Benjamin Todd

We'd recommend being cautious if you're planning to have an impact mainly through your work, especially if that might involve lower wage work like at a charity, if you have significant debt or financial problems, or if you're not sure you can stick to it.

And if you're not quite ready yet, Giving What We Can allows you to take a trial pledge to give as little as 1% of your income for any period you choose to see how it goes before making any long-term commitment.

Take the pledge here at adk.link.gwc.

What if you don't want to give money?

How to help through effective political advocacy?

Just as we happen to be rich by virtue of where we were born, we also happen to have political influence for the same reason.

Rich countries have a disproportionate impact on issues like global trade, migration, climate change, and technology policy, and are generally at least partly democratic.

So if you'd prefer to do something besides giving money, consider advocating for important issues.

We were initially sceptical that one person could have real influence through political advocacy, but when we dug into the numbers, we changed our minds.

Let's take perhaps the simplest example, voting in elections.

Several studies have used statistical models to estimate the chances of a single vote, determining the US presidential election.

Because the US electoral system is determined at the state level, if you live in a state that strongly favors one candidate, your chance of deciding the outcome is effectively zero.

But if you live in a state that's contested, your chances rise to between 1 in 10 million and 1 in a million.

That's quite a bit higher than your chances of winning the lottery.

Remember, the US federal government is very, very big.

Let's imagine one candidate wanted to spend 0.2% more of GDP on foreign aid.

That would be about $187 billion in extra foreign aid over their four-year term.

One millionth of that is $187,000.

So if voting takes you an hour, it could be the most important hour, the highest unexpected value you'll spend that year.

The figures are similar in other rich countries.