Andy is a software engineer donating to long term future and EA meta causes, and investing to give later.
Andy_Schultz
Karma: 113
Just wanted to give a quick note of encouragement that earning to give for long term future or EA meta causes can be very impactful. According to a survey of community leaders last year, donations to the long term future and EA meta EA funds were usually considered even more cost effective than donations to the animal welfare and global poverty funds.
I gave my 2018 quota of donations in early January 2019 in order to bunch my donations. I’m planning on doing this every other year, giving near the end of the alternate years. Should I report those donations in this survey or wait until next year?
Hi, I did a minor in linguistics and enjoyed it. I also considered becoming an academic linguist but decided against it like you.
In case you haven’t seen it, 80,000 Hours has some advice on how to try out software engineering at https://80000hours.org/career-reviews/software-engineering/. The “Next steps” section has a good summary on some options.
I agree it makes sense to spread the idea of effective giving widely. The only counterexample I can think of is the following, which was probably limited to affecting only one person’s donations: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/yz5bqvG2sG92tLHmM/open-thread-4?commentId=pW684GoPXQE4YjdLs. Interestingly, this was a person to person interaction rather than through media. Overall it seems very good to share the idea of effective giving more.
Thanks, this was useful! A few comments:
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There was some more discussion on this topic in the following question: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/iyPQ9fSBGrweXAMLL/investing-to-give-beginner-advice
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You write that money should be added to DAFs in years when your marginal tax rate is high. What should we do with money earned in other years? I believe the answer is to invest in taxable accounts (i.e. your section “Mutual funds in a standard mutual fund advisor”). Then in years when you want to contribute to the DAF, you can move money from your taxable account to the DAF. Donate shares that have increased in value to the DAF to avoid capital gains taxes, and sell shares that have decreased to tax-loss harvest and then contribute the cash to the DAF. In fact, some people may wish to consider starting off investing in taxable accounts and waiting to open a DAF at a later time.
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The section “Mutual funds in a standard mutual fund advisor” discusses capital gains tax, but this should not usually be an issue since you can donate appreciated shares to charity or a DAF. Instead, the taxes to look at are from dividends. These are taxed at the capital gains rate that you cite, and are additionally taxed as ordinary income in most states.
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To automatically invest money each paycheck so that you don’t have to remember, mutual funds are another option besides ETFs (it’s not always possible to automatically invest in an ETF). Mutual funds have higher account minimum balances, though.
Interesting that the Long Term Future Fund is thought of as the most cost effective fund, even though the cause area is considered one of the least funding constrained. Sounds like there are still some pretty amazing opportunities for donations in that area!
For a simpler investment setup that is long-only and doesn’t use leverage other than leveraged ETFs, how would you like to see additional altruistic funds allocated among the following?
QVAL/IVAL/QMOM/IMOM
AXS Chesapeake
EDC (3x emerging markets)
A different high-risk, high-return fund?
What’s the closest we can get to the global market portfolio with leveraged ETFs?
How much more helpful would it be to take the full survey vs the abridged one, for those who have taken the survey in prior years? I’m willing to take the full survey if it’s helpful.
One consideration is that you should have enough saved to live on in case you temporarily stop working. Here is 80,000 Hours’ view on this: https://80000hours.org/2015/11/why-everyone-even-our-readers-should-save-enough-to-live-for-6-24-months/
That’s interesting to hear about their beliefs for #2. By contrast, the leaders at my church specifially say that everyone is our neighbor.
Would any of the funds be able to deploy additional donations quickly to projects that recently lost funding? Or is this an exceptional time where it might be more effective to donate directly to impacted groups, so they can receive donations faster?
Thanks for the update. If you have to donate twice, it’s really a 50% match on up to $200 given per donor per organization, right?
Not to be confused with the Behar.
Stephen Hawking will be answering questions about AI on reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/3eret9/science_ama_series_i_am_stephen_hawking
Thanks so much for writing this guide! I was able to use many of your suggestions to run a successful fundraiser, raising $2,680 for SCI. I really liked the overall idea of using this as an opportunity to connect with people. It was great reconnecting with people I hadn’t talked to in a while.
Do you think it is better to decide each year where to donate, or to give organizations multi-year commitments of what you expect to donate?
“Nov 2 8:43pm PT update—Amazing! Givers have rallied in less than 48 hours to unlock nearly $250k in matching. We are thrilled to announce that a generous donor has added an additional $100k into the Incentive Fund to keep the momentum going! Check out our realtime dashboard to see how much of the funds are left.” https://blog.every.org/fall-giving-challenge/