Effective Giving for Relational Altruists
(Note: this post is written to focus on global health and development. Generalise at your own risk.)
Relational Altruist: someone whose altruism is based primarily on feeling a sense of relationship with the people one is being altruistic towards, because doing nice things for people they feel connected with makes them feel happy.
Effective Giving: money allocated impartially across target to maximise lives saved /â gains in wellbeing /â whatever metric is being used.
One important EA task anyone can do is fundraising for an EA charity. This is mostly going to entail persuading a bunch of relational altruists to do some effective giving. (The alternatives being to recruit more people to effective altruism, or convince non-altruists to give, which are both tasks that are much more complicated.)
This is primarily a task about developing relationships. There are two relationships you need to develop here:
Their relationship with the people theyâre helping
Their relationship with you
On the first: sometimes I see people promoting some impact-focused EA fund as the thing theyâre fundraising for, on the grounds that they want to maximise donation impact. Which is all very well, but consider the counterfactual. Assuming that fund optimally fills funding gaps, donating to anything that fund would fund in the next year is the same as donating to that fund. Thus: pick something in that set that maximises the sense of relational connection your donors will feel. And then do what you can to present that charity in a relationally connective way.
On the second: be a nice person that makes people who meet you want to donate to the thing youâre fundraising for. Be helpful, considerate, generous, genuine in your belief that (for example) malaria is bad and a world without malaria is a world you want to see. Make food for people, climb a mountain and sponsor it, or set up a fundraiser for your birthday. You probably should not be telling anyone that any other charities they donate to are badâyouâre attacking things people feel connected to, so youâre attacking them, and thatâs not good for building relationships.
Ideally, you want to approach things first by building a relationship, and only be prepared to respond to effectiveness-related objections (e.g. âwhy bother, charity doesnât really do anythingâ) with the impact argument (âactually, this one does, I have numbers!â) that you keep in your back pocket.
Iâm curious about experiences that others have found from fundraising for effective charities.
Mental framework here captures 80% of my experience as an in-person /â events-based effective giving advocate.
That said there are ways to make impact-focused EA funds deeply relational. I passionately tell people a large part of my pledge goes to GiveWellâs All Grants Fund. âSince the beginning of 2025, 14 million lives could be lost due to entirely preventable deaths from malaria /â TB /â HIV. This was since the Trump administration and Elon Musk decided to shut down USAID. I give to ensure the most critical frontline organisations can keep their lights on to protect and empower some of the worldâs most vulnerableâ.
An important 3rd point: relational altruists might not start with the highest-impact malaria-reduction charity, or other EA golden standard charities. That said, t hey are still giving. Itâs still counterfactual impact (as opposed to giving nothing), and they should be deservedly praised and acknowledged. Further effectiveness can come incrementally as along as you help nurture their altruism. Make them feel supported and part of a like-minded community of people with skin in the game (people who take concrete action improving the world by donating)
Admittedly bitter take: youâd be surprised to learn this is far from consensual in some EA circles. I got surprising reactions for applying this example.
I can see people arguing that they shouldnât have to donate to help stop malaria. (I get that all the time.)
I cannot, however, see anyone genuinely advocating for a pro-malaria stance?
(As opposed to for example peace activism where you get people genuinely advocating for pro-war stances)
Is this a thing in EA? Some people are pro-malaria?
Iâd hope that even the âmeat-eater problemâ lot recognise that the set of effective methods to reduce animal suffering donât include pro-malaria advocacy.
Sorry, I understand this is a bit confusing.
I was hesitant to spell it out, because Iâm afraid of building a strawman:
My interpretation is that some people have an issue with non-self-oriented wishes or desires, because they can feel like virtue-signalling or guilt-tripping. Expressing things such as âI really want a world without malariaâ can be interpreted as condoning the use of suffering as a negotiation tool.
I.e :
Step 1: People are suffering from malaria
Step 2: This prompts me to fight malaria
Step 3: Someone concludes that suffering causes me to help them
Step 4: They self-inflict suffering to them
Step 5: This prompts me to help them regardless
Step 6: The world is now made up of people who self-inflict suffering as a way to manipulate others, which suck.
Iâm not sure this is an accurate reconstruction, but this is what I can do to the best of my abilities.
Iâd rather not encourage arguing with this version of the argument, since Iâm not a genuine proponent.
Thatâs fair.
Mostly this is about strategies for engaging non-EAs for effective giving. So it wouldnât come up much.
Although this does sound like a version of the standard right-of-centre effectiveness-based objection âwhy bother, giving just causes dependency loops that entrench the problemââto which I would probably shift to impact mode and explain that AMF donations specifically donât do that.