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Alana Horowitz Friedman

Examining the impulse to give locally helps us better understand 

A principle tenet of effective giving is that your money can often do more good when you donate it to the world’s poorest places. For example, Will MacAskill, a co-founder of effective altruism and Giving What We Can, estimates that your money will 

to “benefit the extreme poor” than to “benefit typical citizens of the United States” (MacAskill 22) due to 

the stark income differences between lower and higher income countries.

 And the charity evaluator GiveWell agrees that 

each dollar has more power when donated internationally

Yet this analysis is sometimes met with resistance, with questions like: 

Shouldn’t you help out members of your own community first? 

Don’t you have a special obligation to the people near you?

It’s understandable that some of us may feel a strong pull to give locally. After all, while higher-income countries don’t face poverty on the same scale as lower-income countries (in which it’s far more extreme, and far deadlier)

 there is no shortage of suffering, inequality, and illness in high-income countries. And these are the problems that are right in front of our eyes; we may even know people affected by them.

But I think it’s worth more closely examining the idea that our obligations to people in need change based on our proximity to them. Where does this pull towards giving locally come from? How do we weigh it against the desire to maximise our impact and do the most good we can? Is there room for both types of giving within the effective altruism framework? These are some of the questions I’d like to explore.

The pull to prioritize giving locally: evolutionary explanations

For much of history, our world was limited to those who were in the same location as us. Humans have been living in permanent settlements since the Agricultural Revolution, which happened a little more than 12,000 years ago. While the jury is out as to 

, many place it around the time of Columbus’s voyage to America (only about 530 years ago), and others date it much later, starting in the 1800s or even after World War II! (Of course, some also date it earlier, but National Geographic 

 “the most well-known early example” of globalization to be the Silk Road, which still dates to less than 3,000 years ago.)

So it seems likely that for the vast majority of our time living in communities, we certainly didn’t know much about what was going on outside our local bubbles. 

And even when we started to, we couldn’t do much about it. 

Only very recently have we developed the infrastructure to affect change in other parts of the world

. Thus, our acts of “doing good” were limited to helping out those in our immediate surroundings. Since this limitation was lifted only fairly recently, it’s unsurprising that our moral impulses (

which likely have at least some basis in evolution

) may still be lagging behind.

Now that we 

 help those in other countries, however, there’s a very good case for doing so. In fact, according to an 

 from The Lancet, it would cost about $9 billion to provide “full coverage of basic WASH and waste services [clean water, sanitation, hygiene, and waste management] in existing public health facilities in the 46 UN designated least developed countries.” That’s under 2% of the 

 Americans donated to charity in 2021. Directing money to high-impact causes abroad can do a tremendous amount of good.  

The pull to prioritize giving locally: psychological explanations

If we are evolutionarily primed to prefer giving locally, though, then why do international disasters strike our moral chords so intensely? In other words, why are many so motivated to give internationally after disasters, but not motivated to fund organizations increasing stability in lower-income countries in non-disaster times? Perhaps we need to examine this disconnect further.

It seems likely that we are more emotionally affected by the unexpected, especially when the unexpected shakes our personal sense of safety.

 This “surprise factor,” along with the sense of urgency and magnitude created by extensive media coverage, perhaps explains why events like the war in Ukraine, Hurricane Maria’s devastation of Puerto Rico, the massive earthquakes in Haiti and Japan about a decade ago, and similarly brutal international disasters often motivate substantial influxes of donations from around the world.

In contrast, extreme poverty in low-income countries is a 

 problem. It falls within our paradigm of “normal,” and as such, does not trigger the same type of emotional response (though it should, if we really think about the fact that 

thousands needlessly die every day from preventable causes

, just because of where they happened to be born.)

I would argue that our response to international disasters underscores that we 

feel a sense of compassion and responsibility

for those outside of our local communities; it’s just that for some, it can take a shock to the system (and/or the sense of extreme urgency/magnitude facilitated by media coverage) to access that compassion.

When we understand how our psychology works (and that it isn’t always rational), perhaps we’ll be more equipped to extend our compassion to people who aren’t experiencing suffering and risks to their health and safety because of an 

 disaster, but rather on an everyday basis — simply due to a lack of funding for global health and development where they happen to live. 

It is, in a sense, a disaster of the largest scale that the suffering in certain areas of the world is often thought of as “par for the course” when 

many of us are actually in a pretty good position to prevent it

Cosmopolitanism: What does “local” mean, anyway?

Another way to challenge this preference for helping out your “own” community first is to expand the definition of what your “own” community is.

In other words, do you think of yourself as a member of just your particular town, or do you also think of yourself as a member of your country? What about a member of your particular region of the world? Do you consider yourself a member of humankind more generally — a citizen of the world? What about a member of an ecosystem that includes non-human animals as well as humans? Where we decide to draw the borders of what we consider to be “our community” is somewhat arbitrary; there is no clear place to draw the line.

The philosopher Peter Singer popularized a similar idea in his book 

in which he notes that the project of deciding who warrants our “moral concern” has changed in scope throughout history

“The circle of altruism has broadened from the family and tribe to the nation and race, and we are beginning to recognize that our obligations extend to all human beings. The process should not stop there…The only justifiable stopping place for the expansion of altruism is the point at which all whose welfare can be affected by our actions are included within the circle of altruism” (Singer)

This gradual expansion of our altruistic intuitions shows that we are slowly beginning to think of ourselves as citizens of the world — with a responsibility to all we can impact. So perhaps it’s time to expand the definition of community.

Finding our global ties through the “veil of ignorance”

In addition to the arbitrariness of deciding where our “own” community ends, let’s also acknowledge the arbitrariness of where it begins — in other words, the “luck” of where (in both time and space) we happen to be born.

, philosopher John Rawls advocated for choosing principles of justice “behind a veil of ignorance.” In essence, he proposed that in order to remove the biases that might negatively affect our ability to reason in a fair and just manner, we should pretend that we don’t know anything about our “place in society, [our] class position or social status, nor [do we know our] fortune in the distribution of natural assets and abilities, [our] intelligence, strength, and the like” (Rawls 11).

So let’s embrace Rawl’s thought experiment and imagine for a second that we don’t know what “community” we will be part of. Will we be born into a high-income country where we won’t have to worry too much about clean water and sufficient food, and where we’ve already largely eradicated killers like tuberculosis, diarrhoeal disease, and malaria? Or will we be born into a place where extreme poverty is common, and where our lives are more likely to be cut short by a whole host of deadly (yet preventable) conditions?

Now, given that we don’t know where we will end up, would we advocate for setting up society with tightly-drawn community boundaries, where people only help others who are in the same community as they are? And what would be the consequences of such a decision?

It seems likely that if we were born into an impoverished family in a low-income country, any “local” community resources might not be enough to really help us get by. After all, with so many struggling to meet basic needs, who would be left in our “local” community to extend a hand? In contrast, wanting for resources or aid in a higher-income country would be preferable, since many others in the community would probably be well-equipped to help out.

Because of this discrepancy, if everyone was limited to only receiving help from the people directly around them, global inequality would surely worsen. And that’s certainly not the world most of us would choose!

Let me be clear: I’m not trying to advocate ignoring your own community and spending all your efforts elsewhere. I would instead argue that there is most decidedly room for supporting those directly around you 

 those farther away, even within the effective altruism framework.

At its core, effective altruism is about applying more careful thinking to the act of doing good in order to maximise our impact. It’s this 

to more closely examining how we can best help others — not necessarily the 

Thus, while some effective altruists might choose to only donate internationally, 

others might give both locally and internationally

 internationally. Being a “good” local community member generally means showing up, not just writing checks, so smaller donations coupled with active participation might be more impactful in a local setting, anyway (depending on the needs of the specific community, of course)! And given that it’s 

 more practical to volunteer your time and efforts in your local community than to do so overseas, but just as easy to send money overseas than nationally, 

 internationally isn’t a bad diversification framework.

Regardless of the framework you choose, most people who are passionate about effective giving would likely agree that the current percentage of international giving is far too low — 

only about 6% of the total charitable donations made by residents of the U.S. are donated internationally

. Thus, there is certainly room for us to examine — and perhaps challenge — some of the biases that lead us to deprioritize international giving, especially since it allows us to do more good with every dollar and is so neglected when compared to local causes.

I’ll leave you with this: If you were given the power to (at little cost to yourself) dramatically improve the lives of those whose suffering is too often overlooked, would you do so? Or would you first ask if they lived nearby?

1. Of course, an organization working on a particularly high-impact policy change in a high-income country could do incredible amounts of good, if the change were to be successful. The same is true for organizations trying to mitigate existential and catastrophic risk. The goal here is not to say that giving internationally is always better than giving locally, just that it often allows us to magnify our impact, doing more good with each dollar we spend.
2. For a comparison of global poverty and domestic poverty, see MacAskill’s Doing Good Better, p.184
3. See 

 about how unexpected auditory stimulation provokes increased activation of the amygdala, 

the part of the brain that regulates emotional response


4. The Center for Disaster Philanthropy’s analysis of 2017 and 2018 disaster giving among U.S. households cites “media coverage as a driving factor for disaster giving.” That said, the scale of the disaster as well as personal connection to it were also top motivating factors reported by disaster relief donors. See: https://www.issuelab.org/resources/34757/34757.pdf
5. We can ask similar questions about the time we are born into. Will we be born into a time where the climate is still livable and nuclear war unlikely? Or will we be born into a time when climate-related deaths are the norm and nuclear war could happen any day? Asking these questions may encourage us to extend our circle of concern to those who will (hopefully) come after us, and to donate to organizations working to 

.
6. In fact, GiveDirectly, one of the charities our 

supports, runs cash-transfer programs both 

Examining the impulse to give locally helps us better understand — and navigate — our moral intuitions.

Should charity begin at home?

Fernando Martin-Gullans

Fernando Martin-Gullans with Artists of Houston Ballet in Stanton Welch's In Good Company. Photo by Lawrence Elizabeth Knox (2021). Courtesy of Houston Ballet.



We recently spoke with Fernando Martin-Gullans, a professional ballet dancer from Houston, Texas. He shared how he was inspired to take the GWWC pledge after reflecting on what his "ideal self" would be like and told us about his visions for a better world. 

Tell us about yourself.  What keeps you busy and what makes you tick?

I'm currently a professional ballet dancer, so I spend a good portion of my week rehearsing, training, and performing. Besides that, I really enjoy reading and learning more about different topics, such as effective altruism, philosophy, economics, and history.

Tell us about your effective giving journey.

I stumbled across effective altruism (EA) after listening to a Sam Harris podcast episode with Toby Ord in the summer of 2019, in which they discussed 'existential risks' and briefly touched on the logic behind  EA. The idea seemed incredibly intuitive to me and felt like something I had been looking for for a long time. Hearing about EA on the podcast got me into reading more about ethics, particularly the works of Peter Singer, and led me to question a lot of the life decisions I had made up to that point — namely, the pursuit of financial wealth and independence above most else. Since then, I have taken the GWWC pledge, become an ethical vegan, and am now looking to transition careers into something more EA-aligned.

I am so privileged to have been born — through sheer luck — to loving, highly-educated parents in a developed nation, and I feel a responsibility to give back to those who have not been so lucky.

Why did you take the Giving What We Can pledge?

I took the Giving What We Can pledge because it’s what my “ideal self” would do. I think it’s useful to cultivate a vision of what your ideal self would be like — how they would act, how they would look, and how they would impact the world around them. When I thought deeply about this version of myself, there was not a doubt in my mind that he would dedicate a substantial amount of his time and resources towards having the most positive impact he could on the world.

What are the issues in the world that you care most deeply about?

There are several issues which I feel quite strongly about, such as ending factory farming, ending global poverty, eliminating preventable diseases, expanding the moral circle, improving epistemic processes, legal justice reform, improving political processes, and avoiding x-risks and s-risks (existential and suffering risks).

I think one of the greatest things about the pledge is that it is proportionate to your income. Therefore, if you find yourself having less income to give, you can give proportionally less. I, for example, am about to leave a financially secure job to pursue a more speculative venture, and my income will diminish to almost nothing in the short term. As a consequence, my pledged amount for this year will also decrease significantly. That's okay!

What suggestions do you have for other people considering the pledge?

1. Start where you are: no amount is too small. (Any effective giving is better than no effective giving.)

2. Increase your giving mindfully and sustainably; while it can be tempting to want to give more and more, one has to consider the long-term effects this might have. Sometimes giving a little less, but more sustainably, can have greater positive impacts in the long run. There have been years when I’ve been able to give as much as 30% and others where I give as little as the suggested minimum of 10%.

I would love to see a world in which tremendous suffering is a relic of the past: factory farming does not exist; all people have access to clean water, food, a roof over their head, and an education; we eradicate preventable diseases and continue to make headway on those currently thought to be incurable (including aging); we possess better epistemics and exercise greater reasoning; we expand our moral circle to include all sentient beings; we establish laws and governments which preserve and protect our interests and well-being; and we live forth in excellence far into the distant future.

Have any books, documentaries, articles, or studies significantly changed the way you see giving?

 by Will MacAskill is a great place to start if you want to learn more about how to have the greatest positive impact with your life. Beyond this, I would recommend most of Peter Singer’s works — specifically his book 

Have you found anything to be helpful in talking to people about effective giving?

I have found that starting with a truly basic statement that most people agree with, such as '”saving two lives is better than saving one life, all other things being equal” can be instrumental in getting people to understand some of the basics of the thinking behind effective giving.

I’ve also found that talking to others who are 

 motivated by effective giving has been extremely helpful to 

! It sounds simple, but joining a community of people who are all aligned in their desire to do good has been instrumental in empowering me to take on greater challenges in an attempt to make the world a better place. I highly recommend attending the EA monthly meetups, yearly events, etc.!

Are there any other concrete ways that Giving What We Can has helped you?

I feel a far greater sense of contribution and purpose having taken the GWWC pledge.

Shoutout to Luke and Grace and all the great work that they do!



" series, which profiles a selection of the Giving What We Can community. The Giving What We Can community is comprised of people from all walks of life, with different perspectives and motivations for giving – all united by their desire to make a significant commitment to use their income to effectively help others. 

-Read more 

 to help inspire others to give more, and more effectively.

For more information about Giving What We Can, we recommend you check out our 

Fernando Martin-Gullans, a professional ballet dancer from Houston, Texas., shares how cultivating a vision of what his "ideal self" would be like inspired him to take the GWWC pledge and tells us about the kind of world he'd like to see. 

Member Profile: Fernando Martin-Gullans

Grace Adams

Our parent organisation is in the process of changing its name to Effective Ventures Foundation (EV Foundation). This will mean that Giving What We Can will become a project of EV Foundation.

There will be no operational impact of this change but you may notice that the legal name of our entity is Effective Ventures Foundation when making donations through Giving What We Can.

We will continue to operate as Giving What We Can and our brand and mission will not change.

Why the change to Effective Ventures Foundation?

This change reflects the growing number of organisations and projects that were being operationally supported under the Centre for Effective Altruism.

The Centre for Effective Altruism will remain an active, separate organisation within EV Foundation and will continue to run projects like the EA Forum, EA Global conferences and virtual programs.

EV Foundation supports several organisations operationally including, Giving What We Can, 80,000 Hours, Longview Philanthropy, the Forethought Foundation and more.

Effective Ventures Foundation is now the name of the legal entity in the UK that used to be called The Centre for Effective Altruism.

The process to change the name of the US legal entity is still underway and will remain the Centre for Effective Altruism for the time being.


legal structure of Effective Ventures Foundation

What does this mean for how Giving What We Can operates and processes donations?

The renaming of our parent organisation does not reflect a change in how Giving What We Can operates.

There will be no changes to how your donations will be processed or how Giving What We Can is operated.

We intend to update all of our assets including our website in the coming weeks to ensure that the new name of our legal entity is reflected accurately.

If you have any further questions about how this may impact you, please contact us at community@givingwhatwecan.org

Announcement: Renaming of legal entity to Effective Ventures Foundation

 in Germany recently interviewed bestselling author and Giving What We Can member, 

This interview is full of great quotes and insight from Rutger and is well worth reading in full.

Blog

Should charity begin at home?

Member Profile: Fernando Martin-Gullans

Announcement: Renaming of legal entity to Effective Ventures Foundation

Rutger Bregman on Effective Giving: Interview with Effektiv Spenden

What is counterfactual thinking and why should you care about it?

August Newsletter 2022

Update to our recommended Global Health and Development charities

Joey Savoie: Making it easier for great charities to exist

Using expected value when donating to charity — and day-to-day

What We Owe The Future: A review and summary of what I learned