I gave to charity for eight years before asking if it worked

This is post 1 of 5 of the Giving with intention series

In 2007, the year our first child was born, I set up a standing order to Cancer Research UK. Cancer had appeared in my family, which gave the choice a vague rationale, but beyond that I had no particular reason to choose it over anything else. Neither my family nor my wife's had any tradition of organised giving, no inherited framework for where charitable money should go or why. What we had was a new baby, and with it came a sudden and unfamiliar feeling of obligation. The charity felt serious. A safe, credible bet. The direct debit at the time was £25 a month. It felt meaningful, but I had no way of knowing whether it was.

That question, it turned out, would take me the better part of a decade to begin answering properly. The ten years since have been spent on little else.

On instinct

Becoming a parent changes the way you look at the world in ways that are difficult to predict in advance. I tend to think of myself as a fairly rational person, someone who works things through before acting, but becoming a parent altered my priorities in ways I had not anticipated. I started to notice things I had not paid attention to before. One of those changes was a sharp and immediate consciousness of scale and of responsibility. I had brought a child into a world with a great deal in it that was wrong, a great deal of suffering that was preventable, and a great deal of complacency from people, including myself, who had the means to do something about it but had not done much.

I did not think about this in those terms at the time. What I felt, more precisely, was that it would be dishonest not to act on it in some way. The Cancer Research direct debit was the path of least resistance.

Over the following years, the portfolio grew in the way that most people's charitable giving grows: incrementally, emotionally, and without much strategy. A colleague mentioned a charity. A news story prompted a one-off donation. A direct debit to a second organisation appeared, then a third. Each choice felt right at the time of making. None of them were made on the basis of any clear idea about what the charity was actually achieving with the money.

This is, I suspect, how most people give. The intention is genuine. The method is essentially nonexistent.

On not asking the right question

For a while, not asking felt acceptable. I was giving, which was more than most people around me were doing. The charities I supported were credible, respected, and well-known. Surely the money was going somewhere good. That was the assumption: I had no hard evidence for it, and I was not actively looking for any.

What broke the assumption was not a single dramatic moment. It was a short essay, written in 1972 by a philosopher named Peter Singer, that I heard mentioned on a podcast at roughly the right point in my life. The argument Singer makes is simple enough to state in a sentence: if you can prevent something very bad from happening at no comparable cost to yourself, you are obligated to do it. He illustrates this with the image of a child drowning in a shallow pond. You would not walk past the child to protect your shoes. The fact that the child is a stranger, or that others are nearby who could also help, does not change your obligation.

The argument is discomfiting in proportion to how seriously you take it. I took it seriously enough to sit with it for a while, and over time, it changed something in my thinking. It did not reassure me that what I was doing was sufficient. If anything, it pointed firmly in the opposite direction.

But Singer's argument answers the whether question. It does not answer the how.

The question that followed

Once I accepted that giving substantially was both morally defensible and practically possible, the next question became more technical and considerably harder. If I was going to give, what should I be trying to achieve? How would I know whether I was achieving it? And were some ways of giving dramatically more effective than others?

The answer to the last question, I discovered, is: yes, by orders of magnitude.

This is where the Effective Altruism movement enters the picture, to which Singer is a philosophical forefather. At its most basic, it is a framework for trying to do as much good as possible with whatever resources you commit to giving. It takes seriously the idea that not all charitable giving is equivalent, that the difference between a well-evaluated intervention and a poorly-evaluated one can be the difference between genuinely helping and spending money on good intentions with negligible effect, and that the question "What works?" is both answerable and worth asking before writing a cheque.

For me, that shift in thinking happened roughly ten years ago. The direct debit to Cancer Research UK had been running for the better part of a decade by that point, and I had never once asked what it was achieving. When I started asking, seriously and with effort, the answers were complicated. They changed how I thought about the rest of my giving, and they set off a process of rebuilding the whole approach from the ground up. That process is still running.

Where this series goes

This post is the start of a short series. Over the next four instalments, I want to do something I have not attempted publicly before: document how I actually think about giving now, what framework I use to evaluate charities, how I have structured my giving across cause areas, and what my giving portfolio looks like in concrete terms.

These posts are not advocacy. They are an attempt to document the thinking, show practical examples, and perhaps start a conversation, or prompt someone reading this to act. I have spent a decade building a view on this, and it is worth showing the working.

The question that runs through all of it: if effectiveness can be measured, and it can, at least imperfectly, what does it mean to give without measuring it?

That is where the next post starts.

Why you should consider giving more of your money away effectively and why you should talk about it

In an age where individual actions can catalyse global change, the power of giving has never been more evident. Donating to effective charities isn't just an act of generosity; it's a strategic move towards creating substantial, measurable impact in the world. This is my attempt to delve a bit deeper into the rationale behind donating to organisations that maximise the effect of every cent, underscored by my long-standing personal commitment to contribute thousands of pounds of my hard-earned cash every year to hand-selected causes.

The Importance of Effective Charities

Defining Effectiveness in Charity

An effective charity is not just about the goodwill behind it but its ability to produce significant, measurable impacts with the resources it has. Such organisations are characterised by their cost-effectiveness, transparency, and evidence-based approaches to solving problems. They go beyond good intentions, rigorously evaluating their interventions to ensure that donations translate into real-world benefits. The aim is to maximise the impact on the cause that the given organisation is focusing on.

The Selection Process

Choosing where to donate involves more than picking a cause close to one's heart. It requires diligent research to identify organisations that not only address pressing needs but also demonstrate a track record of success and efficient use of funds. Organisations like GiveWell and The Life You Can Save offer comprehensive analyses, publish their data, continuously refine their criteria and aim to course correct as best as they can. All this makes it possible for all of us to make much more informed choices about which charities to support.

Emotional vs. Impact-Driven Giving

While emotional responses often drive spontaneous donations (e.g. responding to an appeal by a donkey hospice operating in a nearby city), effective giving advocates for a more analytical and more impact-focused approach. By focusing on outcomes, donors can ensure their contributions are not just felt but are also effective in making a substantial difference. And this difference can be measured and evaluated. The best charities are often orders of magnitude more effective (in terms of impact achieved per dollar invested) than those that don't rigorously focus on effectiveness (which, sadly, are most charities out there).

Personal Journey: A Commitment to Effective Giving

My journey into philanthropy and effective altruism began with a simple realisation: I had the means to make a difference, and I wanted to make as much of a difference as I could. Over the years, I've spent a lot of time reading and learning about philosophy and ethics and came across Peter Singer's groundbreaking book Famine, Affluence and Morality. From there, one can easily leap into the Effective Altruism movement, which considers Singer as one of its philosophical forefathers.

My decision to donate considerable amounts of money every year to hand-picked charities was motivated by a desire to see real change in areas of profound need. I selected each charity I donate to after careful research (which I update every year) with a focus on commitment to transparency and impact, aligning with my belief that giving should be intentional, effective and transformative. At the same time, I tried to concentrate my giving on causes which deeply resonate with me — global health, long-term future, humanism and rationality.

Maximizing Impact

Realising that a dollar of donated funds can have a vastly different impact based on how and where it is spent, I felt that if I deeply cared about the impact I was making, donating to effective charities is the only way. Supporting such organisations ensures that each contribution goes towards making the most significant possible difference. Some of the organisations I support include Against Malaria Foundation, Malaria Consortium and Effective Altruism Funds. These charities use evidence and analysis to deploy resources in ways that can dramatically alter outcomes for the better, whether by saving lives, improving education, or protecting the environment.

Now, is all my giving as effective as it can be? The vast majority of it, I hope, is. But a small part of my donations also goes to charities and organisations that I simply want to support because I really want them to succeed in their mission (e.g. Cancer Research, Humanists, and UNICEF), even though their effectiveness is perhaps not as high as I would like it to be.

Personal Fulfilment & Encouraging Accountability

Beyond the tangible impacts, giving effectively brings profound personal satisfaction. Knowing that your donations are working hard to address critical issues provides a sense of fulfilment unmatched by more passive forms of support. It is a way to connect donors directly to the causes they care about, creating a feedback loop of positivity and purpose.

Supporting effective charities also promotes a culture of accountability within the nonprofit sector. It signals to all organisations the importance of transparency, efficiency, and measurable outcomes, raising the bar for what donors expect and what charities strive to achieve.

Why Being Public About Altruism Is Beneficial

There are many strong reasons to abandon once and for all the idea that charity should be private and that one should not talk about it publicly. If one cares about maximising impact, if one really wants to do as much good as possible, then being open and outspoken about one's giving is imperative.

Inspiring Others

When people share their stories of giving, they do more than just highlight their own contributions; they inspire others to take action, and this little article is my way of doing just that. Publicising altruistic efforts can help demystify the process of donating, making it more accessible and appealing to a broader audience. It helps explain why charity matters and may help inform about some of the key considerations involved in choosing where to donate, creating a narrative that encourages others to consider how they, too, can make a difference.

Addressing Criticism

While some may view publicising one's charity work as self-serving, my view is that the broader impact of such openness far outweighs potential critiques. The goal is not self-promotion but the promotion of a cause, leveraging personal influence to spur collective action. And the more effective that action can be, the better.

How Everyone Can Contribute

Donating money is a great way to help and drive progress in the cause area you are focused on. But contributing to effective charities doesn't always mean writing a check. Whilst EA popularised the concept of earning to give, there are many other options to make a difference instead of, or in addition to, giving your money away — volunteering time, lending expertise, or even spreading the word about an organisation's work can be equally valuable. What matters is the intention and the effort to make a positive impact, regardless of the form it takes. Just remember that choosing the cause and the organisation you are supporting will be the crucial determinant with regards to the impact you can make.

The journey to impactful giving begins with a single step. Even small donations to effective charities can have outsized impacts when used wisely. This can be monthly, yearly or, of course, one-off. The key is to start, to take that initial action towards contributing to the greater good, and to build from there.

Conclusion

In a world rife with challenges, donating to effective charities offers a beacon of hope and an opportunity to make a difference. Do you care about animal welfare (as there is still an unfathomable amount of animal suffering in the world) - there are many great, effective charities for you to choose from. Would you rather help with mitigating the risk of AI (perhaps because you share my view that, in the long run, AI may pose an existential risk to humanity)? Well, there are charities for that, too. There are several major causes worthy of your attention, and the choice is only yours.

Effective giving represents a commitment not just to giving but to giving wisely, ensuring that each dollar/pound/euro contributes to building a better future. And by sharing our journeys of altruism, we can all inspire others to join in this movement of meaningful change achieved in the most effective way possible. Today, we have the opportunity to turn our compassion into making a real impact. Let's embrace it with open hearts and minds.