Stop saving specific cats and dogs

A lot of my friends do charity work, and most of them put their money into specific stories:

-- We urgently need N dollars for surgery for a sick kid named X -- The shelter has nothing to feed the dogs, let alone the cats! -- Help the hospice, become a volunteer

And this matters: I'm not judging that kind of help. Not at all! There's a lot of humanity in it, and it really does change someone's specific life. Changes it right now. Today. This second!

But that kind of help is about as irrational as it gets. Every moment we're investing either money or time, and time isn't free. You should put it where 1 dollar produces the biggest result: lives saved. Let me spell it out:

- you're a great engineer and you spend 10 hours a week volunteering - your time isn't free, the average developer hour in the States is $75 - that's $3,000 a month - here's where those same $3,000 could go, with maximum return

1/ Preventing child mortality Mass vitamin A distribution programs for kids in poor countries sharply cut deaths from infections.

$3,000 gets 3 lives saved https://www.hki.org

2/ Vaccination Parents get paid small amounts for a clinic visit. That drives immunization coverage way up and cuts mortality.

$3,000 gets 2 lives saved https://www.newincentives.org

3/ Fighting malaria Preventive drugs and bed nets protect children in regions with high malaria mortality.

$3,000 gets 1 life saved https://www.malariaconsortium.org https://www.againstmalaria.com

If you don't want to dig through all these programs and studies, there's a simple option. There's a fund called GiveWell that analyzes dozens of charity programs itself and sends money where it saves the most lives right now.