Equipped with tools to measure our calories, steps, working hours, wasted hours, water intake and sleep cycles, we have now been exhorted to measure our charitable impact, too. Books, podcasts, TikToks and digital guides implore us to donate our money cautiously, rationally, to the charities that promise to make a dollar go the furthest it can. Holiday season giving can start to feel a little like sports betting: It doesn’t matter if you’re loyal to a scrappy local team — the data can tell you exactly where your money should go.
This is not how I thought about charity when I was growing up. I remember my childhood neighbor declaring that when he rode the subway he sometimes found himself spending more than he would on a cab, because he did not believe in toughening his heart toward people asking for change. This seemed like an approach that made up for impracticality with grace: When someone in front of you says they need help, do not look away.
What is the right way to give away money, anyway? The debate has been fomented partly by a group of billionaires — most prominently the Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz and his wife, Cari Tuna — whose approach to charity argues, essentially, that you do not get to feel good for having done anything at all. People should give wherever their money is most needed and most likely to yield the biggest effects.
Mr. Moskowitz and Ms. Tuna are among the Silicon Valley billionaires who have embraced the philosophical movement known as effective altruism, a worldview that focuses on optimizing good. Elon Musk, a founder of Tesla and SpaceX, said effective altruist thinking closely aligned with his views. The co-founder of Skype, Jaan Tallinn, also supported the movement, and former board members of OpenAI had ties to it as well.
For billionaires who made their money by crunching numbers, effective altruism extends that into the way they give away their money, too. It is a data-loving engineer’s mode of do-gooding, for the first generation of ultra wealth created by engineers It’s an approach that can give people moral permission to keep amassing more wealth — as long as they give some of it away. E.A. fits comfortably into an era of widening inequality, as the fortunes of the world’s richest have grown, and so has their ability to shape ideas for the rest of us.
E.A. applied the sheen of good will (altruism) to a brand of thinking (optimization) that had already taken over the way we eat and exercise, work and live. And just as health optimization began as a tech-world obsession that trickled down to the rest of us, something similar has happened in recent years with the ethos of effective altruism and Americans’ sensibility around charitable giving.
From the conversation
Emma GoldbergReporterHello! I'm wondering: How do you decide where to donate money? Did reading this article give you any new ideas to consider?
AAmyNY@Emma Goldberg, yes! This article gave us much to think about. In my family, we are not wealthy but comfortable, and our own lives have benefited greatly from many nonprofit organizations - especially those with missions relating to religion, arts, and education. So it's easy and natural for us to support those organizations. We don't need to see a rating, because we've seen the results of their work with our own eyes. Perhaps there are many who either don't attend anything run by a non-profit, or don't realize they do, so they think giving is only about stereotypical poor people in a faraway place. I like that you offer options for a more balanced approach.
Read full commentMMaeveUSI live around the poverty level so have little money to give to charity. I am very thoughtful of how I spend the money I do have. I do not want to add harm to the world by the way I spend money thereby necessitating charity. I try to "first do no harm."As examples:I have a small IRA. I choose the funds and companies that are not polluting industries or harm animals, the ones that pay living wages. I check As We Sow for suggestions of ethical investing.I buy and eat food that has been grown organically, and regenerative when I can find it. I only eat pasture raised meat and eggs because I don't want the animals to suffer. I feel I'd be ingesting that suffering if I were to eat them. I buy fair trade chocolate and tea.I recently purchased a sofa and took my time buying it. I purchased one that had been made in North Carolina by workers paid living wages. It also didn't out-gas harmful chemicals and was made with Forest Stewardship Council certified wood.I recently replaced my really old car with a EV. I love it because it is so quiet and does not contribute to the smog of my city.I wear clothes as long as they are presentable, then wear them in my yard planting native flowers for the pollinators and birds. Then I turn them into rags to clean the house.Can I do better? Yes. But striving to live causing as little harm as possible gives me great joy and satisfaction. Even if I can't cut a big check to the local humane society or women's shelter each Christmas.
Read full commentAAlexBrooklyn@Emma Goldberg thank you for this article. I give to a range of organizations, some that have changed the arc of my life and my family’s, some that envision a world that is livable for everyone, and some that add cultural value that makes the livable life worth living. I feel fortunate to be able to give across this spectrum, and would never shame anyone for giving in a modest or values driven way, unlike the implicit criticism that EA adherents level at the rest of us.
Read full commentMMBrooklyn@Emma Goldberg Opening with a caveat - I'm a nonprofit fundraiser at a relatively large organization. But I prefer to donate to small, community-based nonprofits, parks/botanic gardens, and museums primarily because I know from experience that these organizations often have the hardest time quantifying their impact. Solid data practices require resources that are out of reach or impractical for many of these organizations. My choices as a donor, nonprofit decision-maker, and fundraiser are informed by another philanthropic school of thought: community-centric fundraising, which is also an equity-based framework. The difference is that it denounces more data-centric modes of giving as inherently harmful to scrappy but impactful community-based organizations, particularly those run by, and for, members of historically marginalized communities. It also embraces time/volunteerism, connections within the community, and resource-sharing among nonprofits and other local organizations as ways to give and make a difference. It's interesting that two opposite movements are both based on genuine concern for social justice.
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