Comment by web-cowboy
10 hours ago
I highly recommend donating some amount of your time, expertise, or money to good causes, regardless of your financial situation. Even the smallest amounts compound to amazing results—especially over long stretches over time.
When I was a student I made (very!) modest contributions to clean water projects, microfinance organizations, and the reports I now read as a mature adult are so gratifying.
I also try to keep a "charity" type project in my queue - volunteering my tech skills to help fix/build things for NGOs so fun to look back on.
I'd also like to point people towards the Giving What We Can pledge to donate some percentage of their income to charity.
While this is of course closely related to EA, which many people here are (both deservedly and undeservedly) not big fans of, it doesn't require you to choose some specific charities or agree with their moral framework. Consistently donating money to whatever cause you personally value would make the world a much better place compared to not donating anything.
I really recommend people consider doing it regardless of their views on EA or the charities they recommend. I'm not a big fan of the modern EA community myself, but I agree that the money that barely make a difference in my life could be life changing for others.
https://www.givingwhatwecan.org/
On a somewhat unrelated note, also consider signing up for blood and stem cell donation!
What is “EA” in this context?
Effective altruism.
It's a very small, tech-literate and philosophically straightforward death cult.
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Where do you find NGOs/projects that you can volunteer your tech skills to help? This sort of thing is something I've been interested in for a while but haven't been able to find a good place to start looking considering I havent previously done tech oriented charity work
https://www.highimpactprofessionals.org/
https://rendered.one/
Those two sites help with job matching for nonprofits. The first has both volunteering and paid positions, the second only paid AFAIK.
These are great links, thanks a lot.
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Do you have personal experience with both? #2 looks like AI slop, from design to copy.
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Ukraine volunteer here: - Find local charities where you can meet people face to face, and do your own due diligence, this is because: - The best/most tech-starved charities are the ones where they're continously in the trenches of the charities activities (so they won't even be on tech skill matching charity job boards) — and are generally poorly represented online
Seconded.
This is my experience with Microfinance
I've been funding Microfinance loans, $25 at a time, for a while now. Just checked the numbers - I have spent only about 5K in total, made almost 68K for ~2900 loans (keep recycling the money when repayments come in).
Lost motivation for a few years in between, after Covid. Used to think it is just $25, what difference can it make? I was totally wrong. $25 won't even get a good pizza these days in most American cities, it is not a lot in the west. But it can have amazing purchasing power in Africa, parts of Asia etc.
What I am trying to say is - even if we have just $10, it is okay, it can be of immense help to someone. There is Watsi, there is Kiva, Doctors without Borders and many more great projects, like Tanzania Education Project.
Here is a very simplistic (and optimistic) calculation by ChatGPT - simply loaning $25 month consistently can help more than a 1000 people in 20 years
https://chatgpt.com/share/6ac80150-feb8-83e8-a6b0-4b162c056a...
I used to think I need lots of capital to help, this shows how wrong that line of thinking is.
Is that profit or revenue? If it was profit it would be $23 per loan which suggests that the loan interest would have been 100% which I find hard to believe.
But more importantly, can you share the details of how you did that practically? Did you do this yourself or as part of a larger organization who just took your money and paid you back later?
There is no profit/interest for lenders. I do it through kiva.org Kiva doesn't make the loans directly either - they partner with local organizations in the countries they operate in. Any interest these local orgs charge, is for their operating expenses. Lenders on Kiva do not get interest. There is also a chance of losing money if loans are defaulted, due to currency exchange loss etc (I have to check the exact amount, but I have lost some due to defaults)
https://www.kiva.org/about/how
I also tried a couple of other Microfinance orgs (can't remember the names now), but kept going back to Kiva. Been doing it for 15 years, so it slowly adds up, even though I wasn't consistent.
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I think that’s how much money was loaned with $25 dollars being loaned, paid back, loaned, paid back.
since i didn't see it mentioned anywhere here yet (and i know it's been around forever i've been using it for about 10 years) kiva.org is a really good one for micro loans/lending.
I don't think it's good. The cause here is ensuring African countries experience the same demographic collapse as western ones?
Most charities do more harm than good. Does this charity operate in the best interest of the state? which state? Why don't people ask these questions instead of consuming feel-good slop?
It's not an entirely moral judgement if your actions put them in conflict with the state.
You are making very specific claims towards a rather generic comment, so I don't understand your point. How does supporting charities, especially the mentioned clean water and microfinance types, which I believe are among the few which really do help a lot, relate to demographic collapse? And most charities doing harm? Some, sure. Many, maybe. But most? I doubt it. That's a broad claim that requires evidence.
Is getting more children to school not in everyone's best interest? As for conflict with the state, in Tanzania any charity/NGO has to operate for three years before they are even allowed to apply for official recognized status. It makes sense to me. They can't control what everyone is doing. So go, do, and if you want to be officially recognized then show what you did for 3 years and they'll see if they like it. If they don't, they'll probably be told to stop. Small operations like this one can probably be ignored.
I'm not sure if you are referencing my post or the OP but my charity doesn't operating in the interest of any state. It just provides no-string-attached funding for education and healthcare to kids in Ibumila.
what does "microfinance organizations" even mean? loan sharks?
The opposite actually. They provide small loans with generous conditions, and often also with guidance and education on how to start a business.
I highly recommend not to. The potential for whole operation being a scam because you have no way to verify anything is pretty high. Now add there reality of generative AI and very easy way to make deep fakes and essentially every charity is certified scam.
You may see it as cynical or unfair but that's unfortunate reality of time we currently live in.
I highly recommend to diversify. Donate a smaller amount to a bunch of different charities.
hot take :/ Would you really have trouble trusting the OP?
Maybe you just don't want to donate resources in general, because otherwise surely there exists some channel you could witness with your own eyes and donate to with confidence.
I think there are good trustworthy places to donate and the person you replied to was a bit too cynical. OP might be a good place to donate! However:
> hot take :/ Would you really have trouble trusting the OP?
Yes? Your first instinct when someone tells you a sob story or an epic western savior spiel is to do your due diligence.
Recent HN account, the website is a year old, they don't list the 501 EIN and searching for "Tanzania Education Project" on https://apps.irs.gov/app/eos/ yields nothing. OP doesn't list his name on the website (but it is on gofundme).
OP seems genuine, but there are many red flags.
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Yes, best to live in a cave and never take any risks or have any contact with dangerous, suspicious, filthy humans.
It's fine. There is plenty of good in the world. Touch some grass and take a deep breath.