The impact of the counterfactual dollar: a defence of your local food pantry

Audience: readers in high-income countries with a decent amount of disposable income

tl;dr: when you think about the impact of donations, it’s important to think about what the money would’ve realistically been used for instead

I’ve worked almost my whole career on finding cost-effective and impactful solutions for social sector funders and governments to take up. I think Givewell’s work towards moving money towards neglected and highly cost-effective issues in global health is incredible. And I agree that if you have a dollar to donate, it’ll go further towards saving lives if you put it towards malaria nets than your local food pantry.

But the problem with this isolated reasoning when young professionals decide on personal giving decisions or, especially, start criticizing the giving decisions of others, is that the marginal dollar that most people aren’t donating to the local food pantry is not, in fact, going to malaria nets or animal welfare or AI safety — it’s going to going out to eat.

The marginal time that someone does not spend volunteering at the local food pantry is not going to more effective volunteering time but is going to watching TV, or in this case for me, writing a Forum post.

People in the EA community often call local donations in high-income countries “warm fuzzies”. I dislike this term because it implies that these donations and related local volunteer work are somehow ineffective and we should only make them so that we can feel good about ourselves. Just because donating to your local food pantry isn’t the most cost-effective thing in the world doesn’t mean it’s ineffective: it is helping families in your area get nutritious meals that they would’ve otherwise been unable to afford.^[1]

A donation to the local food pantry is, in fact, almost certainly marginally more beneficial to humanity than going out to eat for the second, third, fourth time this week. Time spent volunteering at my local food pantry would almost certainly be more marginally beneficial to humanity than the time I spend watching sports.

I’m not saying it’s not okay to eat out or watch sports — I don’t follow a strict consequentialist moral code: I think that life is meant to be lived and spending money on a coat you really like, or for a gift for a family member, or for dinner with friends and community, can be a good use of money as these are things that bring joy and meaning to our lives.

What I am criticizing is the tendency I see in EA to levy criticism way more on donating to charities that are less than gold-standard but are still doing good, than on… any other decision that people make in their lives that is probably a suboptimal allocation of funds or time.

The way I see young professionals live — including the way I live (I could be spending much less money on rent, for one, and still would be very happy), means that there’s a lot more money that we could spend on others — and still be living good lives ourselves — before we can start criticizing the relative cost-effectiveness of donating to a local charity.

I think this might be most practically relevant for convincing friends to donate to EA causes. Instead of disparaging their donations to the local food pantry, their generosity can be a positive foothold for further conversation, saying hey, that’s awesome, we have a ton of wealth and there are so many people in need here and abroad and in future generations, let’s donate some also towards malaria nets or pandemic prevention.^[2]

Or even — if you have have a rich friend who doesn’t donate at all, because so many people don’t, and they start donating to the local food pantry, I would argue that that’s a better use of their counterfactual dollar — it is a moving in the right direction.^[3]

Or for this community — I see discussions about how much of your 10% you should be allowed to donate to charities that are less cost-effective; instead of this framing, why not have an abundance mindset, why not still donate 10% to the most effective charities, and then in addition to that some percentage to other charities doing good work, or still more to the most effective charities? I understand the rationale for not having an infinite cap and ensuring your needs and retirement are taken care of and that you don’t feel constant guilt and stress — and so I’m absolutely not criticizing any particular individual whose circumstances I don’t know — but surely that doesn’t apply to everyone here; surely, for example, for the average software engineer the 10% isn’t a hard cap? I make nowhere near as much and absolutely could donate more than 10% and could live well; I greatly admire those both in and outside the EA community who do.

And for all of this above, to be able to say truly and truthfully, yes, this is not simply a “warm fuzzy” to soothe my own ego, this is more impactful and cost-effective than where this dollar would’ve otherwise gone.

So don’t move money from malaria nets into a high-income country charity, but maybe consider cooking at home for a week and then giving the money you saved to a local food pantry — or to even more malaria nets.

^
I personally donate to and work on fundraisers for local charities (in addition to global health and development and animal welfare) because it’s important for me to be involved in the community I live in and I think there’s a pretty strong argument for contributing to strong communities in general even from a consequentialist lens — it contributes to better mental health and quality of life for everyone in your community, and the ability to do good work because you yourself are happy and fulfilled — that I think many EAs intuitively understand when they donate to EA university groups and live in group houses. I love seeing how EA has grown into a strong and supportive community for many who are part of it, and my other communities, while they may have different foci, have served a similar positive role for me and others in them.
^
Speaking more broadly, this reasoning about what the dollar would’ve actually been otherwise been used for and can be used for also applies to moving larger pots of money towards more effective causes. Say, for example, a corporation has allocated a portion of their money to carbon offsets. You might not be able to get them to donate to malaria nets, since that has nothing to do with CO2, or put more of their profits into charity, but you might be able to convince them to switch from a less to a more effective carbon offset purchase.
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There are, of course, charities that are bad — ones that embezzle money, or that have no or negative impact — in which case going out to eat is a better use of money; there are also charities essentially amount to community building for already wealthy people, which as I discussed earlier is not necessarily bad in itself, but in which case the money likely is better being spent on dinner with friends even from a purely consequentialist perspective