Donating Effectively

Donations can change lives. But in the U.S. alone there are over 1.5  million registered nonprofits. Which ones are the most impactful?

The Effective Altruism movement presents effective donation options across four main cause areas (poverty and health, animal welfare, existential risk, EA community-building).

To date, they have assessed hundreds of promising charities, and currently recommend just nine. You can read about here.

Fast Facts

• Animal Charity Evaluators (ACE) was founded in 2012 for finding effective animal welfare charities.

• ACE-recommended charities improve conditions on factory farms, encourage vegetarian diets and promote alternatives to animal-based meats.

• ACE finds that every $1 to corporate campaigns affected 9 - 120 years of hen life (2019).

• ACE recommends three top charities.

• Vox covered their charity recommendations which you can read about here.

Fast Facts

• Emerging Challenges Fund by Longview Philanthropy – supports organisations that address global security risks from emerging technologies.

• EA Funds Long-Term Future Fund – aims to positively influence the long-term trajectory of civilization by making grants that address global catastrophic risks, especially potential risks from advanced artificial intelligence and pandemics.

(via Giving What We Can)

Fast Facts

• Centre for Effective Altruism – the primary organisation that aims to grow and support the effective altruism community. Their work covers a number of areas including running the EA Global conferences and supporting local and student Effective Altruism groups.

• 80,000 hours – one of the founding EA organisations that conducts research into careers that do the most good and then helps people pursue them. Currently most focused on AI-related careers.

• Probably Good provides cause-neutral research and advising on impactful careers.

• EACH is a global community of Christians who care about EA. EACH aims to help Christians to give more effectively and pursue high-impact careers.

• Christians for Impact offers impact-oriented career advising and content from a Christian perspective.

Giving effectively is hard. EA funds are a simple solution for anyone interested in outsourcing effectiveness research to a team of experts in EA. It is like a mutual fund that aims to maximise the effectiveness of your donation. The funds are currently focused on Global Health and Development, Animal Welfare, Long-Term Future and Effective Altruism Infrastructure.

The main reasons to donate to the funds are

• Donate with confidence — by drawing on the expertise of grant managers at trusted, highly-effective organizations like the Open Philanthropy Project.

• Get economies of scale — by pooling your donations with the community, you can contribute towards opportunities that aren't open to individual donors.

• Maximize leverage — the Funds can move faster than big foundations, so can be more responsive as new funding needs emerge.

A good way to stay committed to giving is to pledge to give a proportion of your income to effective charities. Giving What We Can was one of the first EA organisations. They encourage you to pledge to give 10% of your income to effective charities. The pledge has been taken by almost 10,000 people who have collectively donated over $200,000,000 so far.

Wherever you are in your faith and your altruistic commitments, you can have a massive impact with even a 1% giving pledge.