Whoops, I’ve not blogged about anything since last year’s donations. Must try harder .
In the meantime, here’s a belated new year’s donation update: over 2018, I earned £30k and so am donating £3k to the global health and development fund run by Effective Altruism Funds. Thanks to them for doing the ongoing research work to make my money work harder.
I’ve lost the bit of their website where it tells you where your money’s gone, but assume it’s going towards malaria nets, deworming and anti-bilharzia/schistosomiasis stuff. Possibly child nutrition too, not sure.
I also need to sort out payroll giving so that this happens monthly rather than in a terrifying blob at the end of the year.
Over the past year, I’ve worried more about climate change / the anthropocene and its coming effects on health and humanity — but it’s hard to work out where to be useful here, apart from preventing harm (lower your environmental footprint) and lobby lobby lobby for systemic change. Previously I’ve donated to Cool Earth and 350.org, but the former took a bit of a beating in this useful blog post, and I like the urgency of the Extinction Rebellion folks, so they’ll get a donation this year. (Not included in the 10% to the ‘most effective’, which is the original pledge.) I need to read this document by ‘Founders’ Pledge’ on climate change, and see what other research into effective mitigation/adaptation is out there.
This is all inspired by the work of Giving What We Can, which is a good place to start learning about — and trying out — charitable giving.
None of this negates the need to do political stuff too!
Scarlet (?) macaws by Alan Godfrey (Unsplash)
Joe Mitchell 