Why we prioritize the long-term future

At Raising for Effective Giving, we’re driven to fund the best organizations working on the most pressing problems. But what exactly is the world’s most pressing problem? In this post, we want to outline why we prioritize interventions focused on affecting the long-term future, particularly those trying to avert worst-case outcomes that would cause vast […]

Read more

The 3 most important criteria that make a charity effective

At REG, we want to achieve as much good as possible with our donations. We try to accomplish this by finding charities that are doing much more good than average. The amount of good produced by the best charities vs. average charities can differ by an order of magnitude depending on certain broad criteria. Research […]

Read more

“Fuzzies” from charitable acts: A reply to Daniel Negreanu

In a recent interview with Calvin Ayre’s Lee Davy, poker legend Daniel Negreanu brings up a very important point about the good feeling and emotional connection (“fuzzies”) one gets from helping others. When comparing giving $500 to buy anti-malaria bednets vs. funding a school trip for a particular person, he states: “There is something about […]

Read more

#SCOOP4Charity

Raising for Effective Giving is running the #SCOOP4Charity fundraiser to raise money for the most effective charities and to spread effective giving among the online community. The Final Table Pledge By taking the Final Table Pledge, players commit to giving 3% or more of their final table cashes to highly cost-effective charities. These charities have […]

Read more

Why We Should Be Worried About Computers Taking Over The World

Lee Davy sits down with Adriano Mannino, Chairman and co-founder or Raising for Effective Giving, to discuss their recent presentation during the World Series of Poker, why more people don’t give to charity, and their interest in the rise of artificial intelligence. When Carnegie Mellon’s computer Claudico took on poker’s finest in a series of […]

Read more

How meta-charity can dominate direct charity

Solid scientific evidence has confirmed that deworming is a best buy in development aid. The direct charities that REG recommends thus either perform deworming interventions or interventions that are comparably cost-effective. Charity cost-effectiveness is measured by the extent of the life-saving/medical, educational, economic and social benefits they provide. An intervention whose cost-effectiveness has been shown to be comparable […]

Read more

Effective animal charities: How they help solve many global problems at once

Our resources are limited. Efforts aimed at improving the world therefore necessitate cause selection and prioritisation: Which causes am I going to support with my resources? Often people select their causes according to what happens to be closest to their heart or what’s immediately salient. This results in non-conventional but potentially extremely important causes often […]

Read more

How NOT to pick a charity

by Adriano Mannino and Tobias Pulver Imagine two charities that both fight a particular disease in a poor country. Donating to charity_1 means that 95% of your money goes directly to the cause (buying and distributing medicine), while only 5% is spent on salaries and other expenses. Donating to charity_2 means that 70% of your […]

Read more

The case for giving now: A reply to Rupert Elder

by Lukas Gloor and Adriano Mannino 1. Identifying points of leverage If something is important to us, such that we want to do it as well as possible (as opposed to just doing it in the way people commonly do it), then it’s crucial to put in a lot of thought and always be on the […]

Read more

Giving locally vs. globally: Where can we do the most good?

“Charity begins at home” is a popular idea. At REG we’re not interested in whether ideas are popular, though, but in whether they’re based on good evidence. Where do the arguments lead in the “local vs. global” debate? One might intuitively think there are special obligations towards “local” people. But what justifies this intuition? (It’s […]

Read more
All blog posts

LEARN MORE

Sign up to receive our guide on effective giving or learn more about our donation advice service. We might also contact you directly regarding our campaigns.