Hi everyone,
My company offers something called Community Care Grants (CCGs) — essentially, they’re willing to donate up to $2,000 per year to eligible charities based on either employee donations or volunteer hours.
The structure looks like this:
1 hour of volunteering → $50 grant
16 hours → $150 grant
50 hours → $300 grant
100 hours → $500 grant
250 hours → $500 grant
500 hours → $500 grant
(Yes, it caps out at $2,000 total.)
I started my career in February 2025. I make about $60.80 per hour and pay roughly $1,000/month in “rent” to my parents since I still live at home in the Bay Area. Earlier this year, before learning about the CCG program, I had already donated $1,547 to effective altruism-aligned charities. Unfortunately, that donation doesn’t qualify for the grant match.
My parents have since encouraged me to stop donating large amounts, mainly because they’re skeptical of charities in general — even effective altruistic ones — and they think 10% is too much for someone just starting out. They suggested I limit myself to something like $40/month, so I’ve paused regular donations for now. I plan to make larger contributions later in life, perhaps through my will, and instead of save the money to perhaps make more money like investments or something.
Given that, I see volunteering for CCGs as a meaningful way to continue contributing without impacting my financial stability. So far, I’ve done about 16 hours (split between 8 during work hours and 8 outside) and plan to direct the resulting $200 to something like the Against Malaria Foundation.
However, I’m struggling with whether I have a moral obligation to aim higher — say, 50, 100, 250 or even 500 hours. On one hand, I didn’t give a full 10% of my income this year. On the other, the additional hours would cut a lot of my own personal time, and I’m unsure where to draw the line between moral responsibility and personal comfort.
I also find myself confused by ideas like Schelling points and what constitutes a reasonable personal threshold. How do you all think about balancing moral “shoulds” with practical limits in cases like this?
Thanks for reading — I’d love to hear your perspectives
Thanks for donating and the CCG work!
I would say you have no obligation to do this volunteering work, if it’s not something you’d like to do. The $ per hour of donation amount is really small. So from an EA perspective it’s an extremely inefficient use of time and effort as compared to being more productive at work, getting a raise, and donating (a portion of) the raise. One good thing about EA is that when needed you can dial your level of effort way back by choosing a more efficient option, and morally justify it by the fact you’re still having the same total impact level.
I generally recommend doing a bit of volunteering if your work supports it, it’s good for your mental health. But pick something you like, and if you don’t like it, don’t do it.
For what it’s worth, I earn less than half of what you earn and I donate 10%. But I understand that it can be difficult to stand up to your parents, and I’m several years into earning so I have some savings cushion and therefore my donations don’t affect my present, they affect my retirement.
If you’re worried about what the threshold should be: why not visit Giving What We Can, sign a 1% or 10% (or whatever %) pledge and put your income in for tracking, and then you can backfill the actual donations when you feel more financially stable? It’s a bit like loaning yourself your pledge money until you’re in a more stable life position!
Hey, I appreciate the response!
This comment is just out of complete curiosity, and even thinking about this I find really distasteful.
Quick question — one thing I’ve noticed is that it seems pretty easy to fake participation in volunteer events, especially virtual ones. Do you think it’s bad to do that just to boost volunteer hours?
For example, I recently did about 8 hours of virtual volunteering. I wasn’t super productive the whole time, but I did technically spend those hours working. Would it be bad to pretend to have done an event that can’t really be verified (like writing cards for the military)?
There probably would be employment consequences if someone got caught, which is one of the major reasons why I don’t want to do this even though I don’t there is any system present to even remotely verify this.
That, and also I find lying like this to be pretty repugnant.
However, in context of utilitarian ethics, I can’t help feel like this is some sort of strange moral obligation or moral “should”.
Thanks.
Not the original responder but wanted to jump in anyway, hope that’s ok!
This seems likely to fail even in utilitarian or expected value terms. As you mentioned, the employment consequences (and/or consequences for the CCG program as a whole) would be serious, and even with a small chance of being caught, I reckon the expected value would be net negative.
But even if that weren’t true, I think you should take seriously that it would feel pretty repugnant; taking common-sense morality into account alongside utilitarianism is important IMO.
Having said all that, your efforts to find ways to do more good are commendable; thank you for thinking about this and engaging about it here! I just think you should focus those efforts on tactics that are above board.
I think it’s probably bad to fake participation. It’s going to affect your underlying moral compass which will set you up badly for the future. There’s a (fascinating) whole section on this on the 80,000 hours website about how ultilitarians might think about “for the greater good” kinds of justifications: https://80000hours.org/articles/harmful-career/
However, if you are actually volunteering, I don’t think it’s bad to put that down, even if you’re not doing something super “official”. So if you do find yourself writing any cards for the military (or for Amnesty International), you can log it!
I also sympathise with the feelings you have to be doing something, even if you can’t really afford to be doing anything right now. I recommend you have a chat to any EAs you know personally about that—it’s a common feeling, and talking to others about it can help you feel less alone.