Bresler and Singer’s organization argue that you can. There is a huge amount of preventable suffering in the world, and many feel their gift would only be a drop in the bucket. But this isn’t the issue, he argued, What if the ‘drop in the bucket’ was your daughter? By giving to highly effective, proven charities that tackle extreme poverty, like The Against Malaria Foundation and Give Directly, donors can meaningfully, quickly, and directly impact the lives of people, usually children, born into extreme poverty. ‘Bottomless’ problems and today’s ‘thoughtless’ philanthropy Often, Bresler said, it seems like acting on problems of extreme poverty is pointless because they are simply too huge and too difficult to solve. However, he pointed out that the issue isn’t the cost of solving these problems but rather the way we inefficiently allocate charitable giving today. According to The Life You Can Save, it would cost $125bn each year to cut global poverty in half. That is a big number, but not when compared to annual charitable giving in the US alone. Each year US households give approximately $240bn to charity. Foundations and corporations give another $120bn. Of donations by households, The Life You Can Save estimates that just 3% of all dollars are given on the basis of the donor doing research into the relative performance of charities in achieving a predefined set of goals. In other words, it’s not that we’re not generous enough to solve difficult problems that cause avoidable deaths from extreme poverty – it’s that we don’t think carefully enough about how we give to charity. Recognizing the imperative to help Bresler was quick to emphasize that recognizing the imperative to help doesn’t necessitate living a life of absolute sacrifice. He recounted a recent conversation with his wife about whether to repaint their house. How, she asked, could they spent $6,000 repainting the house when that money could be given to the Against Malaria Foundation to distribute anti-malarial bed nets (by some estimates, a donation of that size would likely save at least two lives from malaria). Bresler’s answer: you can’t justify it. The answer, he said, is to admit you’re not perfect and work towards doing better, without beating yourself up for not being there already. If we look at the moral imperative to help others and start rationalizing why it doesn’t apply, he said, we have no chance of improving. The goal is to move toward our ‘personal best’. Bresler advises executives and high net worth individuals on their imperative to give by asking this: Would you donate to a given cause if you knew with a high degree of confidence that it would save lives? If their answer is yes, he’ll lead them through the available research about the efficacy of available interventions. At the end of the day, if people simply don’t want to give, at least they admit as much. So, should we all be aid workers in Africa? None of Bresler’s message is anti-business. To the contrary, this is a man who built his career selling menswear. For-profit businesses, he says, do amazing things for the world and solve structural problems in development. Indeed, The Life You Can Save emphasizes that ‘earning to give’ – working in lucrative for-profit fields in order to donate substantially to combat extreme poverty – is often a good career choice, especially for people like MBAs who have high earning potential. This links back to Bresler’s concept of ‘personal best.’ Admitting that we have the power to do amazing things to help people in extreme poverty need not be the catalyst to upend our lives. But it should be the catalyst to start helping, committing to do a little better each year.
Bresler and Singer’s organization argue that you can. There is a huge amount of preventable suffering in the world, and many feel their gift would only be a drop in the bucket. But this isn’t the issue, he argued, What if the ‘drop in the bucket’ was your daughter? By giving to highly effective, proven charities that tackle extreme poverty, like The Against Malaria Foundation and Give Directly, donors can meaningfully, quickly, and directly impact the lives of people, usually children, born into extreme poverty. ‘Bottomless’ problems and today’s ‘thoughtless’ philanthropy Often, Bresler said, it seems like acting on problems of extreme poverty is pointless because they are simply too huge and too difficult to solve. However, he pointed out that the issue isn’t the cost of solving these problems but rather the way we inefficiently allocate charitable giving today. According to The Life You Can Save, it would cost $125bn each year to cut global poverty in half. That is a big number, but not when compared to annual charitable giving in the US alone. Each year US households give approximately $240bn to charity. Foundations and corporations give another $120bn. Of donations by households, The Life You Can Save estimates that just 3% of all dollars are given on the basis of the donor doing research into the relative performance of charities in achieving a predefined set of goals. In other words, it’s not that we’re not generous enough to solve difficult problems that cause avoidable deaths from extreme poverty – it’s that we don’t think carefully enough about how we give to charity. Recognizing the imperative to help Bresler was quick to emphasize that recognizing the imperative to help doesn’t necessitate living a life of absolute sacrifice. He recounted a recent conversation with his wife about whether to repaint their house. How, she asked, could they spent $6,000 repainting the house when that money could be given to the Against Malaria Foundation to distribute anti-malarial bed nets (by some estimates, a donation of that size would likely save at least two lives from malaria). Bresler’s answer: you can’t justify it. The answer, he said, is to admit you’re not perfect and work towards doing better, without beating yourself up for not being there already. If we look at the moral imperative to help others and start rationalizing why it doesn’t apply, he said, we have no chance of improving. The goal is to move toward our ‘personal best’. Bresler advises executives and high net worth individuals on their imperative to give by asking this: Would you donate to a given cause if you knew with a high degree of confidence that it would save lives? If their answer is yes, he’ll lead them through the available research about the efficacy of available interventions. At the end of the day, if people simply don’t want to give, at least they admit as much. So, should we all be aid workers in Africa? None of Bresler’s message is anti-business. To the contrary, this is a man who built his career selling menswear. For-profit businesses, he says, do amazing things for the world and solve structural problems in development. Indeed, The Life You Can Save emphasizes that ‘earning to give’ – working in lucrative for-profit fields in order to donate substantially to combat extreme poverty – is often a good career choice, especially for people like MBAs who have high earning potential. This links back to Bresler’s concept of ‘personal best.’ Admitting that we have the power to do amazing things to help people in extreme poverty need not be the catalyst to upend our lives. But it should be the catalyst to start helping, committing to do a little better each year.
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