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I started on ads at Google in 2017, and have been donating since 2008: https://www.jefftk.com/donations https://www.jefftk.com/donations

• gorpomon 6y ago
  Jeff have you ever considered giving to specific people? It's quite ridiculous that college costs what you might give in a year, but $264,727 could concretely allow several people to attend college each year (state schools, community colleges, etc). Or how about removing bad debt, letting people rebuild their credit and start to save. I can think of myriad reasons why this is harder and less desirable (finding them, funding them, ensuring it has real impact, etc). But curious what your take on this would be.
  • savanaly 6y ago
    If you strongly believe there are some unexplored avenues for impactful donations to individuals you should make the case to Givewell. It's what they're all about, and that seems to be what Jeff is mainly giving to (all those Against Malaria donations I assume were the top Givewell recommendation of their year). I think Jeff is doing the smart thing by outsourcing the analysis to Givewell who specialize in it.
  • loeg 6y ago
    If you click through to some of Jeff's other articles, you can see he's interested in effective altruism. Broadly, at the same total cost, paying for 5-6 globally wealthy people to attend college is going to have lower QALY impact than buying ~132,000 Long-Lasting Insecticidal bed nets ("LLINs") for people in regions with lots of malaria-carrying mosquitoes. For more on effective altruism broadly, some resources: https://www.givewell.org/giving101 https://www.givewell.org/giving101 https://www.givingwhatwecan.org/about-us/#our-mission https://www.givingwhatwecan.org/about-us/#our-mission
  • ryan93 6y ago
    Heinous idea to give to Americans going to college instead of starving people or something.
• wzdd 6y ago
  This statement does not address the parent's comment.
  • jefftk 6y ago
    "appeasing guilt with charity donations" implies something like "ads -> guilt -> donations". That the donations came years before the ads is pretty good evidence otherwise?
    • pwinnski 6y ago
      I make no judgement as to whether you are or are not attempting to offset guilt with donations, but no, I'm not sure the order of events matters that much. A person who donates generously may more easily justify dubious money-earning efforts by saying, "it's really not for me so much, it's for the kids!" In other words, it is possible (again, not saying this is case for you) that one might take a job in advertising because they feel their donations provide ethical cover.
• thundergolfer 6y ago
  Appreciate seeing pages like this, and 50% is pretty great. I need to set one up for myself.