Firstly, I can only speak for the animal advocacy space but there are a very limited number of high impact roles for people to pivot into…
I think this applies more broadly. Overwhelmingly based on data about global health and development interventions, Benjamin Todd concludes “it’s defensible to say that the best of all interventions in an area are about 10 times more effective than the mean, and perhaps as much as 100 times”. If so, and jobs are uniformly distributed across interventions, a person in a random job within an area donating 10 % of their gross salary to the best interventions in the area can have 1 (= 0.1*10) to 10 (= 0.1*100) times as much impact from donations as from their direct work. In reality, there will be more jobs in less cost-effective interventions, as the best interventions only account for a small fraction of the overall funding. Based on Benjamin’s numbers, if there are 10 times as many people in jobs as cost-effective as a random one as in the best jobs, a person in a random job within an area donating 10 % of their gross salary to the best interventions in the area would be 10 (= 1*10) to 100 (= 10*10) times as impactful as a person with the same job not donating.
Thanks, Lauren!
I think this applies more broadly. Overwhelmingly based on data about global health and development interventions, Benjamin Todd concludes “it’s defensible to say that the best of all interventions in an area are about 10 times more effective than the mean, and perhaps as much as 100 times”. If so, and jobs are uniformly distributed across interventions, a person in a random job within an area donating 10 % of their gross salary to the best interventions in the area can have 1 (= 0.1*10) to 10 (= 0.1*100) times as much impact from donations as from their direct work. In reality, there will be more jobs in less cost-effective interventions, as the best interventions only account for a small fraction of the overall funding. Based on Benjamin’s numbers, if there are 10 times as many people in jobs as cost-effective as a random one as in the best jobs, a person in a random job within an area donating 10 % of their gross salary to the best interventions in the area would be 10 (= 1*10) to 100 (= 10*10) times as impactful as a person with the same job not donating.