Earning To Give involves pursuing a high-earning career in order to donate a substantial portion of your income to effective charities. Though earning to give doesn’t involve directly helping others with your career, it’s a path that can have incredible positive impact. Flora works as a software engineer. She loves … Read more
Effective Altruism is a social movement that uses evidence and reason to identify the most effective ways to help others. Its top identifying features are the goal of doing the most good you can with the resources you have, the use of empirical evidence and careful analysis as the primary … Read more
Sometimes, investing more resources—whether it’s money, time, or effort—produces diminishing benefits. For instance, the first dollar you spend on something is often far more useful than the thousandth dollar. This concept, known as diminishing returns, plays a crucial role in evaluating the potential of various opportunities. Illustrating ‘diminishing returns’ Imagine … Read more
Leverage refers to the influence you have over how resources like time, money, and labor (particularly of others) are spent. The more of these resources you’re able to influence, the larger your leverage. Increasing your leverage in a promising cause area can be a great way to increase your impact. … Read more
When we’re uncertain about how our decisions will play out, it’s helpful to consider the expected value of our actions. In other words, using expected values can provide an idea of what we should “expect on average” from uncertain decisions. It can even be used to help in our most … Read more
Marginal impact refers to the additional difference your specific investment of time, money, or effort makes. Rather than focusing on the total impact of an organization or movement, it’s about recognizing how much your contribution adds to what’s already being done. This way, you can better decide where to direct … Read more
Some causes, organizations, and interventions receive far less funding, talent, political support, and public attention than others. These are considered “neglected.” Paying attention to neglectedness helps us spot unique opportunities for impact and ensures that our investments are more cost-effective. Causes that receive a lot of resources tend to face … Read more
Your comparative advantage refers to the extra advantage you have in a particular role in relation to the skills, strengths, and fitness of others who could do the job. Playing to your comparative advantage can help you to maximize your counterfactual impact, even if (perhaps surprisingly) it isn’t the role … Read more
Cause neutrality is the effort to remain impartial and open-minded when deciding which causes to prioritize. While true neutrality is difficult, supporters of cause neutrality aim to avoid getting attached to “pet causes” or limiting themselves to a narrow field. Instead, they focus on exploring a broad range of causes … Read more
Counterfactual impact is the difference you make by doing something versus what would have happened if you hadn’t done it. For example, if you help someone in need but simply replace someone else who would have done the same, your counterfactual impact is minimal because the person would have received … Read more
