singer188_GUILLEM SARTORIOAFP via Getty Images_food charity

Giving with the Heart and the Head

Dec 7, 2020 Peter Singer , Lucius Caviola

The world’s most effective charities do much more good, per dollar spent, than typical charities, but they often lack the emotional pull that motivates donors to give. Psychological research points to a possible solution.

MELBOURNE/CAMBRIDGE – Worldwide, people donate hundreds of billions of dollars to charity. In the United States alone, charitable donations amounted to about $450 billion last year. As 2020 draws to a close, perhaps you or members of your family are considering giving to charity. But there are, literally, millions of charities. Which should you choose?

If you are like most people, you want to support charities that mean something to you – that speak to your heart. Perhaps it is a charity that helps children in your community, or a local homeless shelter where you have volunteered, or maybe a museum you’re passionate about, or a place of worship for which you want to show support. In the US, 94% of donations go to charities focusing on local or national issues.

Donating to a charity that pulls on your heartstrings is likely to be better than not donating at all. Very few charities are outright frauds. The bigger issue is that following your heart ignores research on which charities are the most effective. Some charities will do hundreds of times as much good with your donation – saving or improving many more lives – than typical charities do.

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Peter Singer

Writing for PS since 2001
191 Commentaries

Peter Singer is Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University and founder of the non-profit organization The Life You Can Save. His books include Animal Liberation, Practical Ethics, The Ethics of What We Eat (with Jim Mason), Rethinking Life and Death, The Point of View of the Universe, co-authored with Katarzyna de Lazari-Radek, The Most Good You Can Do, Famine, Affluence, and Morality, One World Now, Ethics in the Real World, Why Vegan?, and Utilitarianism: A Very Short Introduction, also with Katarzyna de Lazari-Radek. In 2013, he was named the world's third "most influential contemporary thinker" by the Gottlieb Duttweiler Institute.

Lucius Caviola

Writing for PS since 2020
1 Commentary

Lucius Caviola is a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Psychology at Harvard University.

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Manuel B Dec 17, 2020

Dear Professor Singer,

I have a concern about giving effectively. I would, of course, like to give as effectively as possible but it seems to me that the criteria suggested of "saving a life", for example, vs. "educating a student" is very problematic. I would very much prefer to give to a foundation trying to end Malaria, not just protecting one child from Malaria at a time. Yes, the foundation trying to end Malaria may fail but if one of those foundations effectively ends Malaria, then, at some point that second foundation will save all of the lives at risk from Malaria at that time and all of the lives that foreseeably would have been at risk from that moment on. Protecting one life at a time does nothing to end Malaria and creates a perpetual cycle of giving and spending.

At the time I am poor and unemployed. When in the past I have had better money, I have tried to give a significant amount to NGOs whose work affects me positively and effectively (Wikimedia, The Footprint network, and a few local organizations in my home country of Colombia).

Most people in the world cannot give, we need that the donations of those who 'can', go on to change the world (at least what does not work or what works in a perverse way), else, we are actually becoming poorer when we give, as we would have less money and live in a more unjust world, a world that continues to be unjust and has more people, people who for the most part will be poorer and disenfranchised.

Hopefully, you can provide some guidance, thank toy,
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