Chantal Braunwalder: How to Help More with Less

“Doing good better” sounds quite promising, no? But what does Effective Altruism exactly mean? It is an environment where you can actually learn how to rationally think through big issues such as poverty, align your career to do good, meet fellow changemakers and even with the smallest donations create true impact.

Doing good, altruism, and impact are all buzzwords that describe the same thing. It’s about making people better off and enabling everyone to have a good life. But chances are high that you have felt lost sometimes with the thousands of charities, the sheer amount of causes there are and most importantly, the billions of people suffering - should you help the homeless, improve water sanitation in developing countries or invest in cancer research? So, despite many people wanting to help, there are many uncertainties and so much range – it feels like standing in front of a foggy, watery abyss and throwing a stone out, hoping it will skip further, but you will never know because you cannot even see it. Effective Altruism (EA) can give you much better clarity and a better aim so your stone can skip until the water meets the ocean. This sounds quite big, but bear with me. As a person that was always interested in helping others and the environment, I was naturally intrigued by the promises of EA – and ever since it’s been like a bright light in the darkness. But enough with the rosy words, let’s get to the rationale which EA loves. There are four core values that EA holds – and I am sure most of you will align with these as well. First, it’s important that we help others especially when they are in need and we have the means to do something about it. Second, everyone is equal and thus has the same right to happiness, freedom, health and just to a decent live. Third, helping more is better than helping less – quite self-evident, right? And lastly, we know our resources are constrained, be it time, money or natural resources.

All these values imply that we need to be careful of how we think about helping the most amount of people given the constrained resources we have. Then most often, despite having good intentions, interventions to do good fail. When you chose your college, you also want to make sure it has a good reputation and will actually lead to you getting a job, no? So that’s why EA ensures the focus is on interventions where the highest possible positive impact can be achieved with the given means. Then the same amount of dollars can either help one person or potentially hundreds or thousands. A typical example are mosquito nets – an average donation of 9’600 USD over an adult’s working life can buy around 1900 nets thus preventing 200 children from getting extremely sick with malaria and probably saving at least two or three lives. Compared to that, many donations go to domestic medical charities, where around 33’000 USD can bring one more healthy year of life. So, what would you chose?

This enormous difference in impact is why it’s pivotal to choose a cause strategically and rationally that creates the largest impact for the highest amount of people given our limited resources, and not one that is just salient to you because a e.g. friend knows it or you got approached at the train station. Of course, there are noble causes but if we you truly care about effectively giving, our aim should be sharper and more thought through, so we can actually help the world become a better place for many people.

This is only a brief introduction to EA and its universe. It’s not only a way of thinking but EA is also about actually doing the most good, which means EA is involved in many different activities from effective donation, research in cause areas, policy work or charity entrepreneurship and many more.

I hope this article helped you understand EA better and the enormous ripple effect it has – join us and let’s “do good better” together!