Andy is a software engineer donating to long term future and EA meta causes, and investing to give later.
Andy_Schultz
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.
Thanks for making this! I would like if the stories in the RSS feed included the name of the website where the content came from.
Would it be worthwhile for aspiring effective altruists to download BOINC or World Community Grid to run on their computers? These are distributed computing programs that try to tackle problems that take a lot of computing power to solve. The software runs in the background on your computer and works on part of a project of your choice.
If so, would it be possible to estimate the best project to participate in? Here are the lists of projects available for BOINC and World Community Grid. At first glance, the project Malariacontrol.net looks most closely related to any promising cause that has been identified in the EA community, as one of their objectives is to “optimize deployment of established interventions and integrated strategies” for malaria (full description).
Here is Jeff’s post about John Wesley: http://www.jefftk.com/p/history-of-earning-to-give-iii-john-wesley
If you have any questions about the Methodist church, feel free to ask—I am a United Methodist.
What would be good advice for people who say they would only be happy with a career in the arts?
I know Citi Forward and Citi Thank You cards earn donatable points, but the Citi Forward card is no longer being issued. For people looking for a new credit card, it looks like cash back cards like Citi Double Cash would beat Citi Thank You. Maybe the EA action could be to look for a cash back or reward card that will give you the most money to donate to charity, depending on your spending habits. For example, a cash back card offering 5% back on certain categories might beat the Citi Double Cash’s consistent 2% back if you tended to spend money in those categories.
For those of you that earn credit card points, you might want to check if your points can be used to donate money to charity. For my credit card, I’m able to donate more money per point than if I redeemed the points for cash. I believe these donations are tax deductible in the U.S. (I think they would go on line 17 in Schedule A).
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?
That’s interesting to hear about their beliefs for #2. By contrast, the leaders at my church specifially say that everyone is our neighbor.
As of December 1, 2014, GiveWell has reinstated AMF as a top charity. GiveWell believes that AMF now has room for more funding. See http://blog.givewell.org/2014/12/01/our-updated-top-charities/
This was actually taken into account in the article I linked to. Using their definition of a moderate-risk portfolio, looking at historical data it is unlikely that the account would drop below $20,000.