Newbie EA question: Organizations like GWWC recommend giving 10%+ of your annual income as part of their pledge, but I’m wondering what the stance is on reinvesting your income, even if it’s in low-return risk-free investments, and donating it when you’re older so you give more money later instead of less money now.
You may get less altruistic as you age, so if you wait you may never actually donate.
Estimates of the returns on investment may be over-optimistic.
Giving to charities that can demonstrate their effectiveness provides an incentive for charities to get better at demonstrating that they’re effective. We can’t just wait for charities to improve — it takes donations to make that happen.
Having an active culture of giving encourages other people to give, too.
Better to eliminate problems as soon as possible. E.g. if we had eliminated smallpox in 1967 instead of 1977, many people would have been spared.
Giving to particular organizations can accelerate our learning about which causes are best to support. (Note: this wasn’t in Julia’s post, it’s from Luke Muehlhauser’s comment under it as to “most important reason missing from” this section)
Reasons to give later:
As time passes, we’ll probably have better information about which interventions work best. Even in a few years, we may know a lot more than we do now and be able to give to better causes.
Investing money may yield more money to eventually donate.
When you’re young, you should invest in developing yourself and your career, which will let you help more later.
You can put donations in a donor-advised fund to ensure they will someday be given, even if you haven’t yet figured out where you want them to go.
But it’s a topic that deserves more depth than that summary. …
Besides the links listed after that, you can also check out the patient altruism tag and “related entries” there, as well as the cause prioritization wiki’s donating now vs later.
I suggest investing ~100% of your money in developing-country funds. This is a generally good decision if you’re young (high-risk, but also high EV), and seems much more sustainable than donating 10% of income. Maybe there’s a related guide out there?
It’s honestly my biggest gripe with the EA movement. I think a counterfactual EA movement which stressed more altruistically effective investment as the primary message instead of an actual tithe (40k/Catholic LARP does not generalize across cultures) would do far more good.
Newbie EA question: Organizations like GWWC recommend giving 10%+ of your annual income as part of their pledge, but I’m wondering what the stance is on reinvesting your income, even if it’s in low-return risk-free investments, and donating it when you’re older so you give more money later instead of less money now.
Meta: consider reposting on the EA Forum?
Julia Wise’s 2013 Giving now vs. later: a summary still seems good today:
Besides the links listed after that, you can also check out the patient altruism tag and “related entries” there, as well as the cause prioritization wiki’s donating now vs later.
That assumes you’re in a better position to make such investments than the charity?
That seems like quite a reasonable assumption.
Good question. You should check out Phil Trammell’s writing on patient philanthropy:
* https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/phil-trammell-patient-philanthropy/
* https://docs.google.com/document/d/1NcfTgZsqT9k30ngeQbappYyn-UO4vltjkm64n4or5r4/edit?tab=t.0
I suggest investing ~100% of your money in developing-country funds. This is a generally good decision if you’re young (high-risk, but also high EV), and seems much more sustainable than donating 10% of income. Maybe there’s a related guide out there?
It’s honestly my biggest gripe with the EA movement. I think a counterfactual EA movement which stressed more altruistically effective investment as the primary message instead of an actual tithe (40k/Catholic LARP does not generalize across cultures) would do far more good.