Blog

Stay up to date with Giving What We Can's blog. Featuring the latest news about our community, how to donate effectively, charity evaluation, community events and more!

Giving What We Can's blog, featuring the latest news from our community.

Donate

Pledge

footerNavigation

About us

Contact us

Our team

Our values

Our members

Our events

Transparency

Our mistakes

Our impact

Donate to Giving What We Can

Careers

Leave feedback or make a complaint

About

Our best charities

Take a giving pledge

Get involved

Make a bequest

Videos, books, podcasts

FAQs

Learn more

Press kit

Media coverage

Case studies: People who pledge to give

Media

Footer Navigation

DONATE

topNavigation

Best charities

High-impact causes

Why give to funds

How much to donate

Why donate publicly

Recommendations

Our research & approach

Comparing charities

Evaluating evaluators

Our approach

Giving guides

Videos, books, podcasts and essays

Hesitations about charitable giving

How rich am I?

Can money buy happiness?

Resources

Research

About Us

Our governance structure

Team

Newsletter

Videos

Take the Pledge

Connect with our community

Share our ideas

Events

Giving games

Charity elections

Pledge drive

Fundraisers

Social Shareable Images

Community

What is the Pledge?

Why pledge instead of just donating?

Share the Pledge (inspire others!)

Pledge signers

My Pledge

🔹Trial Pledge

Company Pledge

Further Pledge

Bequests

Have a 1-on-1 call about pledging

Donate now

Manage my donations

Tax deductibility

Top Navigation

Surbhi Bharadwaj

GWWC Team

A widespread critique of international charity and foreign aid is that it undermines state institutions and nonprofits in the recipient country, creating a long-term dependency on "handouts.'' The history of foreign aid is fraught and marked by missteps. Yet such a sweeping narrative does not tell the whole story.

By supporting effective aid organisations that prioritise evidence-based interventions and empower local communities in recipient countries, we can reduce the misallocation of aid, spur growth, and reduce low-income countries’ reliance on foreign aid in the long term.

Does aid make low-income countries dependent on handouts?

This article is part of a series addressing 

A widespread critique of international charity and foreign aid is that it undermines state institutions and nonprofits in the recipient country, creating a long-term dependency on "

 and marked by missteps. Yet such a sweeping narrative does not tell the whole story of foreign aid's 

 on lifting millions out of poverty, nor does it speak to the concerted efforts by effective aid organisations to equip local institutions to become self-sufficient.

By supporting effective aid organisations that prioritise evidence-based interventions and empower local communities in recipient countries, we can reduce the misallocation of aid, spur growth, and reduce low-income countries' reliance on foreign aid in the long term.

The critique that international charity and aid make low-income countries dependent on "handouts" 

 the thinking that, if foreign aid constitutes a significant portion of a country's national budget, that country becomes accountable to its foreign donors, rather than its citizens. Countries that aren't accountable to their citizens may be less incentivised to deliver basic goods and services. As a result, public institutions can be weakened, poverty can increase, a vicious cycle can arise from political expediency and aid dependency. Similarly, 

 that international charity and aid "crowd out" local organisations (including both businesses and nonprofits) from serving people in need. If those organisations collapse from a lack of need and support, the recipient country can become even more dependent on foreign aid.

However, such dependency is not an inevitable consequence of international charity and aid. Dependency arises when aid is 

 that hinder long-term local development.

 towards well-designed and well-researched interventions can 

 recipient communities. In the lowest-income countries, local organisations often do not have the resources they need. Effective international charity and aid can act as a helping hand to equip local governments and institutions to provide interventions independently. This is in contrast to the prevailing narrative that international aid organisations "crowd out" local organisations and government systems.

Here are some organisations working to set up systems that support local communities, rather than making them dependent on aid:

The distribution of drugs to fight neglected tropical diseases not only improves health, but leads to greater levels of education and wealth. 

 set up these programs to be taken over by national health departments in a sustainable way, leading to decreased dependency on aid over time.

 help governments to fortify staple foods with micronutrients. Once the standards and processes are set up, there is no need for any continued "handouts."

 helps local governments and NGOs to treat and prevent neglected tropical diseases by providing funding and technical assistance.

 provides unconditional cash transfers directly to those who need it most. According to their research, recipients spend their money on essentials like medicine, farmed animals, and school fees. These investments can stimulate economic growth and strengthen institutions in recipients' communities.

 supports government-run vitamin A supplementation programs by providing advocacy, technical support, and funding.

You can channel funds to low-income countries in a highly effective manner and reduce their long-term dependence on foreign aid by donating to one of many 

 that are working to improve lives and support local institutions. Consider making a 

 of like-minded people who are working to make the world a better place.

Common Concerns About Donating to Charity

A widespread critique of international charity and foreign aid is that it undermines state institutions and nonprofits in the recipient country, creating a long-term dependency on "handouts.'' The history of foreign aid is fraught and marked by missteps. Yet such a sweeping narrative does not tell the whole story.

By supporting effective aid organisations that prioritise evidence-based interventions and empower local communities in recipient countries, we can reduce the misallocation of aid, spur growth, and reduce low-income countries’ reliance on foreign aid in the long term.

Andrew Leeke

Effective animal advocates also care about other groups of animals, including the dogs, cats, and other animals we keep as pets, and those that live in shelters or in our streets. However, advocates are likely to prioritise intervening in factory farms and the wild first, because the scale of those problems is enormous, and the causes are relatively tractable and quite underfunded.

Do effective animal advocates only care about farmed animals?

Animal advocates in the effective altruism movement (or “effective animal advocates”) typically care a great deal about farmed animals. Globally, about 

 animals are farmed for food each year, mostly in factory farms. In the U.S., 99% of animals used for food live in these industrial complexes. The high number of farmed animals, together with the relative tractability of reducing suffering that is caused by humans in the first place, makes farmed animal advocacy a high-impact cause area.

However, effective animal advocates don’t 

 care about farmed animals. They also care about wild animals who suffer due to human activities or nature’s indifference, domestic animals in shelters, animals in labs, animals used in entertainment, and so on.

Farmed animal advocacy is an attractive cause area for effective altruists, who generally prioritise their work according to 

. There's no denying that the scale of farmed animal suffering is enormous.

 land animals are slaughtered in factory farms. Most factory farmed animals live awful lives. They:

 to grow larger than they naturally would (sometimes their legs cannot support their bodies)

Advocating for farmed animals is more tractable than advocating for certain other groups of animals, because the suffering of farmed animals is inflicted by humans. If humans can cause so much suffering, we should presumably be able to stop!

There's also a great need for more funding and advocacy and on behalf of farmed animals. In the U.S., only about 

 of charitable contributions support animals and the environment, combined. Of that amount, the 

 of animal charity donations support animal shelters, though animals in shelters are vastly outnumbered by other groups.

However, effective animal advocates don't just care about farmed animals. Another burgeoning area of interest is helping wild animals. With countless animals suffering in the wild, the project of helping wild animals is even larger-in-scale than advocating for farmed animals. It's also in greater need of funding and other resources.

Like farmed animals, many wild animals suffer because of human activity. For instance, 

 fish in the wild are caught and killed by humans each year. Fish caught by 

 are chased to exhaustion, goaded into industrial nets, and compressed and suffocated 

. Ending (or reducing) fish trawling would be a relatively tractable way to help a lot of animals.

Of course, not all suffering in the wild is caused by humans. Many wild animals suffer from disease, parasites, hunger, dehydration, stress and anxiety, accident and injury, extreme weather and habitat destruction, predation and premature death. Whether we can alleviate this suffering, and how we may be able to intervene, is an area of 

 in the effective animal advocacy community.

donating to highly-impactful organisations working to improve animal welfare

Julian Hazell

The social norm of giving anonymously is impeding social progress. We would be better off as a society if we moved past this norm and instead gave publicly. Giving publicly, after all, is one way to inspire more people to give. And even if people give for partially selfish reasons (e.g., “virtue signalling” or bragging rights), their donations will still improve the world.

Donating anonymously: Should we be private or public about giving to charity?

The social norm of giving anonymously is impeding social progress. We would be better off as a society if we moved past this norm and instead gave publicly. After all, we are social creatures who rely on others for cues on what we ought to do.

The idea of doing good things in the service of "pure" altruism does seem admirable. If we see a chance to help others, we ought to be motivated to do it regardless of any praise we might get, right?

It might be nice to live in a world where everyone did good deeds solely for the sake of doing good, but in our world, people respond to many different incentives. We should not resist these incentives and instead seek to understand them so we can make meaningful progress towards solving the world’s most pressing problems at the speed they require. 

Even if people give for partially selfish reasons (e.g., “virtue signalling” or bragging rights), their donations will still improve the world. In other words, all else equal, it’s better to have a big impact with mixed intentions than a small impact with purely altruistic intentions. And as it turns out, there are good reasons to believe that giving secretly might actually lower our overall impact.

What happens when we give to charity in secret?

 about a man named Yossele the Holy Miser captures the supposed virtuosity of anonymous giving.

Yossele was a very rich man who was hated for not doing anything to alleviate the suffering of those who lived in his community. The people even wanted God to punish him for his stinginess. But after Yossele died, it was discovered that he was secretly giving the local rabbi money on a weekly basis to distribute to the needy. It turns out Yossele was quite generous after all. The rabbi then gathered everyone in the synagogue to ask for Yossele's forgiveness, after which Yossele came to the rabbi in a vision and said, 

"I forgive everyone, because long ago I asked God to let me help people the way he does, without anyone knowing or giving thanks."

The story of Yossele the Holy Miser is an inspiring one. The people hated him. They even wanted God to punish him, and yet he still did what was right. Even after the people wronged him, he was kind enough to forgive them. That is admirable, indeed.

But what if Yossele had instead chosen to make his charitable giving public? Perhaps it would've been better for him to be open with his charity than to conceal his good deeds. What if he inspired other well-off people in the community to match his giving? It seems silly to think that his impact was somehow greater or more admirable simply because he hid his generosity.

Charity is for regular people, not just saints

In the real world, we cannot expect folks like Yossele to silently work on improving others’ lives while the rest of us sit idly. The thing that separates Yossele from the majority of us is that he is a remarkable character from a religious folktale centred around righteousness and other good virtues.

The same cannot (and should not) be expected of us regular folks; we’re people, not saints or paragons. But regular folks like us can make a substantial impact, especially when we work together. The world’s most pressing problems cannot afford to wait. Rather than gatekeeping charity by praising those with unrealistically pure motivations, we ought to create a culture that encourages (and celebrates) everyone who is altruistic, 

 when doing so directly inspires others to take action.

Western cultures seem to view signalling some successes as socially acceptable. If you are sceptical of this, I encourage you to scroll through your LinkedIn feed. Why is this behaviour considered taboo when charity is involved? Sharing an acceptance to a university or a prestigious job offer generally isn’t looked down upon. This makes sense — it’s great to celebrate your accomplishments and praise the people who helped get you there. But the same should apply to publicly declaring dedication to improving the world by giving to well-deserving and highly effective charities that have the potential to transform others’ lives.

There are some tremendous benefits to being public with our actions. Beyond the direct value of charity, it is important to think about the knock-on effects of encouraging others to be generous. Think about it this way: pledging to donate 10% of your income throughout your working life can positively impact the lives of many others. But you can substantially increase your contribution to the world just by inspiring one other person to join you in making the pledge!

"Ideas cannot spread unless we share them.”

As Luke Freeman pointed out in his blog post 

How does change happen? The power of social proof in behaviour change & successful movement growth

, we are social creatures who rely on others for cues on what we ought to do (a phenomenon known as "social proof"). Being an "early adopter," Freeman argues, can "normalise the path forward for others" to start dedicating time and money to solving the world's most pressing problems.

Again, I understand the natural urge to conceal our altruism. Telling others about our preferences, ideals, and passions can be scary, especially when it puts us at risk of seeming boastful or pretentious. But giving publicly might be needed in order to create a cascade of social change. Change will happen far too slowly — or never at all — if we keep quiet like Yossele. So let's speak up.

"The reality is we're all active agents in the world. We can all nudge the world towards the world that we want, or sit back and be nudged.”

There are pressing problems in the world that many of us would like to see solved, such as global poverty, the mistreatment of animals, and climate change, to name only a few. But the gap between the world we have and the world we want is difficult to bridge when we act in silence.

The societal norm of giving anonymously might severely restrict the amount that individuals choose to give. When charity is done in silence, donors might falsely assume they are giving more than the norm. In fact, according to 

 research suggests that 72% of people give less than average, but 75% of people think they give more than average. If we were all more open about our giving, we may have a more accurate picture and be inspired to give more.

If you've ever worried about giving publicly, I hope I've given you some reasons to feel more comfortable with the idea. Let's start creating better social norms by publicly 

. Our impact will continue to increase as we spread the word and encourage others to do the same. Finally, we can look to change the norms around giving by publicly celebrating and encouraging all forms of altruism. If we do these things, perhaps one day the social norm that encouraged Yossele to give in silence will be a relic of the past.

Luke Freeman

How much money should we donate to charity?

Something I've found to be shockingly common is that uncertainty around how much we should give to charity can often prevent people from giving anything at all.

Yet if you search the internet for advice, you'll mostly find claims that there's "no right answer" and that it's a "deeply personal decision." While these answers are largely true, they are not very helpful. They don't actually provide any actionable advice, any directions whatsoever for what we should do.

Instead of dodging the question or trying to divine a single prescriptive answer from the fabric of the universe, we are going to look at a range of standards that you could apply to your life, and recommend some approaches that might work for you.

To start with, let's look at the extremes of giving.

There are some people who believe that the right amount to give is nothing, ever. They might believe that charity doesn't help people, that it's not their responsibility, or they're not excited by the incredible opportunity most of us have to use our money to help others. If that's you, I'm not going to dissuade you here (but we recommend that you check out our page that addresses 

common concerns about donating to charity

Others believe that they should give nothing, yet. This might be suitable for you if:

Your material circumstances are very dire.

 who is putting away money now in order to give to charity later (and have taken measures to make sure you'll actually follow through).

You could have a greater positive impact by investing in yourself (perhaps through education, or accruing enough savings that you can pivot into a more impactful career without significant financial risk).

The other far extreme of giving is to give everything humanly possible right up until your circumstances are equal to those whose welfare you are concerned about.

One of the most powerful moral arguments for charitable giving comes from the renowned philosopher 

According to Singer, given that there are millions of people around the world in need, engaging in frivolous consumption instead of donating to charity is quite like walking past a drowning child and not saving them for fear of damaging a fine suit.

The trouble with this thought experiment is that, taken to its extreme logical conclusion, it becomes very 

 Not only are we morally required to give something to help others, but we should give 

One man did just this. After converting to Christianity, evolutionary scientist 

 was convinced that he had a moral obligation to give away all of his possessions to the poor.

Price would seek out the homeless and give them anything they asked for, from his money to the clothes off his back. If they needed a place to sleep, he hosted them at his place indefinitely. Eventually he had given away so much that he became homeless and as poor as those he was helping. This, very unfortunately, eventually led to his suicide.

His altruism is in many ways admirable, but it's clearly not a healthy path to follow, and is ultimately going to be self-defeating (leading to less good for everyone involved, not more).

So, when we look down the barrel of these two extremes and see that neither of them are right for us, this begs the question: "What is the right amount for us to give to charity?"

Let's look at some standard approaches to giving.

If you feel a strong moral obligation to help others, you might decide to give what you don't need. This idea has been formalised by Oxford philosopher 

 who was inspired by ethicists such as Peter Singer.

In 2009, Toby felt that he had a true moral obligation to give what he didn't need. He knew that a significant portion of his income could be so much more valuable to others than it would be to himself.

To put this into practice, he set himself a living allowance and then gave everything that he earned above that level away. He calls this the 

 everything above his inflation-adjusted living allowance. Many others have since taken this Further Pledge, and even more people have modelled their giving on this 'living allowance' idea — deciding what they need to live on sustainably, and giving away the rest.

You might be more motivated to have a steady increase in your standard of living as your income rises, but still want to give a meaningful amount that is more generous than what most people give.

 in your country, it's likely that you can give more generously than an average person can give. If you were born in a high-income country, it is likely that your income is 

at least 10 times that of the average person

 and roughly 100 times that of someone living in extreme poverty.

"Imagine a happy hour where you could either buy yourself a beer for five dollars or buy someone else a beer for five cents. If that were the case, we'd probably be pretty generous — next round's on me!" 

 to choose to be generous with their relative wealth — whether they see this as an obligation to share their luck, or as an incredible opportunity to 

Religious traditions across the world also ask their followers to not just give, but to give generously. In Judaism and Christianity this is made more explicit as a contribution of 10% of income, referred to as 

 also uses 10% as a benchmark number for giving generously.

Ten percent has a few perks as a giving standard:

It is low enough that it's accessible to those who have means.

It is high enough that it really feels meaningful to most people.

It is much more generous than what most people are otherwise giving.

It's not so high as to be off-putting or overly demanding.

Blog

Does aid make low-income countries dependent on handouts?

Do effective animal advocates only care about farmed animals?

Donating anonymously: Should we be private or public about giving to charity?

How much money should we donate to charity?

May 2021 Newsletter

I Dedicated My Birthday to the Against Malaria Foundation

Shouldn't we address human suffering before working to reduce animal suffering?

Giving What We Can is Sponsoring 2021 Charity Elections

Shouldn’t we just focus on economic growth to lift people out of poverty?

Charity begins at home; shouldn't we solve our own problems before helping others?