Total Donations

During the last six months of 2017 our supporters donated $3,606,752 to our recommended charities1. We want to thank all donors for their generous contributions to effective charities which led to a record-breaking year for us.

 

Charity Direct Donations (USD) Discretionary Funds (USD) Total Donations (USD)
The Good Food Institute 725,904 0 725,904
Give Directly 656,300 0 656,300
Against Malaria Foundation 589,859 0 589,859
EA Funds – Animal Welfare 456,784 0 456,784
Machine Intelligence Research Institute 445,017 0 445,017
Brooklyn Community Bail Fund 249,547 0 249,547
Schistosomiasis Control Initiative 148,876 0 148,876
Future of Humanity Institute 60,384 56,460 116,844
EA Funds – Long-Term Future 57,073 0 57,073
Animal Ethics 35,547 10,000 45,547
Helen Keller International 42,420 0 42,420
END Fund (deworming program only) 34,998 0 34,998
Foundational Research Institute 20,930 0 20,930
The Humane Slaughter Association 11,037 0 11,037
Animal Charity Evaluators 5,195 0 5,195
Sightsavers (deworming program only) 220 0 220
Malaria Consortium (seasonal malaria chemoprevention program only) 200 0 200
Total 3,540,787 66,460 3,607,247

 

Highlights of S2 2017

Matching challenge by the Crowley brothers and Dan Smith raises $3.1 million

  • In December, we teamed up with Tom Crowley, Martin Crowley, and Dan Smith to launch a $1,000,000 matching challenge for ten highly effective charities.
  • When the cap was reached shortly before Christmas, they doubled their commitment to $2,000,000 in matching funds.
  • When the second cap was also reached before the year end, Fedor Holz chipped in another $250,000, which was soon matched as well
  • As a result, a total of $4,500,340 was donated as part of the challenge (see below for a breakdown between the recipient charities).
  • We did not include all donations made as part of the challenge in our report, but only $3,144,741 (70%). Since the challenge had also been advertised the charities themselves, it was very likely that people contributed who would have made the donation in any case. We inquired with individual donors and charities to estimate how much of the total contributions had been donated because of the matching challenge itself and extrapolated conservatively from the results.2

 

Charity Total Donations (USD) Counterfactual Adjustment Adjusted Donations (USD)
The Good Food Institute 831,932 87% 725,904
Give Directly 1,176,620 54% 637,877
Against Malaria Foundation 551,572 83% 457,964
EA Funds – Animal Welfare 501,054 91% 456,784
Machine Intelligence Research Institute 598,602 64% 382,656
Brooklyn Community Bail Fund 340,924 73% 249,547
Schistosomiasis Control Initiative 286,626 47% 134,515
EA Funds – Long-Term Future 87,002 66% 57,073
Helen Keller International (Vitamin A) 50,420 84% 42,420
Total 4,500,340 70% 3,144,741

 

Benjamin Pollak finishes third in the WSOP Main Event

PokerStars donates all fees from $25,000 WCOOP High-Roller and matched up to $50,000

  • After our collaboration for SCOOP in May 2017, we partnered up with PokerStars again for the World Championship Of Online Poker (WCOOP) in September.
  • PokerStars donated the rake from Event 66-H – $25,000 NLHE worth $59,375
  • They had also decided to match up to $50,000 bringing their total donation to $120,775.
  • They decided to split the funds evenly between the Machine Intelligence Research Institute (MIRI) and the Future of Humanity Institute (FHI) at the University of Oxford.

888poker donates all fees from three events at XL Eclipse

  • After our collaboration with 888poker for XL Inferno in May 2017, we also advised them for their Chip In events during XL Eclipse in September.
  • The total rake from the three events was $40,825 which they decided to give to the Against Malaria Foundation (AMF).

Charity auction for extra WSOP 2017 Bracelet raises $10,200

Unrestricted Donations

Of the donations made during this period, $66,460 (1.8%) was given without restriction for REG to allocate to our recommended charities. We decided to give $10,000 to Animal Ethics and $56,460 to the Future of Humanity Institute (FHI) at the University of Oxford (see our FAQ for more details on the allocation process).

Update to Recommended Charities

Every six months, we conduct a review of our charity recommendations to ensure they remain the most impactful giving opportunities. If we find that new evidence warrants a change, we update our list of charities accordingly. During this period, we have concluded the following:

  • We added No Lean Season and Helen Keller International’s Vitamin A Supplementation Program to our Standout recommendations.
  • We added The Good Food Institute to our Top recommendations and moved Animal Charity Evaluators from Top recommendation to Standout recommendation.
  • We removed Mercy for Animals and the Nonhuman Rights Project from our list of recommended charities.

Donations to the Effective Altruism Foundation

During the second half of 2017, donors decided to give $25,337 in unrestricted donations to the Effective Altruism Foundation, $8,601 to its project REG, $495 to Wild Animal Suffering Research, and $20,930 to its project FRI. Because of our conflict of interest, we do not allocate any funds to EAF or its projects ourselves. With the exception of FRI (which is one of our recommended charities), we do not include these donations in the overall amount of money raised.

1 We included some donations to highly cost-effective charities that were not recommended by us at the time: The Good Food Institute, Helen Keller International’s Vitamin A Supplementation Program, two Effective Altruism Funds, and the Brooklyn Community Bail Fund.

2 For donations where we had no information whatsoever we used the average between donations for which we had information and a conservative base rate of 10%. This resulted in an estimate of 41% of the money being donated as a result of the matching challenge for donations for which we had no specific information.