6 ms·

I humbly encourage everyone to make giving a larger part of your life. Consider giving at least 10% of your income to cost-effective charities -- because cost-

by yboris 6y ago

I humbly encourage everyone to make giving a larger part of your life. Consider giving at least 10% of your income to cost-effective charities -- because cost-effective charities can do thousands of times more good than merely regular charities. So your $1,000 donation can do as much good as $1 million, if given well. Join others: https://www.givingwhatwecan.org/ https://www.givingwhatwecan.org/

read_if_gay_ 6y ago
That point about cost effectiveness is what always leaves a bitter taste in my mouth when donating. I didn't realize people put lists of recommendations together, that's nice to see. But how would you go about verifying any stated claims?
- brundolf 6y ago
  This site ranks charities based on their finances, with breakdowns on different axes: https://www.charitynavigator.org/ https://www.charitynavigator.org/
  - yboris 6y ago
    Overhead is a bad thing to look at: http://overheadmyth.com/ http://overheadmyth.com/ If an organization cures blindness for $20 through cataract surgeries in developing nations, and another spends $40,000 to train a seeing eye dog for a single individual, we are looking at ratios of 1:1000 in terms of effectiveness. The amount spent on 'overhead' is irrelevant!
- FeepingCreature 6y ago
  Givewell's process is detailed at https://www.givewell.org/how-we-work/process https://www.givewell.org/how-we-work/process It's very plausible to disagree with some of their choices. For instance, you might be interested in efficient charitable giving within your country, and bite the bullet of "this means I value starving africans a lot less." The important part is to prompt charities to document costs and outcomes in general (preferably to a scientific standard), so that people can make more informed choices about their donations no matter their values.
bby 6y ago
why stop there? I think even as high as 50% is fine given that most people here are in tech.
scott31 6y ago
> So your $1,000 donation can do as much good as $1 million, if given well. Umm, no
- Veluga 6y ago
  Yes. Consider mosquito nets (<10$) to protect against malaria vs. training a guide dog (~50k).
- renewiltord 6y ago
  Well, it depends on your utility function, but judging by Zuckerberg's experience with the Foundation for Newark's Future vs. mosquito netting in Africa, I think that ratio is not out of the realm of possibility.
- jcims 6y ago
  Um yes. There are way more folks in a position to give $1k than $1m.
- keketi 6y ago
  A donation of half a billion can do as much good as six houses, if given poorly. https://www.propublica.org/article/how-the-red-cross-raised-half-a-billion-dollars-for-haiti-and-built-6-homes https://www.propublica.org/article/how-the-red-cross-raised-...
- tomjakubowski 6y ago
  A $1,000 donation, if given well, can measure better on this metric than a $1 million donation, if given badly. Not a very meaningful thing to say, I agree.
raz32dust 6y ago
I think thinking in terms of percentage of income doesn't work, because the lower your income, the lower a percentage you can afford to give away. I have found it better to think of it as a percentage of your non-essential expenses. e.g, if you spend $500 per month on non-essential things (eating out, movies, netflix, amazon impulse buys etc.), then you can afford giving away 10% of it ($50 per month) to charity.
- narwally 6y ago
  That's how I do it. I don't have a 6+ figure salary, or tons of disposable income, so I can't afford to give 10% of my income without reducing how much I put into savings. One thing I do have is more time on my hands than the average person. So for things like open source projects that I benefit greatly from, I always try to give some portion of my time with things like improving documentation, always submitting detailed bug reports, or writing updated versions of tutorials that are out of date.
- halflings 6y ago
  Shouldn't it be a % of (income - essential expenses), rather than % of non-essential spending? If you're very frugal, you'd end up giving away a very small amount of money, saving all the rest... Saving is super important, but giving money to effective charities is also a great way to use your money. To take a typical example of someone that might be reading HN, any software engineer working in NY or the Bay Area can easily give away $10K a year while saving enough money to get a very cozy retirement.
  - raz32dust 6y ago
    I am not sure if you can easily give away that much money. If it were easy, people would already be doing it. Buying a nice home is a distant dream even for many software engineers in the bay area for example, and future education and healthcare costs are very unpredictable. Putting it in terms of money you are already spending helps put it in context.
    - halflings 6y ago
hangonhn 6y ago
I'll echo this sentiment and add that during my career I've experienced a number of ups and downs. During the downs, when it felt like I've wasted years of my life for something that went nowhere, what always felt worthwhile to me was the time I spent doing charity work and volunteering. You don't need to be a Feeney to make a huge difference. Many of the people on HN are insanely well educated and knowledgable and have skills and traits that can be put to good use helping others or inspiring a new generation, especially among the less privileged. Just spending an hour or two a week over a period of years can yield tremendous results in the lives of others.
Kevin_S 6y ago
Givewell.org is another great resource for identifying extremely impactful organizations.
freeopinion 6y ago
I think a big part of the Feeney story is that he didn't just donate money. He got involved. He took an interest and made sure he was making a difference, or at least was doing his best to make a difference. He gave his time and his personal effort. I remember watching a documentary on him some time ago. There was some issue he was interested in. I think it involved a community in Ireland. He put his money into the issue, but it didn't have the desired outcome. He looked closely at what they were doing and decided the strategy wasn't a failure, so he committed some astounding amount more with specific strings attached. His strings forced others to put skin in the game with him. Then they worked together towards their desired outcome. How do you make sure that your donation to the blind center will get that roof repaired? Grab a hammer.
- halflings 6y ago
  This assumes Feeney is more qualified to know where his money will be most effective and that no one else is out there already doing a ton of research validating the effectiveness of different charities. (both questionable) I think this could be a convenient excuse that keeps some from donating more money (I'll wait until I can spend time creating my own charity / doing some hands-on vetting on who gets my money). There are already plenty of organizations (GiveWell, OpenPhil, etc.) that have very good research on the impact different charities have, often with RCTs on those interventions proving how much each $ buys (in terms of quality-adjusted life years or else).
  - freeopinion 6y ago
    If the roofing example didn't illustrate the point, let me try again. Donate $100 to a literacy campaign, then volunteer for 30 minutes each week at a beneficiary elementary school to have a struggling reader read to you from one of the books your money purchased. You don't have to buy the book. You don't have to decide which books are purchased. You don't have to decide which student gets to read the books. But you can be involved enough to know that books were purchased and the students are benefiting. And your extra effort makes the $100 so much more fulfilling.
    - 6y ago
woofie11 6y ago
To be honest, I'd recommend just giving as directly as you can. Right now, I ordered remote teaching equipment for teachers in my community. You can too. Identify people doing good important things, and give them money to do it. Especially if you give resources to volunteers doing genuinely good work in your community, it has a huge multiplier effect.
- caturopath 6y ago
  This is a common viewpoint, but quite different from OP's. $5000 can save a person from Malaria or it can buy all the history teachers at a first world school document cameras. No doubt, both are worthy causes, but if you are choosing between which change to make in the world, one thought is to choose things like the former, which are seen to do more good for the same resources.
  - woofie11 6y ago
    Well, to be fair, I know people and projects in the developing world, and buy things for (or give money to) people there too. I've also seen the impact of organizations which promise to spend money to save people there, and it's not always pretty. You can't serve two causes well. Picking between Western donors and local recipients, successful NGOs must choose to serve the former and not the latter. That often just distorts markets and causes its own problems.
    - caturopath 6y ago
      To be frank, with that attitude, we'd never make better decisions ever. We'd always see that things get complicated quick. Things ARE complicated. Teams spend time navigating the questions and coming up with their best answers - the poster who started this thread posted a site that has done that exercise https://www.givingwhatwecan.org/giving-recommendations/ https://www.givingwhatwecan.org/giving-recommendations/ They have a model, and they can iterate on that model as they get new information or insights. It's hard for me to think that their model is worse than my lack of model.
munificent 6y ago
I support charities and think more people should give. At the same time, I think it is a bad systemic solution to rely on charitable giving to solve large-scale problems. Imagine an island with 100 residents, each with $100. Their moral compass varies randomly from Mr. Rogers all the way to a few outright sociopaths. Each day, everyone decides how much to donate. The kinder people donate more because they're kinder. The selfish assholes obviously don't. What does tomorrow look like? Well, now all the good people are a little poorer and have a little less power. The sociopaths are richer and stronger. They use their edge to secure a little more power, maybe skim a little more off the top. Watch that island for a few years and what do you start to see? A few avaricious monsters with all the wealth and a horde of poor decent folks doing their best to distribute fewer and fewer scraps equitably amongst themselves. This is the real magic of taxes. Because taxes are morally neutral. They don't preferentially take more money away from the most decent folks. Ultimately there are some bad selfish people out there and if you don't have some way of forcibly reducing their power, they will take it all. Taxation backed by the force of government is one of the least violent ways of doing that.
habosa 6y ago
Agree whole-heartedly that everyone should give more. If you find a way to give automatically (ideally from your paycheck, not your credit card) you never even feel it. It's important to recognize that some causes are not as cost-effective as others, but are still worthy. I'll use my own donations as an example: 1. Against Malaria Foundation - widely recognized as one of the charities that can do the most for a dollar. Malaria nets cost about $2-3 and it's estimated every ~$2500 given to them saves a life from Malaria. 2. Larkin Street Youth Services - helping homeless youth in San Francisco (where I lived). A very expensive city and they provide not just housing but education, job services, medical care, etc. Helping just one full-service client can cost $40,000 a year. I don't think giving to both of these causes makes me inconsistent. After all, no number of malaria nets in Africa can take a person off the street in San Francisco. And I want both outcomes. I believe nobody should die of malaria, and nobody should be homeless. So I give to both.
- yboris 6y ago
  Thank you for sharing that. I think at the outset, whenever we all discuss donations, no one should be bullied or told they are doing something wrong. Helping people should be encouraged, even if there are better ways to help. I think it's a productive discussion when those involved learn something new. My hope is always to share the counterintuitive finding that in today's world we are able to help people a tremendous amount with (relative-to-our-lives) very little financial involvement. I hope that when people learn about this remarkable fact, they reflect on their goals and consider giving to more-cost-effective charities, and to give more overall. I'm thrilled to hear you too give to one of GiveWell's top recommended charities! Cheers!
- FeepingCreature 6y ago
  I mean, props for donating, and I believe that you want both outcomes, but for the sake of completeness the revealed-preferences meaning of your giving patterns is that the marginal badness of a SF youth being homeless is equivalent to 16 africans dying. Like, I'm not saying that to denigrate your choices, it's just an inherent fact of donation splitting. https://www.givingwhatwecan.org/post/2013/11/should-you-only-donate-to-one-charity/ https://www.givingwhatwecan.org/post/2013/11/should-you-only...

by yboris 6y ago

read_if_gay_ 6y ago

That point about cost effectiveness is what always leaves a bitter taste in my mouth when donating. I didn't realize people put lists of recommendations together, that's nice to see. But how would you go about verifying any stated claims?

brundolf 6y ago
This site ranks charities based on their finances, with breakdowns on different axes: https://www.charitynavigator.org/ https://www.charitynavigator.org/
- yboris 6y ago
  Overhead is a bad thing to look at: http://overheadmyth.com/ http://overheadmyth.com/ If an organization cures blindness for $20 through cataract surgeries in developing nations, and another spends $40,000 to train a seeing eye dog for a single individual, we are looking at ratios of 1:1000 in terms of effectiveness. The amount spent on 'overhead' is irrelevant!
FeepingCreature 6y ago
Givewell's process is detailed at https://www.givewell.org/how-we-work/process https://www.givewell.org/how-we-work/process It's very plausible to disagree with some of their choices. For instance, you might be interested in efficient charitable giving within your country, and bite the bullet of "this means I value starving africans a lot less." The important part is to prompt charities to document costs and outcomes in general (preferably to a scientific standard), so that people can make more informed choices about their donations no matter their values.

bby 6y ago

why stop there? I think even as high as 50% is fine given that most people here are in tech.

scott31 6y ago

> So your $1,000 donation can do as much good as $1 million, if given well. Umm, no

Veluga 6y ago
Yes. Consider mosquito nets (<10$) to protect against malaria vs. training a guide dog (~50k).
renewiltord 6y ago
Well, it depends on your utility function, but judging by Zuckerberg's experience with the Foundation for Newark's Future vs. mosquito netting in Africa, I think that ratio is not out of the realm of possibility.
jcims 6y ago
Um yes. There are way more folks in a position to give $1k than $1m.
keketi 6y ago
A donation of half a billion can do as much good as six houses, if given poorly. https://www.propublica.org/article/how-the-red-cross-raised-half-a-billion-dollars-for-haiti-and-built-6-homes https://www.propublica.org/article/how-the-red-cross-raised-...
tomjakubowski 6y ago
A $1,000 donation, if given well, can measure better on this metric than a $1 million donation, if given badly. Not a very meaningful thing to say, I agree.

raz32dust 6y ago

I think thinking in terms of percentage of income doesn't work, because the lower your income, the lower a percentage you can afford to give away. I have found it better to think of it as a percentage of your non-essential expenses. e.g, if you spend $500 per month on non-essential things (eating out, movies, netflix, amazon impulse buys etc.), then you can afford giving away 10% of it ($50 per month) to charity.

narwally 6y ago
That's how I do it. I don't have a 6+ figure salary, or tons of disposable income, so I can't afford to give 10% of my income without reducing how much I put into savings. One thing I do have is more time on my hands than the average person. So for things like open source projects that I benefit greatly from, I always try to give some portion of my time with things like improving documentation, always submitting detailed bug reports, or writing updated versions of tutorials that are out of date.
halflings 6y ago
Shouldn't it be a % of (income - essential expenses), rather than % of non-essential spending? If you're very frugal, you'd end up giving away a very small amount of money, saving all the rest... Saving is super important, but giving money to effective charities is also a great way to use your money. To take a typical example of someone that might be reading HN, any software engineer working in NY or the Bay Area can easily give away $10K a year while saving enough money to get a very cozy retirement.
- raz32dust 6y ago
  I am not sure if you can easily give away that much money. If it were easy, people would already be doing it. Buying a nice home is a distant dream even for many software engineers in the bay area for example, and future education and healthcare costs are very unpredictable. Putting it in terms of money you are already spending helps put it in context.
  - halflings 6y ago

hangonhn 6y ago

I'll echo this sentiment and add that during my career I've experienced a number of ups and downs. During the downs, when it felt like I've wasted years of my life for something that went nowhere, what always felt worthwhile to me was the time I spent doing charity work and volunteering. You don't need to be a Feeney to make a huge difference. Many of the people on HN are insanely well educated and knowledgable and have skills and traits that can be put to good use helping others or inspiring a new generation, especially among the less privileged. Just spending an hour or two a week over a period of years can yield tremendous results in the lives of others.

Kevin_S 6y ago

Givewell.org is another great resource for identifying extremely impactful organizations.

freeopinion 6y ago

I think a big part of the Feeney story is that he didn't just donate money. He got involved. He took an interest and made sure he was making a difference, or at least was doing his best to make a difference. He gave his time and his personal effort. I remember watching a documentary on him some time ago. There was some issue he was interested in. I think it involved a community in Ireland. He put his money into the issue, but it didn't have the desired outcome. He looked closely at what they were doing and decided the strategy wasn't a failure, so he committed some astounding amount more with specific strings attached. His strings forced others to put skin in the game with him. Then they worked together towards their desired outcome. How do you make sure that your donation to the blind center will get that roof repaired? Grab a hammer.

halflings 6y ago
This assumes Feeney is more qualified to know where his money will be most effective and that no one else is out there already doing a ton of research validating the effectiveness of different charities. (both questionable) I think this could be a convenient excuse that keeps some from donating more money (I'll wait until I can spend time creating my own charity / doing some hands-on vetting on who gets my money). There are already plenty of organizations (GiveWell, OpenPhil, etc.) that have very good research on the impact different charities have, often with RCTs on those interventions proving how much each $ buys (in terms of quality-adjusted life years or else).
- freeopinion 6y ago
  If the roofing example didn't illustrate the point, let me try again. Donate $100 to a literacy campaign, then volunteer for 30 minutes each week at a beneficiary elementary school to have a struggling reader read to you from one of the books your money purchased. You don't have to buy the book. You don't have to decide which books are purchased. You don't have to decide which student gets to read the books. But you can be involved enough to know that books were purchased and the students are benefiting. And your extra effort makes the $100 so much more fulfilling.
  - 6y ago

woofie11 6y ago

To be honest, I'd recommend just giving as directly as you can. Right now, I ordered remote teaching equipment for teachers in my community. You can too. Identify people doing good important things, and give them money to do it. Especially if you give resources to volunteers doing genuinely good work in your community, it has a huge multiplier effect.

caturopath 6y ago
This is a common viewpoint, but quite different from OP's. $5000 can save a person from Malaria or it can buy all the history teachers at a first world school document cameras. No doubt, both are worthy causes, but if you are choosing between which change to make in the world, one thought is to choose things like the former, which are seen to do more good for the same resources.
- woofie11 6y ago
  Well, to be fair, I know people and projects in the developing world, and buy things for (or give money to) people there too. I've also seen the impact of organizations which promise to spend money to save people there, and it's not always pretty. You can't serve two causes well. Picking between Western donors and local recipients, successful NGOs must choose to serve the former and not the latter. That often just distorts markets and causes its own problems.
  - caturopath 6y ago
    To be frank, with that attitude, we'd never make better decisions ever. We'd always see that things get complicated quick. Things ARE complicated. Teams spend time navigating the questions and coming up with their best answers - the poster who started this thread posted a site that has done that exercise https://www.givingwhatwecan.org/giving-recommendations/ https://www.givingwhatwecan.org/giving-recommendations/ They have a model, and they can iterate on that model as they get new information or insights. It's hard for me to think that their model is worse than my lack of model.

munificent 6y ago

I support charities and think more people should give. At the same time, I think it is a bad systemic solution to rely on charitable giving to solve large-scale problems. Imagine an island with 100 residents, each with $100. Their moral compass varies randomly from Mr. Rogers all the way to a few outright sociopaths. Each day, everyone decides how much to donate. The kinder people donate more because they're kinder. The selfish assholes obviously don't. What does tomorrow look like? Well, now all the good people are a little poorer and have a little less power. The sociopaths are richer and stronger. They use their edge to secure a little more power, maybe skim a little more off the top. Watch that island for a few years and what do you start to see? A few avaricious monsters with all the wealth and a horde of poor decent folks doing their best to distribute fewer and fewer scraps equitably amongst themselves. This is the real magic of taxes. Because taxes are morally neutral. They don't preferentially take more money away from the most decent folks. Ultimately there are some bad selfish people out there and if you don't have some way of forcibly reducing their power, they will take it all. Taxation backed by the force of government is one of the least violent ways of doing that.

habosa 6y ago

Agree whole-heartedly that everyone should give more. If you find a way to give automatically (ideally from your paycheck, not your credit card) you never even feel it. It's important to recognize that some causes are not as cost-effective as others, but are still worthy. I'll use my own donations as an example: 1. Against Malaria Foundation - widely recognized as one of the charities that can do the most for a dollar. Malaria nets cost about $2-3 and it's estimated every ~$2500 given to them saves a life from Malaria. 2. Larkin Street Youth Services - helping homeless youth in San Francisco (where I lived). A very expensive city and they provide not just housing but education, job services, medical care, etc. Helping just one full-service client can cost $40,000 a year. I don't think giving to both of these causes makes me inconsistent. After all, no number of malaria nets in Africa can take a person off the street in San Francisco. And I want both outcomes. I believe nobody should die of malaria, and nobody should be homeless. So I give to both.

yboris 6y ago
Thank you for sharing that. I think at the outset, whenever we all discuss donations, no one should be bullied or told they are doing something wrong. Helping people should be encouraged, even if there are better ways to help. I think it's a productive discussion when those involved learn something new. My hope is always to share the counterintuitive finding that in today's world we are able to help people a tremendous amount with (relative-to-our-lives) very little financial involvement. I hope that when people learn about this remarkable fact, they reflect on their goals and consider giving to more-cost-effective charities, and to give more overall. I'm thrilled to hear you too give to one of GiveWell's top recommended charities! Cheers!
FeepingCreature 6y ago
I mean, props for donating, and I believe that you want both outcomes, but for the sake of completeness the revealed-preferences meaning of your giving patterns is that the marginal badness of a SF youth being homeless is equivalent to 16 africans dying. Like, I'm not saying that to denigrate your choices, it's just an inherent fact of donation splitting. https://www.givingwhatwecan.org/post/2013/11/should-you-only-donate-to-one-charity/ https://www.givingwhatwecan.org/post/2013/11/should-you-only...