people lifted out of poverty).
2035 (age 49): annual donation: $55,856 (116 people lifted out of poverty)
2035: cumulative inflation-adjusted donation: $265,188 (552 people lifted out of poverty)
2040 (age 54): annual donation: $114,351 (238 people lifted out of poverty)
2040: cumulative inflation-adjusted donation: $709,812 (1,479 people lifted out of poverty).
2045 (age 59): annual donation: $201,061 (419 people lifted out of poverty).
2045: cumulative inflation-adjusted donation: $1,529,206 (3,186 people lifted out of poverty)
2050 (age 64): annual donation: $322,461 (672 people lifted out of poverty)
2050: cumulative inflation-adjusted donation: $2,883,380 (6,007 people lifted out of poverty)
2055 (age 69): annual donation: $486,360 (1,013 people lifted out of poverty)
2055 cumulative inflation-adjusted donation $4,968,631 (10,351 people lifted out of poverty)
2060 (age 74): annual donation: $702,162 (1,463 people lifted out of poverty)
2060 cumulative inflation-adjusted donation: $8,024,968 (16,719 people lifted out of poverty)
2065 (age 79): annual donation of $981,167 (2,044 people lifted out of poverty)
2065 cumulative inflation-adjusted donation of $12,344,979 (25,719 people lifted out of poverty)
2070 (age 84): annual donation of $1,336,938 (2,785 people lifted out of poverty)
2070 cumulative inflation-adjusted donation of $18,284,385 (38,092 people lifted out of poverty)
2075 (age 89) annual donation of $1,684,659 (3,510 people lifted out of poverty)
2075 cumulative inflation-adjusted donation of $26,077,369 (54,328 people lifted out of poverty)
2080 (age 94) annual donation of $2,023,582 (4,216 people lifted out of poverty)
2080 cumulative inflation-adjusted donation of $35,497,215 (73,953 people lifted out of poverty)
Harvard is working on an anti-aging treatment they think will be commercially available in 10 to 15 years. Alphabet (Google) has two subsidiaries working on anti-aging.
If I can give long enough, I can potentially live for centuries or, at the very least, turn my portfolio into a perpetual charitable trust. And this is how I can help end extreme poverty entirely.
2100 (age 114) annual donation of $4,019,601 (8,374 people lifted out of poverty)
2100 cumulative inflation-adjusted return of $94,958,450 (197,830 people lifted out of poverty)
2125 (age 139) annual donation of $8,942,714 (18,631 people lifted out of poverty)
2125 cumulative inflation-adjusted donation of $251,880,346 (524,751 people lifted out of poverty)
2150 (age 164) annual donation of $19,322,860 (40,256 people lifted out of poverty)
2150 cumulative inflation-adjusted donation $594,432,065 (1,238,400 people lifted out of poverty)
2175 (age 189) annual donation of $41,208,898 (85,852 people lifted out of poverty)
2175 cumulative inflation-adjusted donation $1,328,375,330 (2,767,449 people lifted out of poverty)
2200 (age 214) annual donation of $87,354,556 (181,989 people lifted out of poverty)
2200 cumulative inflation-adjusted donation $2,887,548,835 (6,015,727 people lifted out of poverty)
2250 (age 264) annual donation of $389,794,175 (812,071 people lifted out of poverty)
2250 cumulative inflation-adjusted donation $13,154,430,576 (27,405,064 people lifted out of poverty)
2300 (age 314) annual donation $1,734,310,469 (3,613,147 people lifted out of poverty)
2300 cumulative inflation-adjusted donation $58,869,237,194 (122,644,244 people lifted out of poverty)
2350 (age 364) annual donation $7,711,450,846 (16,065,523 people lifted out of poverty)
2350 cumulative inflation-adjusted donation $262,170,250,905 (546,188,023 people lifted out of poverty)
2400 (age 414) annual donation $34,283,242,696 (71,423,422 people lifted out of poverty)
2400 cumulative inflation-adjusted donations $1,004,402,009,845 (Andrew Carnegie holds the current record at $438.5 billion in today's dollars) - 2,429,232,648 people lifted out of poverty
2450 (age 464) annual donation $152,409,985,174 (317,520,802 people lifted out of poverty)
2450 cumulative inflation-adjusted donation $5,184,282,938,209 (10,800,589,455 lifted out of poverty)
Once extreme poverty is eliminated, I plan to focus on regular poverty and global UBI starting at $500, then $1,000, and eventually a peak at $3,000 per month, adjusted for inflation, for anyone who wants to sign up.
$3,000 per month is sufficient for just about anyone to afford a comfortable life, including health insurance and education (assuming it's not provided by the government).
Basic needs (via UBI), healthcare, and education are the three legs of the Star Trek utopia I have from the Army (pension, VA, and GI bill).
It's my life's mission to bring this Utopia to all humanity.
How long will that take?
2500 (age 514) annual donation $677,550,606,749 (1,411,563,764 people lifted out of poverty)
2500 cumulative inflation-adjusted donation $23,047,770,140,492 (48,016,187,793 people lifted out of poverty)
Note that poverty won't exist by 2,500, but I'm providing the numbers for context.
2550 (age 564) annual donation $3,012,099,639,781 (6,275,207,583 people lifted out of poverty)
2550 cumulative inflation-adjusted donation $102,461,213,367,918 (213,460,861,183 people lifted out of poverty)
How much would $500 monthly UBI for all humanity cost? The UN's estimated 11 billion peak population and $6K annual UBI (adjusted for inflation) cost $66 trillion annually.
$1,000 monthly UBI costs $132 trillion, and $3,000 Star Trek Utopia UBI $396 trillion annually.
By 2550 my portfolio/charitable trust will be donating $3 trillion annually.
So if we define Star Trek Utopia ($36K per year for all humanity, adjusted for inflation each year), when will we achieve that?
2600 (age 614) annual donation of $13,390,499,184,067 ($1217 annual UBI for all humanity)
2600 cumulative inflation-adjusted donation $455,499,252,405,406 (1,309X more than Andrew Carnegie)
2650 (age 664) annual donation $59,528,393,731,069 ($5412 annual UBI = $451 per month)
2650 cumulative inflation-adjusted donation $2,024,954,398,250,170 ($2 quadrillion, 4,618X more than Andrew Carngie)
2700 (age 714) annual donation $264,637,601,961,757 ($24,058 annual UBI = $2,005 per month)
2700 cumulative inflation-adjusted donation $9,002,076,107,668,440 ($9 quadrillion, 20,529X more than Carnegie)
Star Trek Utopia achieved in...
2714 (age 728) annual donation $401,856,706,735,331 ($36,532 annual UBI = $3,044 per month)
Cumulative inflation-adjusted donation $13,669,806,068,717,800 ($14 quadrillion = 31,174X more than Carnegie)
What if there are more than 11 billion people in the future? Nasa estimates there are enough resources in the Solar System to sustainably support approximately 200 billion humans).
How much would it cost to provide 200 billion people with $3K per month, adjusted for inflation each year? $7.2 quadrillion per year ($7,200 trillion).
How long would that take?
2811 Star Trek Utopia For 200 Billion Humans (Complete Colonization Of The Solar System)
2811 (age 825) annual donation of $7,261,901,439,054,070 ($7.26 quadrillion)
Cumulative inflation-adjusted donation $247,025,332,027,871,000 ($247 quadrillion) = 563,342X more than Carnegie
And keep in mind I'm assuming that I keep paying taxes on this portfolio over time. Charitable trusts don't pay taxes. I consider taxes a form of social charity. Here are the cumulative stats about this portfolio, running on the most conservative inflation-adjusted returns until Star Trek Utopia is achieved for 200 billion people in 2811.
2811 annual inflation-adjusted dividends: $19,365,070,504,161,000 ($19.4 quadrillion)
2811 cumulative inflation-adjusted dividends: $658,734,218,776,728,000 ($658.7 quadrillion)
2811 annual inflation-adjusted taxes $3,017,264,954,836,730 ($3 quadrillion)
2811 cumulative inflation-adjusted taxes $102,637,151,381,368,000 ($102.7 quadrillion)
And just for fun, let's consider the annual and cumulative donations for the year 3,000.
3,000 (age 1,014) annual-inflation-adjusted dividend $2,042,753,059,308,000,000 ($2,043 quadrillion)
3,000 cumulative inflation-adjusted dividend $69,487,551,938,900,600,000 ($70,000 quadrillion = 158,466,481X more than Andrew Carnegie.
You might think that such compounding as I'm describing (8.5% inflation-adjusted growth) can't possibly continue for centuries. After all, the global economy can only get so large, right?
Consider this. Nasa estimates that the mineral value of just the eight most valuable asteroids is approximately $63 quintillion ($63 million trillion).
That's approximately 603,000X more than the world's total economic output in 2021.
And that's just the eight most valuable asteroids.
At least 100 earth's worth of resources is available in the solar system (and possibly much more with optimal space mining methods).
Add in centuries of productivity improvements and the solar system's economy, with a sustainable population of up to 200 billion (25X more than the Earth's population today) could be many orders of magnitude larger than today.
Bottom Line: I started giving immediately but am scaling up over time and taking a long-term focus.
If you give thousands, you can make a difference in some people's lives.
If you give millions, you can change many people's lives.
If you give billions, you can change the world.
If you give trillions over centuries, you can change everything.
If you give quadrillions over a millennium, you can get to Star Trek Utopia.
And keep in mind this is just my portfolio! I'm just one person. With 11 billion people in 2100 and thousands of trillionaires and millions of billionaires (and a few quadrillionaires), I'm hardly the only person who will be working on solving the world's problems.
My goal isn't to single handily bring about Star Trek Utopia in 2811; it's to help an army of like-minded philanthropists to bring about Star Trek utopia much sooner.
Does utopia mean there are no problems? Of course not. As Star Trek Discovery shows, even in the 32nd century, the citizens of utopia still have challenges and issues to deal with and overcome.
For every solution to a problem, you create two unintended consequence problems. But if those new problems are 25% as severe as the problem you solved initially, then you're 50% better off.
And when you solve those two new problems, you create four new problems, each 25% as severe and 50% better off and 125% better off than when you solved the original problem.
This is how humanity has slouched its way toward utopia for millennia.
And it's how we'll continue to progress for millennia.
I hope to be around for that long, thanks to Harvard's anti-aging treatments that will allow me to remain biologically 25 years old for thousands of years (and my friends and family as well).
But if I can't, my portfolio and its sacred mission for a Star Trek utopia will continue long after I'm gone.
Today's problems seem insurmountable, just too large to overcome. But the value in philanthropy is in the journey and steady improvements in human existence.
"A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step" - Lao Tzu
Whether I get hit by a bus in a few years or live for Millenia, I look forward to helping people live their financial dreams (my job) and helping lift people out of poverty.
The only value to our lives is our impact on others, and patient effective altruism is the blessing that gives my life its meaning.
I'd like to wish you and yours a healthy, relaxing, safe, and joyous holiday season.
Are these some grand dreams? You bet. But as I like to say, weekends are for dreaming, especially when the dreams are this meaningful and wonderful;)
Live long and prosper:)
Dear Adam, Great to read your post, we share the same philosophy, that by investing we can greatly increase the amount donated to charity each year. Our solution is to donate half of the interest to charities each year and to use the other half for compounding. Have a look at our website if you are interested: www.giveforgood.world Feel free to drop us a message if you're interested to exchange ideas or to talk about a potential collaboration! (https://giveforgood.world/en/contact-us/) Best regards, Rik Viergever Founder @ Give For Good