To encourage others to give and to keep myself accountable, I’ve decided to start a log of my charitable donations. This report covers donations made during the period 2013-2016, and will be updated at the end of each new year. I may also start tracking money moved in addition to direct donations, as Peter does, and might provide information about donations made prior to 2013, if I find the relevant records.

Note that the amounts I donate are very modest relative to those donated by some of the effective altruists I most admire, such as Brian, Peter, Jeff, and Michael. At some point in the past, I considered earning to give, but ultimately decided that I could have a much bigger impact through direct work, in particular by multiplying the impact of other, highly impactful EAs. I estimate that my current impact through direct work, counterfactually adjusted, is maybe 100 times my impact through donations (the EA I work for, who moves hundreds of thousands of dollars per year to cost-effective charities and has considerable direct impact through public advocacy and outreach, believes that I make him ~⅓ more impactful and that I’m largely irreplaceable).

Summary

Detailed breakdown

Note: many of the donations to the Centre for Effective Altruism—my employer between May 2013 and June 2014, and July 2016 until June 2018—were in the form of unclaimed expenses.