Benjamin Todd

In fact, the main reason many volunteering schemes persist is that if someone is a volunteer for an organisation, they're more likely to donate.

When the organization Forge cut its volunteering scheme to be more effective, it inadvertently triggered a big drop in donations.

So while volunteering can be effective in the right circumstances, it's often not.

In our research, we found that any college graduate in a rich country can do a huge amount to improve the lives of others.

And they can do this without changing jobs or making big sacrifices.

We'll cover three examples.

Donating 10% of your income to effective charities, advocating for important causes, and helping others be more effective.

Donating effectively.

How can you take whichever job you find the most personally rewarding and do a huge amount of good?

Give 10% of your income to the world's poorest people.

It's as simple as that.

How much good can donations do?

A lower bound.

Since 2008, GiveDirectly has made it possible to give cash directly to the poorest people in East Africa via mobile phone.

We don't think this is the most effective way to donate to charity by any means.

Later we'll discuss higher impact approaches.

But it's simple and quantifiable, so it makes a good starting point.

As we saw in Chapter 1, the more money you have, the less additional money will improve your life.

For instance, in the US, doubling your income is only associated with about a half point gain in life satisfaction on a scale of 1 to 10.

These surveys have been extended around the world.