Why activists should consider making lots of money

Abstract

It’s common for activists to equate “nonprofit work” with “doing good” and “for-profit work” with “selling out.” But in fact, if you’re well suited to working at a corporation or startup company, this option might be better than working at a nonprofit, because the extra money you could donate at the for-profit job would buy new nonprofit employees, while at the nonprofit, you might partially be replacing someone else. That said, I would not advise the “earning to give” approach for everyone, and I think there are cases where people should clearly work on a problem directly rather than making money to donate toward it. There may also be cases in which you don’t counterfactually replace another person, in which case the direct impact of the job is potentially significant.