“I recognise that I can use part of my income to do a significant amount of good. Since I can live well enough on a smaller income, I pledge that from [now] until [my death], I shall give [at least 10% of my annual income] to whichever organisations can most effectively use it to improve the lives of others, now and in the years to come. I make this pledge freely, openly, and sincerely.”

Sat in JFK Airport, NY, with an hour and a half to go before I was to board the plane and return home to the U.K., I was scrolling through a list I had made throughout my time on the trail of the various changes I wanted to enact in my life. Titled, “It would be pretty cool to…”, the page of notes contained a mixt of habits, skills, and commitments (both short and long-term) that I thought would be cool to develop, acquire and make. Just after “Veganism”, “Brazilian Jiu Jitsu”, and “Throwing left-handed”, but just before “Data comprehension course”, “French”, and “Friends and family birthday list”, was the idea to “take the Giving What We Can Pledge.” Aware of the fact that I was returning to ‘normal’ society in a few hours’ time, where all my previously acquired habits and patterns of thought most probably awaited me, I took the pledge and made a series of donations to cover the next 365 day. And I did so freely, openly, and sincerely.

But what is this pledge all about? Why would I make such a commitment? And why am I writing about this here?

Effective Altruism

Will MacAskill and Toby Ord, the co-founders of Effective Altruism and its many subsidiary organisations, are probably not the individuals that come to mind when one thinks of an “Oxford academic philosopher”. They have not spent their careers (thus far) playing ‘language games’ or getting bogged down in the “narcissism of small differences” in the meanings and minutiae of single words. Instead, inspired by the work of two of the greatest moral philosophers of the last century (Peter Singer and Derek Parfit), they have built hugely impactful and efficacious communities of individuals committed to doing the most good they probably can. Effective Altruism (EA), which defines itself as “a research field and practical community that aims to find the best ways to help others, and put them into practice”, takes a rational and empirical approach to altruism. This, in turn, has led to many ideas, including the following:

• “It’s critical to pay attention to how many people are affected by a particular intervention. When we do this, it seems that some ways of doing good are over 100 times more effective than others.
• We should focus on problems that are important, neglected, and tractable
• We can do a lot of good with our careers.
• New technologies might threaten to wipe out life on earth, and reducing this risk might be a key priority.
• Some sentient beings are ignored because they don’t look like us or are far away.”

There are many incredibly important insights contained within these ideas, but most pertinent to this article is the massive disparity in the efficacy between charities and the importance of focusing on neglected issues. There are a seemingly infinite number of causes that demand and necessitate our concern. Climate change and environmental issues, social care, animal welfare, global health and global poverty, existential risk, disease, addiction and mental health, education, and many more. And within each of these segments and sectors exists a huge number of charities, non-profits, companies, and governmental organisations committed to solving these problems, all of whom seem to be vital, necessary, and efficacious. But that is very much not the case. Many charities squander money, spending millions of dollars without achieving very much actionable good. “Give Well”, a charity evaluator which is often seen as the ‘gold standard for giving’, has found, through more than 50,000 hours of annual research, that some charities do multiple magnitudes of ‘good’ better than others. Not just two, or three, or even ten times better than others, some charities are hundreds and even sometimes thousands of times more effective in using their funds to save or improve lives.

The most effective charities for global poverty and health at present, as highlighted by GiveWell, are the Against Malaria Foundation (who distributes bed nets, with an estimated average cost-effectiveness of $5,500 per life saved), the Malaria Consortium (who provide preventive malaria medication in sub-Saharan Africa, with an estimated average cost-effectiveness of $5,000 per life saved, and Hellen Keller International (who provide supplements to prevent vitamin A deficiency, with an estimated average cost-effectiveness of $4,000 per-life-saved). Whilst each of these estimations cannot be 100% accurate, and whilst these causes may not be as ‘sexy’ or as sentimentally appealing as others, they are backed by extensive evidence, research and data. Compare this with the example of the “Roundabout PlayPump”, a non-profit which gained huge traction in the early 2000’s. The idea was to install roundabouts in villages across Africa that served the dual function of also pumping water out of the ground as they span. Happy children and villages supplied with water: it seemed like a fantastic idea. Jay-Z raised $250,000 for the charity, and the U.S. government gave it more than $16 million dollars. The only issue was that everyone, carried away by the rosy idea, failed to check that the pumps actually worked as intended. Since they didn’t spin freely like a normal roundabout, children found them exhausting to play on and soon stopped, and since they were installed in place of regular pumps, women from the villages had to push the roundabouts to pump the water. They were more expensive, pumped less water, were demeaning for the women who had to turn them, and were harder to maintain than normal pumps. Unsurprisingly, they were ultimately deemed to be a significant failure. In addition to being not effective, some charities are scandalously squandering of funds. ‘Aid for Starving Children’, a California-based charity seemingly committed to a very positive cause, received donations of more than $100 million but spent only 1.3 cent of every donated dollar on actually helping starving children. If you’re going to give your money away to charities, then to me it only makes sense to me to give to the ones that have demonstrated they really can do effective good.

The Giving What We Can Pledge

But why should we give our money away to such causes at all? I think there exists two issues here, both of which I will address in turn. Firstly, do we have a moral responsibility to people in societies and countries on the other side of the world, who we almost certainly will never meet? And secondly, why should I do so? I am not a high earner with huge amounts of disposable income and there are plenty of people with more money than me, so why should I be donating my money?

One of the greatest accomplishments in the evolution of how we have done so. We have moved from caring solely about ourselves, our partners and our children, to caring about our tribes, to ultimately caring about entire countries of millions of people. Whilst we may not realise it in our day-to-day lives, it is at least in part through our acceptance of the idea that our compatriots are our moral equals that we pay taxes to fund health services, social welfare, and roads, for people far away within our own borders. Peter Singer has argued throughout his career that humanity ought to continue extending our moral circle to ultimately encompass all sentient beings and that our highly globalised world has made this ever easier.

In his book, “Famine, Affluence and Morality”, he posited a thought experiment known colloquially as the ‘Shallow Pond’. You are walking to work, bedecked in a beautiful new suit and a shiny pair of designer shoes, and you pass a shallow pond. The pond is only about a foot or so deep, and in the summer months it is frequently played in by young children. The weather today is cool however, so you are surprised to see a child, only the age of a toddler, in the water. As you get closer you see that the child, unable to stand upright and walk out of the pond, is flailing around. You look around. There is no parent nor babysitter nor anyone else. The child is unable to keep its head above the water and will most probably drown in the next few minutes. Wading in to save her will muddy your suit, completely ruin your shoes in the process, and make you late for work. But should you do so anyway?

Of course, you should. Someone who’d do otherwise would, correctly, be deemed a moral monster. But do we not, Singer asks, face something akin to this decision on an everyday basis? It is a fact that every year, millions of children either starve to death or are killed by preventable diseases. It is also a fact that there exists hugely effective charities and aid organisations that can reliably mitigate such suffering so long as they have the money with which to do so. By not giving a portion of our disposable income to such charities (however much that may be), are we not essentially leaving the child in the pond? Whilst this argument is admittedly rather arresting, I do think there is significant truth here. As human beings, I believe we have an ethical responsibility to help reduce and mitigate the suffering of others if we can and I believe that if we have the means to do so, then we should fund the organisations who can most effectively do so.

But do we have the means to do so? At present I do not have a job lined up for next year and I have absolutely no idea how much wealth and income I may accrue through my life? Is it not then sufficiently naïve to pledge to give away 10% of my income without knowing these things? I don’t think so. There exists significant academic research highlighting how people evaluate their respective wealth and income in relation to people around them. In our age of instantaneous news and social media, in which we are constantly inundated with images of the super-rich and the super-wealthy, it is easy to become disillusioned and to think of ourselves as having very little. But in many developed Western societies, including the U.K., this is simply not the case. This is not to say that we are all equal. There exists more inequality within countries than there ever has before, largely owing to the stratified quantities of wealth that billionaires have been enabled to accrue, but we cannot ignore how much progress has nonetheless been in improving the overall standards of living. We are living in a country that has a modern sewage system, potable tap water, an NHS, extremely low levels of violence, huge democratisation of technology, and a social welfare system. Despite global inequality having been decreasing since the 1990’s, the average income of the 50% of the poorest people in the world is still around £2,700, whereas the UK’s average salary of £34,963.

If at some point in my career I were fortunate enough to be earning £40,000, then after taxes, repayment of my student loan, rent and utilities, I think could expect to be taking home around £20,000. To then give away £4,000 of this remaining sum is by no means an insignificant portion. Such an amount of money would be enough to buy a car, to finance a very nice holiday, and would certainly be useful to be put into a pension or a savings account. £4,000 of this sum is therefore a fairly significant portion. But can any of these things compare to distributing enough vaccines or bed nets or medicines that it is highly probable that your actions would have saved a child’s life? Or to how much value £4,000 would have if placed directly in the hands of the world’s poorest people, through a charity like GiveDirectly? I, personally, do not think so. Giving this amount of money will not require me to live monastically nor give up all the things and activities. Instead, it will require some slight alterations in my spending and saving. 10% of any income is certainly not an insignificant amount of money, but in our society, it is also not the difference between survival and death. It is based on the logic of this that I have chosen to take the Giving What We Can Pledge.

Finally, why have I chosen to talk about this here so publicly? Self-promotion would probably be a very good bet, but (at least at the conscious level) I can assure you that this is not my motivator here. It has become the norm in our society that when one gives money, they do so anonymously. Not doing so is often seen as showy, braggadocios, and a shameless attempt to gain social status and adoration. Whilst it may be true that people who talk publicly of their charitable work may be seeking these things, the norm of giving anonymously neglects two potentially significant upsides of publicising one’s giving. Firstly, it is only through the public discussion of ideas like these that they can be disseminated and normalised. It is only through listening to Sam Harris talk about his having taken the pledge, and the positive impact that it has had on his life, that I became first exposed to and then compelled by these communities. Had I been asked a year ago about making this pledge, I would have balked at the idea and would have seen it as inconceivable. Secondly, there also exists a ‘social contagion’ effect, by which the amount of good you do is effectively doubled by convincing only one other person to take give in a similar way. Whilst I, of course, do not have the reach of Sam Harris, there is a chance someone reading this may be compelled by these ideas. Thirdly, social judgement is an enormously powerful motivator. If I had signed the pledge and didn’t tell anyone about it, I would be far more likely to renege on my promise. But through telling my friends and family I have made this pledge, and now making it truly public on the internet, I am making the commitment much more real. If I go back on it, I will devalue my word and, justifiably, face judgement and negative reappraisals of my character and reliability. For me, at least, this is a sufficiently effective motivator.

I sincerely thank you or taking the time to have read this article and I hope you have at least found the ideas presented here interesting. There are many counter arguments to many of these philosophies and ideas that are no doubt worth exploring but, on balance, I think systematizing your charitable work is a positive thing.

We have such an extraordinarily fleeting time in this world and so few opportunities to make truly positive changes here before we’re gone. But by being altruistic in the most effective ways possible, I think we stand a much better chance of improving the lives and experiences of all people, everywhere.