What do you think counts as earning to give, and what do you think should be the definition of the concept that we use? I’d say it involves taking a job partly because it has good earning potential, and donating a significant proportion of your income. I don’t have a particular sense of what the thresholds should be. I don’t think these thresholds should be part of a ‘public’ definition, but they’re interesting to think about. 5% might be considered a “significant” proportion, or for high earners you might think at least 50%. Similarly I suspect that people have different senses of the income threshold, though this plausibly depends on the options that are reasonably open to a particular individual.
I often wonder about this with my own career. It’s not particularly high earning but I do donate a high percentage (50%). I don’t think it really makes sense to use this as an example of earning to give, since it’s more simply described as “giving a high percentage.”
My internal definition is “take a job (or build a business) so that you donate more than you otherwise would have” [1]. It’s too minimalist a definition to work in every case (it’d be unreasonable to call someone on a $1mn salary who donates $1000 “earning to give”, even if they wouldn’t donate anything on $500k), but if you’re the sort of person who considers “how much will I donate to charity” as an input into their choice of job, then I think the definition will work most of the time.
There probably needs to be a threshold amount donated for “earning to give” to be applied in an EA context, but I don’t see the need for a progressive percentage scale for higher-income earners. If you’re giving 10% of $1mn, then you’re doing a lot more than me and my higher percentage of a lot less.
[1] That needs a bit of pedantic re-writing for it to perfectly match what I mean. e.g., I consider myself earning to give because if it wasn’t for my pesky conscience, I’d negotiate a reduced salary for a four-day work week. It’d still be basically the same job, just a different contract… anyway I don’t think this sort of pedantry is important here.
My internal definition is “take a job (or build a business) so that you donate more than you otherwise would have”
I think that’d have to be “in part so that you donate more than you otherwise would have”. And it doesn’t capture people who’d have taken their jobs anyway, like several EtG-ers in finance. But this is nitpicking—it’s a pretty good definition.
What do you think counts as earning to give, and what do you think should be the definition of the concept that we use? I’d say it involves taking a job partly because it has good earning potential, and donating a significant proportion of your income. I don’t have a particular sense of what the thresholds should be. I don’t think these thresholds should be part of a ‘public’ definition, but they’re interesting to think about. 5% might be considered a “significant” proportion, or for high earners you might think at least 50%. Similarly I suspect that people have different senses of the income threshold, though this plausibly depends on the options that are reasonably open to a particular individual.
I think of earning to give as a strategy, rather than a place you’re at. Pursuing earning to give will nudge you in the direction of:
giving a larger % of income to charity
giving some conscious thought to your career, taking earning potential into consideration
keeping up to date with which charities seem the most cost effective
But you don’t have to do all those things, or do them especially well, or do them a certain amount to say you’re pursuing an earning to give strategy.
I often wonder about this with my own career. It’s not particularly high earning but I do donate a high percentage (50%). I don’t think it really makes sense to use this as an example of earning to give, since it’s more simply described as “giving a high percentage.”
My internal definition is “take a job (or build a business) so that you donate more than you otherwise would have” [1]. It’s too minimalist a definition to work in every case (it’d be unreasonable to call someone on a $1mn salary who donates $1000 “earning to give”, even if they wouldn’t donate anything on $500k), but if you’re the sort of person who considers “how much will I donate to charity” as an input into their choice of job, then I think the definition will work most of the time.
There probably needs to be a threshold amount donated for “earning to give” to be applied in an EA context, but I don’t see the need for a progressive percentage scale for higher-income earners. If you’re giving 10% of $1mn, then you’re doing a lot more than me and my higher percentage of a lot less.
[1] That needs a bit of pedantic re-writing for it to perfectly match what I mean. e.g., I consider myself earning to give because if it wasn’t for my pesky conscience, I’d negotiate a reduced salary for a four-day work week. It’d still be basically the same job, just a different contract… anyway I don’t think this sort of pedantry is important here.
I think that’d have to be “in part so that you donate more than you otherwise would have”. And it doesn’t capture people who’d have taken their jobs anyway, like several EtG-ers in finance. But this is nitpicking—it’s a pretty good definition.