Imma🔸
Bio
I work as Software Tester in the Railway Industry and donate a part of my income.
I got into EA in 2012, took the 10 Percent pledge in 2015.
As of autumn 2024, I am also mentor at Giving For Animals. Feel free to reach out if you'd like to chat about donating or a giving pledge.
Posts 1
Comments105
I can relate a lot to your story.
My first experiences talking about effective giving were so negative that they discouraged me from doing it for years. Maybe it had a negative impact because I communicated so poorly that people were put off and stopped being open to the idea in the first place.
Every time I read on the internet that I should encourage others to give, it felt like yet another moral obligation that I was failing to fulfill.
"You should give it to me instead"
I got this one a few times, and I find it extremely dismissive and disrespectful. Even more so when I think about people in extreme poverty and animals in factory farms.
Another time, the other viewed donating as no better than giving in to beggars... a weakness that has nothing to do with doing good.
Surprisingly, the same people were very understanding or even positive about vegetarianism or veganism.
Nowadays, it has become a little easier to talk about effective giving since I can point to the website of the local effective giving organization. I still avoid being the first point of contact.
Edit: retracted the downvote.
I agree that preserving democracy is important, but I downvoted this post:
- the ALL CAP title comes across as yelling - and is unclear
- not facts, references to sources. Very little reasoning. Tell us based on what events you believe there is a short term collapse (and that can be in 1-2 paragraphs)
- typos
- no clear call to action. "there is a range of solutions" - why not mention what those solutions are?
I've listened to your podcast and there I learnt things. This post, however, does not provide me any information.
Question, just to check whether I haven't misunderstood this post:
- Are the EA Funds (Animal Welfare Fund, Long-Term Future Fund, etc.) "charitable projects" and not "hosted funds" and will GWWC keep supporting them? The EA Funds website
- Will you continue to maintain an ANBI (tax-deductibilty and tax exemption) in the Netherlands?
It would be very sad if we lost these two things without handover.
I made two small donations via Every.org and regret it. By default, your profile and donations are public, and it's not immediately obvious (a privacy issue—especially if you make a potentially controversial donation as an individual), which I find unethical. Additionally, Every.org sends a lot of spam if you miss the opt-out button. These are known as UX dark patterns.
Next time, I'll email the charity to ask if I can use conventional payment methods (if the donation is large enough) or simply refrain from donating.
Being public about one's donations can be beneficial, but donors should have easy control over what they make public and what they don't. I encourage organizations to think twice before using Every.org.
Thankfully, our local effective giving organization and the GWWC platform don't have these issues.
FWIW: definitely not a world vision, but Ozy's blog is the most heart-warming thing I've read after the recent US elections.
Some thoughts on what would help. Some of them are already happening.
- funding circles. Note that most official funding circles I know require a large budget and are therefore inaccessible for mid-sized donors.
- Related: a small group of like-minded donors evaluating a specific organization. Donors could reach out to each other and organize themselves.
- Give each other recommendations. If you have expertise of specific cause area and you can recommend organizations (especially when you don't have a conflict of interest with them), do talk about it to potential donors during networking events. Or, if you are a donor, do ask.
- EA funds can publish a more detailed public write-up of their grants, so that interested donors can follow up. Especially interesting when they can't give as much as they want due to funding constraints.
- Donor lotteries
- Impact markets, if implemented well.
- The two local effective giving organizations I know best (Effektiv Spenden and Doneer Effectief) offer donor advising. However, they might be limited to the cause areas they are working in themselves.
2 small donations through Effektiv Spenden.
Unfortunately I will not move a lot of money this year, nor will I spend a lot of time thinking about my donations. But I am happy that I can do at least this little bit.
* I thought that, if everyone with an income similar to mine would do this, the climate would be in a better state, but I was wrong. I quickly fact-checked this. This article on nature.com says "The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) says that an annual investment of $2.4 trillion is needed in the energy system alone until 2035 to limit temperature rise to below 1.5 °C from pre-industrial levels.". I understand from the article this includes funding from governments and companies. I am not going to disclose my income and my donation budget here, but I can say that my donation is much less than a fair share of this 2.4 trillion. (It may be, if my donation is unusually cost-effective). - apparently it's damn hard to fix climate change.
** there may be difference between funding gap that the org believes they have themselves, and the funding gap that ACE thinks the org has. I mean the latter.