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Alana Horowitz Friedman

Can one person really make a difference? If we combine our inherent desire to make a difference with the careful thinking needed to make it happen, it turns out there are easy, concrete steps we can take to positively impact many lives over the course of our lifetime.

Can one person really make a difference?

Did you grow up believing you could change the world? I did. 

Whether this was due to my family's particular brand of liberal idealism or simply a mark of my generation, I was sure one person could make a difference. I even chose my university based partly on their marketing slogan: “Think one person can change the world? So do we.”

But upon arriving at university, I quickly lost faith in that belief. The “make a difference” opportunities available were largely limited to “raising awareness” about various issues by sitting at a table in a public place and accosting passersby.

I think my story is fairly common. How many of us are raised with “youthful idealism” only to be rudely awakened to the reality that comes with growing up? At least that’s the story we are often told — that “making a difference” is just a naive pipe dream. Is it, though?

History does show us a handful of exceptions. Norman Borlaug, who pioneered high-yield and disease-resistant wheat, is credited with preventing mass famine, 

. Another, lesser-known example is Viktor Zhdanov, who proposed and successfully lobbied for a global campaign to eradicate smallpox, 

a disease that was then taking around 2 million lives per year

. Then there are high-profile pioneers like Martin Luther King Jr and Mohandas Gandhi, both of whom are very well-known for bringing about substantial — even revolutionary — societal change.

These were exceptional individuals, of course. To truly make a difference, do we need to tackle the world’s biggest problems with the courage of Gandhi, the intelligence of Borlaug, the determination of Zhdanov, and the luck of being in the right place at the right time?

In other words, can ordinary people like you and me really have much of an impact?

It turns out we can. And it doesn’t have to involve risking our lives, overthrowing a political regime, or curing a deadly virus epidemic. All we need is the desire to make a difference and the foresight to think carefully about it.

If you are reading this, you probably know that you’d like to make a difference. But many of us are unaware of our extraordinary power to do so.

The philosopher Peter Singer’s now famous “drowning child” thought experiment gets at this disconnect between desire and action:

Imagine you are walking by a pond on your way to work or school, and you see a child drowning. You can jump in and rescue the child, but you would ruin your clothes in the process. Do you save the child?

The answer, for most of us, is a resounding yes! Of course we would rescue the child, even if we were wearing an expensive suit or designer shoes. We would probably feel pretty great about it too — saving a life is certainly a morning well-spent!

Singer then points out that there are “drowning children” all over the world, and although we aren’t literally walking by them, we 

A staggering number of children die every day from causes like diarrhea and malaria

. Cheap and effective interventions exist to prevent these deaths, and we can help fund them.

In other words, we can be the difference between people receiving treatment or going unaided. And we can do so with sums that most would consider to be far less than the value of a human life.

At this point, you may be raising a series of practical objections: Can my actions be anything more than a drop in the bucket given the scale of the problem? Will my actions really matter if others do nothing?

This is all well and good for the ultra-wealthy. But I’m just an ordinary person earning a modest salary! How much difference could I really make?

Let’s address that last question first, because its answer explains what gives many of us such extraordinary power to help others.

If you’re like me, you likely don’t think of yourself as rich. But because of the vast differences between wealthy and lower-income countries, those of us earning a modest income in wealthy countries usually fall within the top 1.5% of income earners worldwide. You can see exactly how you stack up 

Additionally, Will McAskill, a co-founder of Giving What We Can and author of the book 

, explains that these drastic income discrepancies allow our money to go something like 100x further when directed to the poorest communities.

What about those other practical objections?

 aren’t, especially given the scale of the world’s problems. With so much suffering in the world, are your individual actions likely have much effect? To address these objections, let’s return to Singer's thought experiment.

 people are witnessing the child drowning in the pond and most are just walking past, not doing anything to help. Does this affect your decision to rescue the child? If you’re like the people Singer asked, it probably doesn’t.

Now let’s imagine that there are many children drowning and you can only save one. Would you still do it? If you would, chances are you agree that your action would make a difference. Otherwise, wouldn’t you just walk by the pond? (If you’re not convinced, imagine that someone has saved 

 child from drowning. Would you think that they made a difference?)

Of course, by combining the power of comparative wealth with giving effectively, our impact can potentially affect many more lives than just one. But for now, I want to recognize that saving even one life is a pretty significant accomplishment. After all, that’s someone’s daughter, or mother, or father, or grandparent.

So the truth that we can’t help everyone everywhere doesn’t lessen our ability to help those we can. In fact, by putting our money where it has the greatest impact, we can make a very significant difference.

. Let’s discuss the second part of the equation: 

the foresight to think carefully about it

While we’re used to applying rigorous analysis to decisions like where to invest, whether to buy or rent, or which brand of appliance to purchase, charitable giving often gets lumped into a vague “hope this is doing something!” bucket.

If we want to make a difference, though, it stands to reason that we should think carefully about the causes and organisations we support. In fact, our impact can vary substantially based on where we choose to donate. Just like some investments offer greater returns than others, a highly-effective charity can be 

This means that depending on where we donate, we can accomplish with just one donation what it might otherwise take 100 equally-sized donations to achieve.

Combine these extraordinary giving opportunities with the comparative wealth we discussed earlier and it’s clear that 

one person can make an incredible difference in the lives of others

 estimates that ~$5000 donated to one of their top charities would result in a life being saved.

To know where to donate, we don’t necessarily have to do the countless hours of research required to measure an organization’s impact. Places like 

, and of course — our team here at Giving What We Can — put out yearly lists of 

 based on stringent research that assesses the 

In addition to our extraordinary power to make a difference as individuals, we can also leverage the power of giving publicly to maximize our impact. By publicly donating to highly-effective charities, we can help bring about a systemic shift in the way people in wealthy countries think about their power to help others.

To see how this could play out, let’s return to the pond with the drowning child, and the numerous people who are just walking by. This time, though, when you jump in and take the child out, one of these passersby sees you do it. And they realize they can do it too.

Changing the culture of giving — making it commonplace for ordinary people living in wealthy countries to donate some portion of their income to highly effective charities — would be a significant societal shift. And by giving publicly, you can be part of that systemic change. If that sounds overly idealistic, consider this: Even if your actions only motivate one other person to give more to others, that could result in a (dare I say doubling?) of your already significant impact. That’s nothing to scoff at!

Evidence-backed global poverty interventions — while incredibly effective at saving both child and adult lives — are far from the only avenue to make a difference. Check out this 

 that we think offer outstanding giving opportunities along with this 

 by the organization 80,000 Hours, which explores how to make a difference with your career.

So let’s go back to the belief that one person can make a difference. It’s true that this 

 end up being a pipe dream. But if we combine our inherent desire to make a difference with the careful thinking needed to make it happen, it turns out there are 

 we can take to positively impact many lives over the course of our lifetime — merging our vision of an ideal world with the realistic, evidence-based actions that could help get us there.

Grace Adams

April 2022 Newsletter

Hello and welcome to our April Newsletter!

A few weeks ago the Giving What We Can team attended the Effective Altruism Global conference in London, and we were so thrilled to meet with many of our members in person. We also recently interviewed some exciting guests about effective giving, so stay tuned for the release of those videos through our

If you didn't get the chance to connect with us but would like to share your effective giving story, please click this

Our team also held a week-long workshop, where amongst other things, we discussed redesigning and improving our website so we can help more people learn to give effectively and provide better resources for our community members like you! We're excited to get building and share the results with you soon.

Top row, left to right: Luke (Executive Director), Grace (Head of Marketing), Fabio (Full Stack Engineer). Bottom row, left to right: Michael (Researcher), Alex (UX Designer), Julian (Content and Research Associate)

Julian Hazell & the rest of the Giving What We Can team.

Thank you for your continued commitment and advocacy, Michael!

Reviewing our work: please contact our researcher 

Joining our team (we're hiring!): we are currently seeking expressions of interest for a 

This month we are focusing on Effective Altruism (EA) around the world. We are joined by group leaders from a range of countries and cultures to help us shape a discussion around global EA communities - what are some specific challenges faced in different locations and cultures, or things that might be shared experiences between us all. Lets celebrate the diversity within EA and discuss ways that we can further promote a welcoming atmosphere in our community! Come along to hear a broad range of perspectives and to share your own insights with us.

 (New York: Sat 6:00 pm, Sydney: Sun 8:00 am)

 (London: Sun 10:30 am, Mumbai: Sun 3:00 pm, Singapore: Sun 5:30 pm)

Our open forum is an event where you can come along with questions about effective giving or just come along to meet others interested in effective giving. Alternates between different timezones each month.

 (London: 8:00 pm, New York 3:00 pm, San Francisco 12:00pm)

My experience with imposter syndrome --- and how to (partly) overcome it

Mid-career people: strongly consider switching to EA work

Sam Bankman-Fried on taking a high-risk approach to crypto and doing good

Release of Existential Risk Research database

 about a major update to its views on the promisingness of water treatment as a possible area for funding.

GiveWell's CEO, Elie Hassenfeld, and its managing director, Buddy Shah, were interviewed on the 

GiveWell is also still looking for excellent candidates for its open

Our thinking on the importance of organizational culture

Charity Entrepreneurship is looking for 3 new team members: 

Gene editing could upend the future of factory farming --- for better or worse

Forecasts estimate limited cultured meat production through 2050 --- Rethink Priorities

Agriculture is at a climate crossroads. Alternative proteins are a global solution

 - Madeline Cohen, Sheila Voss, and Shira Fischer, The Good Food Institute.

Planting Seeds: The Impact Of Diet & Different Animal Advocacy Tactics

Happiness for the whole family: An update to our previous analysis to incorporate household spillover effects for cash transfers and psychotherapy

 - Joel McGuire and Samuel Dupret, Happier Lives Institute.

Snakebites kill 100,000 people every year, here's what you should know

They warned about pandemics before Covid-19. Now they have a $100 billion plan to stop the next one

Forecasting Nuclear Risk and why EA should fund scalable non-profits

https://twitter.com/givingwhatwecan/status/1518353436588269570

You can now support Giving What We Can's operations using EA Funds

This funding helps us to inspire donations to high impact charities

 with Giving What We Can and effective altruism.

Discuss effective giving and effective altruism on the 

Do you have questions about the pledge, Giving What We Can, or effective altruism in general? Check out our 

Shakeel Hashim

While some things like income inequality or the mistreatment of non-human animals seem to be getting worse, there’s surprising data showing that some things are going much better than you might think.

Is the world getting worse or better?

It can be hard to look at the news these days without feeling sad. Pandemics, war, climate change — things can seem really bleak. If you feel that way, you're not alone: 

, only 6% of Americans and 4% of Brits thought the world was getting better.

While some things like income inequality or the mistreatment of non-human animals seem to be getting worse, there’s surprising data showing that some things are going much better than you might think. On many measures you can think of — poverty, health, safety — things are much, much better than they used to be. People are living longer, happier and healthier lives than ever before. We've made tremendous headway with improving people's lives even in the last two generations alone, and you can play a significant role in making sure we continue that progress. But to do so, we need to take a balanced view of if the world is getting better or worse.

Let’s start by seeing how it has gotten better.

As an example of the progress we’ve made, take poverty: since 1990, over one billion people have been lifted out of 

 even while the world's population has increased by 2.5 billion people.

Over the long term, things look even better. Just 200 years ago, around 90% of the population lived in extreme poverty. By 2018, it was around 10%.

The reduction in global poverty has enabled all sorts of other positive changes. Life expectancy has shot up all over the world, more than doubling in Africa since 1900.

The number of children who die is rapidly falling, too — the total number of deaths of under-5-year-olds was more than halved between 1990 and 2019, even after considering population growth.

And we're making really good progress on eliminating some of the most deadly parts of life, like 

. Malaria deaths in Africa alone were almost halved in just 15 years.

The improvements aren't just limited to health and poverty. 

 than ever before; and while 88% of people were illiterate in 1800, 86% of people were literate in 2015.

Even in cases where things may have been getting worse in the short-term, looking at long-term trends puts the badness in perspective. Take violent deaths caused by war: looking at the short-term trends, we see things worsened over the 2010s, and this might continue in the 2020s due to the ongoing war in Ukraine. But things were much worse in the 20th century:

Climate change is another example where, even though things are bad and progress is slow, we might be making a bit more progress than you’d realise. Yes, 

global CO2 emissions have been increasing

 too. But if we zoom in on some of the major polluters, we can see that advocates for reducing emissions are starting to achieve their goals: emissions are falling in the US, EU and UK.

Consumption-based CO2 has also decreased (albeit more slowly), even though populations have grown and GDP has risen.

The amount of energy generated by renewable sources is rapidly increasing, too. In fact, solar energy deployment has repeatedly 

But all this progress doesn't mean we can rest on our laurels.

For one thing, there are some important measures by which things are getting worse — and we need to do something about it. Take inequality, which has been getting much worse in many countries, most notably the 

. And even though we’ve reduced poverty globally, around 700 million people still live on less than $1.90 per day — and that's 700 million too many. Meanwhile, the majority of the world lives on less than $10 a day, which is still an awful lot less than people in rich countries are used to. There are proven ways to improve these people’s 

, such as cash transfers: we just need to give more money to do it.

What's more, although things have been getting better for humans, they've been getting much worse for non-human animals. 

. That means more non-human animals in captivity, many of whom are (and will be) living in awful conditions. If you care about the well-being of non-human animals, this is a very concerning trend — and it means there's room to do a lot more work 

Perhaps the most worrying trend of all is the significant increase in existential risk. As Oxford philosopher and Giving What We Can co-founder Toby Ord has written, "for the first time in humanity's long history, we have the capacity to destroy ourselves." We've invented incredibly powerful tools like nuclear weapons, biotechnology and artificial intelligence, all of which have the potential to 

. And we’ve damaged the environment to such an extent that climate change is likely to harm many people, and, in worst-case scenarios, could even lead to our extinction. That means that while most things have been getting better over time, the risk of human extinction or unrecoverable collapse of civilisation is increasing, not decreasing. Ord thinks that though our existential risk was around 1% throughout the twentieth century, the current risk of existential catastrophe within the next 100 years is 17%.

That's a really high number, and it's why Ord and many other activists 

donate to initiatives that can lower that existential risk

. We’ve made so much progress in the last century, and it would be a huge shame if future generations weren’t around to appreciate it.

We should be optimistic about how much better the world can be

When we put our minds to it, we really can make a difference. Happily, more and more people seem to be realising that: the amount of money committed to effective giving has 

 since 2015. We've achieved a lot in the last century, and there’s still so much we can do. As Open Philanthropy's Holden Karnofsky 

, for most of human history, our welfare was either fairly stagnant or worsening. The (relatively) recent big increase in welfare we've seen is only due to a phenomenal amount of effort and technological development. That progress should make us optimistic about what can be achieved when we put our minds to it — and help us imagine how much better the world can be for future generations, if we keep working to improve it.

Each of us has the power to help that process: by donating to one of the 

 we recommend, you can contribute to reducing poverty, fighting climate change, and safeguarding the long-term future. You can also take your impact even further by using your 

 to work directly on these sorts of problems. Through work like that, we can leave the world better than we found it — and ensure better lives for generations to come.

Factfulness: Ten Reasons We're Wrong About the World – and Why Things Are Better Than You Think

Caroline Wood

Expecting billionaires to solve global poverty can distract us from the fact that right now we can make a significant difference to help improve the lives of the world’s poorest.

 Why philanthropy isn’t just for billionaires

No matter how many times you read it, the statistic is staggering: 

the richest 1% own around 46% of the entire world’s wealth

have a collective net worth of $1.3 trillion

. The wealth these individuals possess is beyond comprehension for most of us – we simply can’t get our heads around the numbers. Against these sums, any amount we donate to charity from our personal incomes may seem insignificant. So would the most effective strategy to address global poverty be to simply redistribute as much of these billionaire fortunes as possible to the world’s poorest citizens?

Blog

Can one person really make a difference?

April 2022 Newsletter

Is the world getting worse or better?

Why philanthropy isn’t just for billionaires

Member Profile: Martin Skadal

March 2022 Newsletter

Announcing our 2022 strategy and how you can help (and we're hiring!)

It's perfectly okay to be an imperfect effective altruist

Donating like a startup investor: Hits-based giving, explained

The value of small donations from a longtermist perspective