This coming year I am setting a target of donating £2000, going to:
Around 30%: Eliminating extreme suffering (OPIS):
In my life I have had the misfortune of experiencing extreme pain a few times. This pain required strong painkillers (e.g. morphine) to kill. These experiences had a hugely outsized impact on my wellbeing in relation to their duration, due to the intensity of the suffering I felt. The thought of not having access to pain relief in these moments of suffering is terrifying, and as such I believe eliminating or reducing extreme suffering should be one of, if not THE top moral priority for humanity. I plan to donate to OPIS (organisation for the prevention of intense suffering). I am a big fan of their work to increase access to morphine in developing countries, and to find effective pain relief for cluster headaches. In particular, their approach of lobbying for institutional change means that any donation to them could have an enduring impact e.g. if they are successful in changing laws preventing access to pain relief.
Around 30%: Global health/poverty:
Having grown up in a developing country, it’s very easy for me to summon the imaginative empathy required to donate towards this cause area, and doing so motivates me to keep earning to give. It’s also a cause area that I believe has become more urgent in the last year, with covid-19 and the resulting blow to the world’s economy threatening to undo much of the progress made towards eliminating global poverty over the last few decades.
-Give Directly: I believe there is a strong argument to the effectiveness of unconditional cash donations, with the term ‘cash benchmarks’ now being used to define the idea that we should measure any intervention against the equivalent amount of good that could be done simply by giving the recipient an amount of cash equal to the intervention. Another factor that motivates me to donate to Give Directly over other global health interventions that do no involve unconditional cash transfers is the that it has less of the shadow of Western parochialism. There is a long history of misguided Western interventions in developing countries, and if we are unsure what the most effective way of helping poor people are, it may be simplest to simply give them the money directly, as they are most familiar with their situation and will know best where to use it. Lastly, unconditional cash transfers appeal to a moral stance around global justice, the immorality of extreme global inequality and the legacy of colonialism, which I am sympathetic to. Lastly, the concept of GiveDrectly is very easy to explain., and I have received supportive responses when explaining it to non-EA friends. I think that by being public about my giving to this charity (e.g. Facebook fundraisers) I maybe be able to raise an additional 30% in donations from people who would otherwise be unlikely to give to effective charities
* Against Malaria Foundation: I have a monthly payment of £10 a month set up to AMF, and I’m very unlikely to change this in the future.Having a steady, predictable stream of income is very useful for charities and this is another reason for me to not change my donations to them. Lastly, I like the dashboard that shows me where the nets I have bought have gone to (this probably counts as ‘buying fuzzies’, although I know there’s also a very good argument to the effectiveness of AMF)
Around 10%: Animal Welfare:
I find it hard to feel enough empathy towards animals to donate large amounts of my donation budget towards animal interventions instead of human ones. To what degree this is based on legitimate questions towards how strongly we should weight the experiences of animals, and to what degree this is ‘speciesism’ prejudice, I’m not sure. Nevertheless, I plan to donate to the top recommended ACE charity for the following reasons:
-there is good evidence large mammals are sentient
-there is good evidence that factory farming causes lots of suffering to these animals
-you can save the lives/reduce the suffering of many of these animals per £, compared to human interventions
-many in the ea community think this is a good cause area
Around 30%: Undecided/opportunistic donations:
I plan to keep a portion of my donation budget undecided where I will spend it. This year I donated £200 to Family Empowerment Media. This was quite a spontaneous decision for me, and was based on the fact that they were recently founded and raising money for a pilot trial. As such, I felt my donation could have a large marginal benefit for reasons of
-neglectedness
-information value
I plan to give this portion of my giving budget to an opportunity(s) that are more speculative or time bound, but potentiality higher-impact that the interventions I have listed above.
Just for any readers who might be unfamiliar with that phrase, I believe it’s a reference to the well-worth-reading post Purchase Fuzzies and Utilons Separately.
This coming year I am setting a target of donating £2000, going to:
Around 30%: Eliminating extreme suffering (OPIS):
In my life I have had the misfortune of experiencing extreme pain a few times. This pain required strong painkillers (e.g. morphine) to kill. These experiences had a hugely outsized impact on my wellbeing in relation to their duration, due to the intensity of the suffering I felt. The thought of not having access to pain relief in these moments of suffering is terrifying, and as such I believe eliminating or reducing extreme suffering should be one of, if not THE top moral priority for humanity. I plan to donate to OPIS (organisation for the prevention of intense suffering). I am a big fan of their work to increase access to morphine in developing countries, and to find effective pain relief for cluster headaches. In particular, their approach of lobbying for institutional change means that any donation to them could have an enduring impact e.g. if they are successful in changing laws preventing access to pain relief.
Around 30%: Global health/poverty:
Having grown up in a developing country, it’s very easy for me to summon the imaginative empathy required to donate towards this cause area, and doing so motivates me to keep earning to give. It’s also a cause area that I believe has become more urgent in the last year, with covid-19 and the resulting blow to the world’s economy threatening to undo much of the progress made towards eliminating global poverty over the last few decades.
-Give Directly: I believe there is a strong argument to the effectiveness of unconditional cash donations, with the term ‘cash benchmarks’ now being used to define the idea that we should measure any intervention against the equivalent amount of good that could be done simply by giving the recipient an amount of cash equal to the intervention. Another factor that motivates me to donate to Give Directly over other global health interventions that do no involve unconditional cash transfers is the that it has less of the shadow of Western parochialism. There is a long history of misguided Western interventions in developing countries, and if we are unsure what the most effective way of helping poor people are, it may be simplest to simply give them the money directly, as they are most familiar with their situation and will know best where to use it. Lastly, unconditional cash transfers appeal to a moral stance around global justice, the immorality of extreme global inequality and the legacy of colonialism, which I am sympathetic to. Lastly, the concept of GiveDrectly is very easy to explain., and I have received supportive responses when explaining it to non-EA friends. I think that by being public about my giving to this charity (e.g. Facebook fundraisers) I maybe be able to raise an additional 30% in donations from people who would otherwise be unlikely to give to effective charities
* Against Malaria Foundation: I have a monthly payment of £10 a month set up to AMF, and I’m very unlikely to change this in the future.Having a steady, predictable stream of income is very useful for charities and this is another reason for me to not change my donations to them. Lastly, I like the dashboard that shows me where the nets I have bought have gone to (this probably counts as ‘buying fuzzies’, although I know there’s also a very good argument to the effectiveness of AMF)
Around 10%: Animal Welfare:
I find it hard to feel enough empathy towards animals to donate large amounts of my donation budget towards animal interventions instead of human ones. To what degree this is based on legitimate questions towards how strongly we should weight the experiences of animals, and to what degree this is ‘speciesism’ prejudice, I’m not sure. Nevertheless, I plan to donate to the top recommended ACE charity for the following reasons:
-there is good evidence large mammals are sentient
-there is good evidence that factory farming causes lots of suffering to these animals
-you can save the lives/reduce the suffering of many of these animals per £, compared to human interventions
-many in the ea community think this is a good cause area
Around 30%: Undecided/opportunistic donations:
I plan to keep a portion of my donation budget undecided where I will spend it. This year I donated £200 to Family Empowerment Media. This was quite a spontaneous decision for me, and was based on the fact that they were recently founded and raising money for a pilot trial. As such, I felt my donation could have a large marginal benefit for reasons of
-neglectedness
-information value
I plan to give this portion of my giving budget to an opportunity(s) that are more speculative or time bound, but potentiality higher-impact that the interventions I have listed above.
Thanks for sharing this reasoning :)
Just for any readers who might be unfamiliar with that phrase, I believe it’s a reference to the well-worth-reading post Purchase Fuzzies and Utilons Separately.