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Here was one project: https://efektywnyaltruizm.org/blog/help-for-ukrainians/. I found that link on https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/gacpE79RKke2foG9K/rough-attempt-to-profile-charities-which-support-ukrainian.
Would any of the funds be able to deploy additional donations quickly to projects that recently lost funding? Or is this an exceptional time where it might be more effective to donate directly to impacted groups, so they can receive donations faster?
Since Meta hasn't specified a start time for the match, should we assume you're eligible if you donate after midnight on Nov. 15 in your time zone?
Thanks for the update. If you have to donate twice, it's really a 50% match on up to $200 given per donor per organization, right?
Not to be confused with the Behar.
This was a great reference when the every.org match started and I needed to evaluate more organizations quickly. Thanks!
"Nov 2 8:43pm PT update - Amazing! Givers have rallied in less than 48 hours to unlock nearly $250k in matching. We are thrilled to announce that a generous donor has added an additional $100k into the Incentive Fund to keep the momentum going! Check out our realtime dashboard to see how much of the funds are left." https://blog.every.org/fall-giving-challenge/
Thank you! I hadn't thought about the issue through this lens before. I will explore those resources.
Thank you! I will work on internalizing these ideas.
Any good face shields you can recommend? :-) Perhaps a shield of good relationships and overall good mental health?
Hi, I did a minor in linguistics and enjoyed it. I also considered becoming an academic linguist but decided against it like you.
In case you haven't seen it, 80,000 Hours has some advice on how to try out software engineering at https://80000hours.org/career-reviews/software-engineering/. The "Next steps" section has a good summary on some options.
What do you think of waiting to give for now (investing in the stock market instead) and reassessing in a few years whether to donate, in the hope that we will have a better collective understanding of the relevant considerations by that time?
I agree it makes sense to spread the idea of effective giving widely. The only counterexample I can think of is the following, which was probably limited to affecting only one person's donations: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/yz5bqvG2sG92tLHmM/open-thread-4?commentId=pW684GoPXQE4YjdLs. Interestingly, this was a person to person interaction rather than through media. Overall it seems very good to share the idea of effective giving more.
For a simpler investment setup that is long-only and doesn't use leverage other than leveraged ETFs, how would you like to see additional altruistic funds allocated among the following?
- QVAL/IVAL/QMOM/IMOM
- AXS Chesapeake
- EDC (3x emerging markets)
- A different high-risk, high-return fund?
What's the closest we can get to the global market portfolio with leveraged ETFs?
For "RPTP is a strong reason to consider giving later", I'd recommend linking to the forum version of the article since it has been updated, unlike the currently linked version. https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/m85Ecd8QFE7muvojj/rptp-is-a-strong-reason-to-consider-giving-later
Welcome!
The Global Health and Development Fund that you mentioned would be a good choice. Note that the fund's 2 most recent payouts have been related to respiratory disease including COVID-19, which fits with what you're interested in supporting (see the Payout Reports section of the fund's page).
For more COVID-19 donation opportunities, see the post Prioritizing COVID-19 interventions & individual donations.
For charities working on global warming, see Founders Pledge climate change recommendations.
Thanks, this was useful! A few comments:
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There was some more discussion on this topic in the following question: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/iyPQ9fSBGrweXAMLL/investing-to-give-beginner-advice
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You write that money should be added to DAFs in years when your marginal tax rate is high. What should we do with money earned in other years? I believe the answer is to invest in taxable accounts (i.e. your section "Mutual funds in a standard mutual fund advisor"). Then in years when you want to contribute to the DAF, you can move money from your taxable account to the DAF. Donate shares that have increased in value to the DAF to avoid capital gains taxes, and sell shares that have decreased to tax-loss harvest and then contribute the cash to the DAF. In fact, some people may wish to consider starting off investing in taxable accounts and waiting to open a DAF at a later time.
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The section "Mutual funds in a standard mutual fund advisor" discusses capital gains tax, but this should not usually be an issue since you can donate appreciated shares to charity or a DAF. Instead, the taxes to look at are from dividends. These are taxed at the capital gains rate that you cite, and are additionally taxed as ordinary income in most states.
Thanks! Yes, fortunately the message to cancel everything has gotten out.
OK that makes sense, thanks.
It seems like Ben Todd is saying that increasing one's exposure to stocks increases risk, but Lifecycle Investing is saying this decreases risk when done early on. How should we reconcile these two views?
I gave my 2018 quota of donations in early January 2019 in order to bunch my donations. I'm planning on doing this every other year, giving near the end of the alternate years. Should I report those donations in this survey or wait until next year?
Just wanted to give a quick note of encouragement that earning to give for long term future or EA meta causes can be very impactful. According to a survey of community leaders last year, donations to the long term future and EA meta EA funds were usually considered even more cost effective than donations to the animal welfare and global poverty funds.
There was another discussion about this on the forum a couple of years ago: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/Ebjm8rNFP4mGEjtFD/is-the-community-short-of-software-engineers-after-all
To automatically invest money each paycheck so that you don't have to remember, mutual funds are another option besides ETFs (it's not always possible to automatically invest in an ETF). Mutual funds have higher account minimum balances, though.
Interesting that the Long Term Future Fund is thought of as the most cost effective fund, even though the cause area is considered one of the least funding constrained. Sounds like there are still some pretty amazing opportunities for donations in that area!
In the linked Summary of Evidence document, in the section "Farmed animal vs. wild animals vs. general antispeciesism focus", some of the rankings in the grid do not match the explanations below. For example, under Scale, the grid has Farmed animal focus as rank 1, but the explanation below has General antispeciesism as rank 1.
How much more helpful would it be to take the full survey vs the abridged one, for those who have taken the survey in prior years? I'm willing to take the full survey if it's helpful.
Any word on the global health budget decisions?
One argument for saving more is that it could allow you to have a higher risk tolerance, since you could afford to lose some of the money. If you planned to donate any excess savings after some time, this could increase the expected value of your donations. I wrote about this here: http://effective-altruism.com/ea/rz/increasing_risk_tolerance_by_growing_your/
Let me know if you have any questions about this.
Thanks, I've written letters to my senators.
One consideration is that you should have enough saved to live on in case you temporarily stop working. Here is 80,000 Hours' view on this: https://80000hours.org/2015/11/why-everyone-even-our-readers-should-save-enough-to-live-for-6-24-months/
It looks like 2 posts that were created while the bug was occurring are not showing up on the main page: "Donor coordination under simplifying assumptions" and "What does the election of President Trump mean for EA?"
If you waited until Jan 2017, would you ask about both 2015 and 2016 donations?
The section "Where does the money go?" says it goes to AMF, but it says the charity treats parasitic worms.
I had to click on View More under Add a section to your profile, and then a tile appeared called Causes you care about. I checked the Other checkbox and typed effective altruism.
If you donate the stock directly to a charity without selling it first, you don't pay taxes on long-term gains. In your example, if you donate $100 of stocks and reinvest the $100 in cash, then you don't pay taxes on the $25 capital gain. When you sell the $125 in two years, you pay taxes on a long-term capital gain of $25, compared to the gain of $50 if you donated the $100 in cash instead.
Here's an article that describes this in more detail: http://www.fivecentnickel.com/2010/04/30/reset-your-investment-cost-basis-with-charitable-donations/ It also mentions the wash sale rule, which might be the law that you were thinking of. That rule only applies if you sell assets at a loss, so it wouldn't come into play here.
You're right that you could end up paying more in taxes if you sold the stocks less than a year after reinvesting. Another caveat is that you can only deduct donations of stock up to 30% of adjusted gross income, unlike 50% for cash donations.
I have a couple questions about donating stock to charity in the U.S. Particularly I'm wondering about the case where someone has cash available to make a donation, but they want to instead donate an equivalent amount of appreciated stock and invest the cash in the same stock. This would decrease the cost basis of their stock, reducing the amount of tax owed when selling shares of the stock in the future.
- When is the best time to invest the cash: as you receive the money, right before you donate, or after any restricted period after you donate (some funds impose a waiting period to buy back the stock if you have recently sold shares)?
- If the stock only has a small long-term capital gain, is there any advantage to donating cash this year and waiting to donate stock until the gain has increased?
Also see this summary page on giving now vs. later: http://www.effective-altruism.com/ea/4e/giving_now_vs_later_a_summary/
This was actually taken into account in the article I linked to. Using their definition of a moderate-risk portfolio, looking at historical data it is unlikely that the account would drop below $20,000.
Stephen Hawking will be answering questions about AI on reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/3eret9/science_ama_series_i_am_stephen_hawking
Thanks so much for writing this guide! I was able to use many of your suggestions to run a successful fundraiser, raising $2,680 for SCI. I really liked the overall idea of using this as an opportunity to connect with people. It was great reconnecting with people I hadn't talked to in a while.
Thanks for making this! I would like if the stories in the RSS feed included the name of the website where the content came from.
Would it be worthwhile for aspiring effective altruists to download BOINC or World Community Grid to run on their computers? These are distributed computing programs that try to tackle problems that take a lot of computing power to solve. The software runs in the background on your computer and works on part of a project of your choice.
If so, would it be possible to estimate the best project to participate in? Here are the lists of projects available for BOINC and World Community Grid. At first glance, the project Malariacontrol.net looks most closely related to any promising cause that has been identified in the EA community, as one of their objectives is to "optimize deployment of established interventions and integrated strategies" for malaria (full description).
Here is Jeff's post about John Wesley: http://www.jefftk.com/p/history-of-earning-to-give-iii-john-wesley
If you have any questions about the Methodist church, feel free to ask - I am a United Methodist.
What would be good advice for people who say they would only be happy with a career in the arts?
I know Citi Forward and Citi Thank You cards earn donatable points, but the Citi Forward card is no longer being issued. For people looking for a new credit card, it looks like cash back cards like Citi Double Cash would beat Citi Thank You. Maybe the EA action could be to look for a cash back or reward card that will give you the most money to donate to charity, depending on your spending habits. For example, a cash back card offering 5% back on certain categories might beat the Citi Double Cash's consistent 2% back if you tended to spend money in those categories.
For those of you that earn credit card points, you might want to check if your points can be used to donate money to charity. For my credit card, I'm able to donate more money per point than if I redeemed the points for cash. I believe these donations are tax deductible in the U.S. (I think they would go on line 17 in Schedule A).
Do you think it is better to decide each year where to donate, or to give organizations multi-year commitments of what you expect to donate?