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Why I’m giving 10% of my income to charity (forever)

2024-08-09 · Long video (solo, talking head or whiteboard) · Ali · recording, 16:47 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Money and investing · mode: Explanation and tutorial · tags: His own numbers, His medical past, Lesson from a book, His own products discussed

Ali extends the 10% Pledge he took for his personal income in 2019 to his business, which will give 10% of its profits to effective charities every year; he explains effective charities, retells the drowning-child argument and says giving saves more lives than a doctor's career.

What is said

The parts of the video and what is said in each (★ — how much it matters to the video).

00:00:00 — Why Ali is making this video: the 10% Pledge for his business

  • ★★★ Ali has decided to take the 10% Pledge for his business too: from now on it will donate 10% of its profits to effective charities every year, having taken it personally in 2019. — 00:00:00

00:00:29 — What the 10% Pledge is; effective charities; cataract surgery against a guide dog

  • ★★ The 10% Pledge is run by the nonprofit Giving What We Can, which Ali says is not partnering with him or sponsoring the video. — 00:00:29
  • ★★★ Not all charities are created equal, Ali says: researchers of charity effectiveness have sometimes found a 100-times difference between a less and a more effective charity, an insight that changed his thinking five years ago. — 00:00:59
  • ★★ Giving What We Can says choosing where to give can matter more than how much, since charities differ greatly in effectiveness, so it is worth researching which do most good per dollar. — 00:01:57
  • ★ Giving What We Can counts 1.5 million charities in the US alone. — 00:01:57 · United States
  • ★★ In Giving What We Can's example, about $1,000 can cure a severe case of cataract blindness, while one guide dog for a person with limited vision typically costs $30,000 to $50,000. — 00:02:26

00:03:03 — Why he takes it: the drowning child, all lives equal, 10% and global inequality

  • ★★★ Retelling the drowning-child thought experiment, Ali asks: if you would ruin your suit to save a drowning child, would you donate $5,000 to the Against Malaria Foundation to save a child you cannot see? — 00:04:29
  • ★★★ Ali broadly agrees with Peter Singer that all lives are created equal, so living an ethical and moral life means doing what we can to save them. — 00:04:29
  • ★★ When he first heard the argument as a doctor, Ali agreed in theory but felt uneasy about donating $5,000, and for years felt he could do nothing without giving up his quality of life. — 00:05:17
  • ★★ 10% feels like a good number to Ali: for most people in most parts of the world, giving 10% will not really change their quality of life. — 00:06:25
  • ★★★ Giving What We Can says, based on research, that earning $60,000 a year after tax puts you in the top 1% globally. — 00:06:25
  • ★★★ Earning more than $19,000 a year puts you in the top 10% globally; global inequality is so great, Ali says, that a normal life in a developed country probably puts you in the top 1%. (hedged) — 00:06:53
  • ★★ Earning about 40k a year as a doctor, Ali realised that donating £4,000 would not change his life in any meaningful way, yet £4,000 or $5,000 can save a child's life. — 00:07:18
  • ★★★ Citing Gregory Lewis's analysis, updated in 2023, Ali says a doctor in the UK saves on average around seven or fewer lives over a whole career. — 00:07:18 · United Kingdom

00:07:36 — How many lives a doctor saves against donating; not letting perfect be the enemy of good

  • ★★ Doctors are good for more than saving lives, Ali grants, such as kindness to a struggling patient, but a mathematical approach to a UK doctor's impact lands on a few lives saved per career. — 00:08:05 · United Kingdom
  • ★★★ Working 40 years as a doctor, Ali could save maybe seven lives; donating 10% of a doctor's income to effective charities every year could save more lives than that in the developing world. — 00:08:32
  • ★★ Saving a life in the developing world is fairly cheap, about $5,000 through the Against Malaria Foundation, but very expensive in a developed country, where vaccines and sanitation are largely taken care of. — 00:08:32
  • ★★ The enormous sum the UK will spend to extend someone's life by one year could, Ali says, save 10 lives in a sub-Saharan African country. — 00:08:32 · United Kingdom
  • ★★★ Realising that donating to certain charities saves more lives than working full-time, 60 hours a week, as a doctor in the NHS is why Ali took the 10% Pledge for his personal income in 2019. — 00:09:10 · NHS
  • ★★★ In an ideal world Ali would be a full-on philanthropist donating millions, but he says not to let perfect be the enemy of good. — 00:09:48
  • ★★ For a few years Ali felt he should give 90% of his income to charity, and because of that took no action at all, until talking to people showed him he was being dumb about it. — 00:10:12
  • ★★★ Ali does not want to give all his money to charity, at least not yet: he likes a nice quality of life, growing his business and being rich, but has happily given 10% for five years. — 00:10:12
  • ★★★ Ali's business is projected to make about £2 million in profit this year (2024); if the projections work out, it will donate $260,000 to charity. (hedged) — 00:10:12

00:10:21 — How much the business will donate this year; why the pledge now covers business profits

  • ★★ At $5,500 per life saved through the Against Malaria Foundation, Ali says, his business's donation this year (2024) would save 47 lives. — 00:10:46
  • ★ Ali finds it mind-blowing that filming YouTube videos lets him be a multimillionaire and, this year (2024) alone, save 47 lives simply by writing a cheque. — 00:11:10
  • ★★ Ali's personal income is only about 100K, since for tax reasons he keeps the money in the business; as founder of a business doing very well, pledging only his personal income felt wrong. (hedged) — 00:11:50
  • ★★ Ali signed the 10% Pledge for his business's profits at his team offsite in Portugal a couple of weeks before the video. — 00:12:35
  • ★★ The business pledge has brought Ali a new sense of purpose: he had at times felt he had enough money and saw no point in making another course. — 00:12:35

00:12:38 — How he has felt since the pledge; GiveWell; the How Rich Am I calculator; email him if you take the pledge

  • ★★★ Knowing that every $50,000 of his business's profit saves a life gives Ali a reason to get out of bed and more reason to grow the business. — 00:13:04
  • ★★ GiveWell, a nonprofit charity evaluator, researches which charities are most effective, tries to quantify their impact, and every year recommends top charities for donors who want maximum impact. — 00:13:31
  • ★★ Ali suspects his business will give to charities in health or education, still to be decided; he would like his team to meet yearly and choose together from GiveWell's recommendations. (hedged) — 00:14:12
  • ★★ Ali says details of his business's charity donations will be shared in his weekly email newsletter, LifeNotes. — 00:14:12 · Sunday Snippets
  • ★★ Ali recommends that viewers who vibe with these ideas check out GiveWell. — 00:14:12
  • ★★ If even 10 viewers of the video took the 10% Pledge and started donating, Ali says, that would magnify his impact beyond his own business's donations. — 00:15:17
  • ★★ By Giving What We Can's How Rich Am I calculator, Ali's junior-doctor post-tax income of maybe 35,000 put him in the richest 2.3% of the world, at 13.5 times the global median. (hedged) — 00:15:17
  • ★★ After giving 10%, the calculator says, that income would still be in the richest 2.9% at 12.2 times the global median, and each year's donation could treat 610 children for malaria or save almost one life. — 00:15:46
  • ★★ Ali asks anyone who takes the 10% Pledge after watching the video to email him and say so. — 00:16:10
  • ★ If enough people take the 10% Pledge, Ali has been toying with a Telegram group or an annual meetup of pledgers, depending on the numbers. (hedged) — 00:16:10

00:16:39 — The 2019 pledge video and sign-off

Threads in this video

Where the stories that moved here went next

Mentioned

Central: Against Malaria Foundation · effective altruism · GiveWell · Giving What We Can

Also: People: Gregory Lewis · Peter Singer

Projects: Sunday Snippets

Organizations: NHS

Concepts: drowning child

Places: Australia · Canada · France · Germany · London · Nigeria · United Kingdom · United States

Products: Telegram

Only in the description or credits: The Life You Can Save

Also centred on Against Malaria Foundation: Why I'm Giving 10% of my Income to Charity

Also centred on effective altruism: Why I'm Giving 10% of my Income to Charity

Also centred on Giving What We Can: Why I'm Giving 10% of my Income to Charity

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