Best Charities to Give to?

[Red]

I've been managing my monthly charity budget, and I've been wondering, which charities are best to give to in terms of cause and overall effectiveness? Which charities should I stay away from?

[Lay Vegan]

For general charities:
https://app.effectivealtruism.org/funds ... s/givewell

For animal charities:
https://animalcharityevaluators.org

For donating to fight COVID-19: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/pos ... r-covid-19

The biggest impact one could make in this area would be on research and investments that help to prevent another pandemic. Kind of makes me regret my program of study in college…

[Red]

I used to donate to Doctors Without Borders, and while I think the money I've donated has had some impact, according to charity evaluators such as GiveWell, it isn't on it's recommended Charity list which is pretty unfortunate.

Lay have you seen Peter Singer's talk on effective altruism?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Diuv3XZQXyc

[Jamie in Chile]

I think GIve Well's altruism is a good start. I think you are on the right track.

I actually gave some money to GIveWell directly last year to donate as they see fit. That would probably have gone to their reccomended charities like the Against Malaria Foundation and others that I have donated directly to in the past. I assume you know about their annual reccomendations.

I also gave to Hellen Keller International, Fred Hollows Foundation and Seva Foundation last year. I did this after emailing Peter Singer because I had seen an article where he wrote about reducing blindness or improving eyesight for relatively low $ amounts, but he didn't specify a charity. So I emailed and I asked him "I want to give money to trachoma-related charities to improve vision quality. Can you name a specific charity that you would recommend or have given to yourself?" and he said "Fred Hollows Foundation, or Seva. Check them out at www.thelifeyoucansave".

That website has some good looking charities. I discovered one on there called Population Services International, that finally fit something I had been looking to find for a while - a charity that effectively works to slow down population growth by helping women that don't want more children but don't have birth control, and does so without being excessively pro abortion or considering abortion. So I gave to them.

I also have started giving to Extinction Rebellion in the last 1-2 years. I think they are really creating change. I disagree with a number of things about them, but I think in practice what they did had good results. However I'm unsure whether to keep donating to them in the future.

I also gave a donation to the Labour Party ahead of the general election. We really need political change to avoid the worst effects of catastrophic climate change amongst other things. I think in the US it is worth donating to democrats this year to stop Trump. I considered doing it until I found out that it's probably not legal for me to do so as a foreigner. But donating to democrats in close races could be very beneficial. Very difficult to compare and contrast the value of a political donation vs a charity in Africa.

I also give smaller amounts when school, friends etc highlight local campaigns.

[Jamie in Chile]

I also gave to Vegan Outreach.

Here are their Animal Charity Evaluator's top charities: https://animalcharityevaluators.org/cha ... op-charity

Not reccomending ACE, but it's there if you are interested.

They also have a quiz to determine what charity you should give to:
https://animalcharityevaluators.org/don ... rity-quiz/

[Red]

@Jamie in Chile Definitely great charities the ones that GiveWell recommends, but @brimstoneSalad says that they're overfunded, and that more money is needed to save one life (still a good option to donate to).

I've donated a bit to Biden while he was running, although I'm not sure how useful donating to campaigns is. It's important of course, but there's probably a diminishing return there too.

I think Vegan charities are the best, since they help solve so many issues. Why don't you recommend ACE? AFAIK it's the best vegan charity evaluator available.

[Jamie in Chile]

I'm fairly neutral on ACE. I do use them because there isn't much else available but trying to rank leafleting vs slaughterhouse footage vs campaigning for abolition of cages on a suffering/life per $ basis is very difficult.

When I said I didn't recommend them I just mean to say "here is a link, decide for yourself, worth considering".

When GiveWell says you can save a life for $5,000 (or whatever it is) I can kind of believe that in reality it might be $1,000 or $20,000 but it's probably a reasonable estimate.

With ACE, it's just too hard for them to create some way to quantify and compare these things, is 1 hour of a pig suffering worse than 4 hours of a chicken if pigs are more sentient? Too many variables. I think it's too hard.

[Jamie in Chile]

Red, it says 69 in the age on your profile, is that more of a joke or is that your real age? I seem to recall you talking about school a couple of years ago, or was that someone else?

If you are, as I recall, about 17-20, then you can only really afford to donate $10 or $100 probably to each charity. You can do more good by promoting charity giving and effective altruism to others for now? When I was in my 20s I used to do a charity challenge every couple of years (I did a mountain climb, marathon, 100-miles cycle ride, and cycle to the Olympics) and so I raised about $500-$1000 each time. That was more than I gave myself directly to charities at that time.

If you've never done charity fundraising before I used to find the first $300 was a piece of cake and you get it just from 1 post on facebook and 1 email to family and friends, the next $300 was more effort like pestering work colleagues and reminding people who ignored your email, and the next $300 really was starting to feel like serious effort and you were hassling people, and then by about $900 it really dried up.

When I ran a marathon people really felt like that had to fork out and someone that normally gave £10 might have given £20. I saw someone once do a charity fundraiser on facebook where they said "I will forego tea and alcohol and drink nothing but water for a week" to raise money for some water charity. People tend to respond more based on how much physical effort or sacrifice you are doing rather than how good the charity is. I think the water charity got about 3 donations.

The other thing if you've never done a charity fundraise before you do better. If you do it every year you will start to see diminshing returns for year, I did it biannually for a while.

I haven't done charity fundraising for a while now since now I can afford to give that kind of money myself. We (my wife and I) gave about $2000-$3000 in 2020 mostly to GiveWell charities and those mentioned above. I only mention this because there's strong evidence that people talking about their donations can inspire more, even though it does come across like you are showing off or something.

For the vegan charities, in 2020 I gave to Vegan Outreach and Anima.

[Red]

Red, it says 69 in the age on your profile, is that more of a joke or is that your real age? I seem to recall you talking about school a couple of years ago, or was that someone else?

Haha, yeah it's a joke, bit of a yearly tradition to change my birth year so my age is 69.

If you are, as I recall, about 17-20, then you can only really afford to donate $10 or $100 probably to each charity. You can do more good by promoting charity giving and effective altruism to others for now? When I was in my 20s I used to do a charity challenge every couple of years (I did a mountain climb, marathon, 100-miles cycle ride, and cycle to the Olympics) and so I raised about $500-$1000 each time. That was more than I gave myself directly to charities at that time.

Don't worry, money isn't an issue, I have plenty to spare, and if I ever get my Youtube channel off the ground I'm planning on donating 90% of the revenue to charity, and also donate a lot of money from my engineering job once I graduate. I do tell others about what charities are best to donate too, but I'm not sure how many actually listen.

I was planning on auctioning off some of my TF2 items on marketplace.tf but they had to remove the selling option for most users, so that isn't an option anymore. It's a shame, since my inventory is worth quite a bit of cash.

If you've never done charity fundraising before I used to find the first $300 was a piece of cake and you get it just from 1 post on facebook and 1 email to family and friends, the next $300 was more effort like pestering work colleagues and reminding people who ignored your email, and the next $300 really was starting to feel like serious effort and you were hassling people, and then by about $900 it really dried up.

There's definitely a diminishing return there, but I think it's best as you said to tell others about effective charities to spread the word about them, and telling them to tell others as well, since fundraisers usually don't increase much awareness about them.

When I ran a marathon people really felt like that had to fork out and someone that normally gave £10 might have given £20. I saw someone once do a charity fundraiser on facebook where they said "I will forego tea and alcohol and drink nothing but water for a week" to raise money for some water charity. People tend to respond more based on how much physical effort or sacrifice you are doing rather than how good the charity is. I think the water charity got about 3 donations.

I don't think you need to go that far, I think it's useful to appeal to people's desires to actually do good in the world, and show them how easy it is to do so.

other thing if you've never done a charity fundraise before you do better. If you do it every year you will start to see diminshing returns for year, I did it biannually for a while.

I haven't done charity fundraising for a while now since now I can afford to give that kind of money myself. We (my wife and I) gave about $2000-$3000 in 2020 mostly to GiveWell charities and those mentioned above. I only mention this because there's strong evidence that people talking about their donations can inspire more, even though it does come across like you are showing off or something.

I think you have to only do it relatively conservatively if you're going to do a fundraiser. While fundraising is great, it's probably usually better to just donate your own money and encourage people to donate like 100 bucks or so a month to charities, and teach them how to get into the habit of giving.

For the vegan charities, in 2020 I gave to Vegan Outreach and Anima.

I think the GFI is also a good choice, though I'll get to that in my next reply.

[Red]

I'm fairly neutral on ACE. I do use them because there isn't much else available but trying to rank leafleting vs slaughterhouse footage vs campaigning for abolition of cages on a suffering/life per $ basis is very difficult.

When I said I didn't recommend them I just mean to say "here is a link, decide for yourself, worth considering".

When GiveWell says you can save a life for $5,000 (or whatever it is) I can kind of believe that in reality it might be $1,000 or $20,000 but it's probably a reasonable estimate.

With ACE, it's just too hard for them to create some way to quantify and compare these things, is 1 hour of a pig suffering worse than 4 hours of a chicken if pigs are more sentient? Too many variables. I think it's too hard.

I think it just regards the different methods to use to get people off meat. While I do think the ethical arguments are the strongest, using health and environmental arguments are also very useful for people who don't care about animals. I said I'm planning on giving a lecture, and I'm going to use every sound vegan argument, since most people will be swayed by at least one of them.

The charities ACE recommends are generally the best of the best are far as Vegan charities go, it's just a matter of approach.