This year I gave 13% of my income (+ some carryover from last year, which I had postponed) to EA charities. Of this, I gave about half to global health and development (mostly to GiveWell Top Charities, some to Give Directly) and the other half to animal welfare (mostly to the EA Funds Animal Welfare Fund, some to The Humane League). I also gave $1,250 to various political candidates I felt were EA-aligned. In prior years I’ve given overwhelmingly to global health and development and I still think that’s very important: it’s what initially drew me to EA and what I’m most confident is good. But last year I was convinced I had underinvested in animal welfare historically and I’m starting to make up for that.
I strongly prefer near-term causes with my personal donations, partly because my career focuses on speculative long-term impact. I’m bothered by the strong possibility that my career efforts will benefit nobody, and want to ensure I do at least some good along the way. I also think that in recent years, the wealthiest and most prominent EAs have invested more money into longterm causes than we can be confident is helpful, in ways that have sometimes backfired, damaged or dominated EA’s reputation, promoted groupthink in pursuit of jobs/community, and ultimately saddened or embarrassed me. Relatedly, I think managing public perceptions of EA is inescapably important work if we want to effectively improve government policies in democratic countries. So even on longtermist grounds, I think it’s important for self-described EAs at the grassroots level to keep proven, RCT-backed, highly effective charities with intuitive mass appeal on the funding menu (perhaps especially if we personally work on longtermism and want people to trust our motives).
Within neartermism, I like to split my donations across a single-digit number of the most impactful funds or charities. This is because I do not have a strong, confident belief that any one of them is most effective, want to maximize my chance of doing a large amount of good overall, and see hedging my bets as a mark of intellectual humility. I don’t mind if this makes my altruism less effective than that of the very best EAs, because I’m confident it’s better than that of 99% of people. Likewise, I think the path to effective giving at a societal scale depends much more on outreach to the bottom 90% or so of givers, who give barely any quantitative thought to relative impact, than it does on redirecting donations from those already in the movement.
This year I gave 13% of my income (+ some carryover from last year, which I had postponed) to EA charities. Of this, I gave about half to global health and development (mostly to GiveWell Top Charities, some to Give Directly) and the other half to animal welfare (mostly to the EA Funds Animal Welfare Fund, some to The Humane League). I also gave $1,250 to various political candidates I felt were EA-aligned. In prior years I’ve given overwhelmingly to global health and development and I still think that’s very important: it’s what initially drew me to EA and what I’m most confident is good. But last year I was convinced I had underinvested in animal welfare historically and I’m starting to make up for that.
I strongly prefer near-term causes with my personal donations, partly because my career focuses on speculative long-term impact. I’m bothered by the strong possibility that my career efforts will benefit nobody, and want to ensure I do at least some good along the way. I also think that in recent years, the wealthiest and most prominent EAs have invested more money into longterm causes than we can be confident is helpful, in ways that have sometimes backfired, damaged or dominated EA’s reputation, promoted groupthink in pursuit of jobs/community, and ultimately saddened or embarrassed me. Relatedly, I think managing public perceptions of EA is inescapably important work if we want to effectively improve government policies in democratic countries. So even on longtermist grounds, I think it’s important for self-described EAs at the grassroots level to keep proven, RCT-backed, highly effective charities with intuitive mass appeal on the funding menu (perhaps especially if we personally work on longtermism and want people to trust our motives).
Within neartermism, I like to split my donations across a single-digit number of the most impactful funds or charities. This is because I do not have a strong, confident belief that any one of them is most effective, want to maximize my chance of doing a large amount of good overall, and see hedging my bets as a mark of intellectual humility. I don’t mind if this makes my altruism less effective than that of the very best EAs, because I’m confident it’s better than that of 99% of people. Likewise, I think the path to effective giving at a societal scale depends much more on outreach to the bottom 90% or so of givers, who give barely any quantitative thought to relative impact, than it does on redirecting donations from those already in the movement.