Start here for part I on splitting. If people have several motivations for donating to charity, sometimes it might make sense to split donations in order to optimize the outcome for each motivation separately. Our previous post looked at splitting one’s donation budget from the perspective of wanting to achieve the most in terms of […]
Read more
Should we put all our dollars into one charity, or does it make more sense to diversify our charitable investment? The answer to this question depends on both the personal goals that motivate one’s donations, as well as on the specifics of the charities in question. 1. The goal: helping others Let’s first consider the […]
Read more
Rupert Elder, one of the UK’s most successful professional poker players, recently posted about why he’s in favor of effective giving. From his piece: “My goal for charitable giving having thought about it is something along the lines of raise the quality of living for the most amount of people as much as possible per […]
Read more
Rationality is about optimal goal achievement. Whatever your goals are, you’re rational if you act so as to maximize their expected achievement, i.e. so as to maximize your life-game EV. This post argues that if people were more rational – reasoned better about what their life goals actually are and how to optimally achieve them […]
Read more
On July 3rd, many poker players joined us for the official REG launch dinner in Vegas. The topic of the evening was effective charity: Which rational arguments speak in favor of giving unusually high amounts to unusually cost-effective charities? How many people can we help – or indeed save – per dollar donated if we pick […]
Read more
Giving mainly makes the beneficiaries happy: When donated to the most cost-effective charities, a mere $7,500 demonstrably saves a human life*. Fortunately, giving tends to make the givers happy, too: Psychological research suggests that charitable giving ranks among the best forms of self-regarding spending as well. Here’s an example paper from the Journal of Consumer Psychology: «The […]
Read more
Scientific charity evaluators such as GiveWell provide reliable evidence that their top-rated charities help a very high number of people per amount of money donated. In addition to these “direct” charities, REG also recommends several meta-charities. A meta-charity is an organization that doesn’t seek to help people in need directly, but seeks to help many potential donors to start helping […]
Read more
Raising for Effective Giving seeks to promote a new way of thinking about charity. Our approach is best characterized by two main features: 1. Unusual cost-effectiveness 2. Unusual commitment Neither of the two is in itself new or revolutionary, but combined and applied in the domain of charity, these two principles distinguish REG from more […]
Read more
Don’t hate on Dan Colman. It feels to me that he felt wrong about the next step so he chose to voice his concerns without knowing exactly how to proceed. He is having a moral dilemma and has not yet found the solution. His intentions seem to be good and honest, and he may have […]
Read more
by Igor Kurganov and Adriano Mannino After winning the One Drop, Dan Colman left the event without giving interviews and later explained some of his thoughts in a blog post: «I’ve been fortunate enough to benefit financially from this game, but I have played it long enough to see the ugly side of this world. It […]
Read more