The world’s problems are large, complex, and hard to solve. Even if you’ve been moved by some of the research and values discussed so far, you might wonder:
Isn’t anything I donate just a drop in the bucket?
This is a very common concern, and a valid question.
Here’s how I personally think about it:
It can be hard to feel the impact of giving to charity, even when the data tells us it’s life-saving. So to make it more concrete, I imagine a more visceral way to save someone’s life – for example, pulling a child out of a burning building.
I know that if I did this, I’d feel incredible. It might even be the single most important day of my life.
And yet, there are always other burning buildings with other children inside – who don’t make it out.
This doesn’t make the person I rescued any less worthy or important. And it certainly doesn’t mean I should walk by the building.
The point here is that it is surprisingly easy to be distracted by looking at our impact in relative terms. But arguably, it is our impact in absolute terms that matters.
When I prevent someone from dying by funding bed nets, nutritional supplements, or vaccines, that’s someone’s daughter, son, mother, father, best friend, mentor...the list goes on. That person has goals, dreams, hopes, desires, and plans.
It’s not about the size of the bucket, but the size of the drop — and the bigger the bucket, the more vital every drop becomes.
I’m a big fan of regular, consistent giving like the 🔸10% Pledge because it’s a relatively small cost to me and an outsized impact for others.
I don’t feel much difference to my quality of life from year to year. But if I stop to think about the impact of my pledge – it’s massive.
On a ~50k salary, and a 40 year career, giving 10% yearly is the equivalent of preventing about 40 deaths.
That’s like walking by a burning building and pulling someone out 40 times throughout my life.
So when I stop to really think about it, my donations just don’t feel like a drop in the bucket.
My point above has been that – regardless of the size of the bucket – individual action can make a huge difference in the lives of so many. That’s true whether or not others act too.
But of course, the 🔸10% Pledge is also about norm-setting: collective action adds up astonishingly fast. In just two years of the richest 1% (~$65K+, post-tax) giving 10%, we could completely end world hunger, get clean water and sanitation for all, and massively suppress disease and suffering.
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