by Cullen O’Keefe, President
Since our main event each year is our summer income pledge, HLS Gives (please sign up if you haven’t!), some might perceive us as a singularly money-focused organization. We aren’t. We encourage donations to effective charities because we think money is an extremely potent tool for helping others. But it is far from the only tool; not every problem is a nail to charity’s hammer. For students and others living on a low budget, donations may be appealing but unrealistic. In this blog post, I outline some ways that I practice effective altruism beyond giving to effective charities. Some of these practices have some cost (beyond the opportunity cost), but many of them can be done nearly for free, and some may even save you money (which you could then donate if you so desire).
1: Reduce your meat, dairy, and egg consumption
There’s a lot to dislike, ethically, about consuming animal products. Animal agriculture is a major contributor to greenhouse gas emissions, antibiotic resistance, numerous health problems, and, of course, immense animal suffering. By reducing your animal product consumption, you will ameliorate these harms.
If you’re not ready to commit to veganism (as a mea culpa, I am not vegan), there’s still a lot you can do to reduce the suffering your food consumption creates. Vegetarianism is of course a good start, both in its own right and as a stepping stone towards veganism if you so desire. Consider trying your target diet one day per week (e.g., “Meatless Mondays”) at the outset to ease the transition. Learning new plant-based recipes will further facilitate the adjustment. You can also try targeting especially harmful menu items (e.g., beef for greenhouse gas emissions, fish for direct suffering caused). For those who can, reducing animal consumption is an easy way to make the world a better place.
2: Learn
Investing in your knowledge and skill bases will pay dividends over the long run as you act, give, and persuade more effectively. Reading up on effective altruism and related topics—e.g., philosophy, economics, poverty, psychology, politics, productivity, technology—is therefore a good way to spend your time when you can’t yet afford to donate. Our “About Effective Altruism” page is a good starting point, as are our forthcoming discussion groups.
3: Invest in your career
For better or worse, your career is your lifetime’s biggest time commitment, so choosing a career strategically is incredibly important. If you’re in school, make sure you consider all your possible career paths and choose the one that is most effective. 80,000 Hours, a nonprofit dedicated to helping people with exactly this problem, is an excellent resource for this. I’ve found their blog especially helpful.
Once you’ve decided on a career path, you can also spend time cultivating skills and knowledge that will help you be more effective in your work and/or earn more (so you can give more) in the future. For example, I’m interested in the risks to humanity from artificial superintelligence and might want to work in AI policy someday, but lack a technical background in relevant fields. So, I’ve been trying to learn more about the issue to keep that career path open.
4: Be politically active
Some problems are best addressed by political pressure, not charity. Although good information on effective political interventions is limited, at least one study suggests that bigger protests get better political results. So attending marches and protests on issues that will improve the world can make a meaningful difference.
Anecdotal evidence also supports the effectiveness of phone calls and other communications. Technologies like 5 Calls, Resist Bot, and Countable makes pressuring your elected officials this way easy.
5: Stay healthy
Making doing good a central part of one’s life does not have to mean a singular focus on good works, nor should it. Focusing on your general welfare, mental and physical health, happiness, social skills, and stress management should make you a more effective agent of change as you live longer, work better, and ultimately do more good.
6: Use Amazon Smile
For people who use Amazon (as I suspect many of my readers do), using smile.amazon.com for all your Amazon shopping is an easy, cost-free way to do good. For all purchases made through Amazon Smile, Amazon donates 0.5% of your purchase to your designated charity. Amazon Smile currently supports two of our recommended charities: Against Malaria and GiveDirectly. Importantly, this only works through purchases made through the Amazon Smile site, so make sure you bookmark smile.amazon.com and use that URL for all your Amazon purchases to maximize the amount of money given.
7: Pledge now to give later
If you want to make giving a significant part of your life, but cannot afford to give a significant amount now (because you’re in school or for another reason), pledging to give in the future is a good first step towards that. Giving What We Can identifies three benefits of such a pledge: increasing the likelihood of follow-through, supporting other pledgers, and inspiring others to give.
There are three main effective altruism pledges one should consider, depending on one’s circumstances. All of them support deferring most or all donations till significant earnings begin. Our partner, One For The World, asks donors to pledge 1% of their income (out of the total 2.6% the average person donates) to effective charities that help the global poor. They allow you to defer the start date of your recurring donations, so you can pledge to give 1% now then start doing so once you land your first job. If you feel like giving more than 1%, you should consider The Life You Can Save’s pledge, the commitment for which adjusts according to income. Thus, it asks you to pay nothing while your income is below $50,000, such as while you’re in school, and pay more as your salary grows (the average BigLaw first-year associate will give about 6%, for example). Finally, Giving What We Can asks members to pledge 10% of their income, and permits students and others on a tight budget to give 1% of their spending money. Whichever you choose, pledging now is a real manifestation of your commitment to helping the global poor.
8: Join the EA community
Donating your time and talent to the effective altruism movement is potentially one of the most high-impact things one can do. By getting more people to join our movement (and getting those already here to stay), you can multiply your impact and do more good than you would have been able to alone. HLS Effective Altruism has several position openings and would love to have you on board.