Effective altruism is a philosophy and social movement that applies evidence and reason to determine the most effective ways to improve the world. Effective altruists aim to consider all causes and actions, and then act in the way that brings about the greatest positive impact. It is this broad evidence-based approach that distinguishes effective altruism from traditional altruism or charity. While a substantial proportion of effective altruists have focused on the nonprofit sector, the philosophy of effective altruism applies much more broadly, e.g., to prioritizing the scientific projects, companies, and policy initiatives which can be estimated to save and improve the most lives.
We are excited to be a part of this movement and hope you’ll join us.
On this page: organizations doing the work, and reading material if you want to go deeper. The FAQ answers the questions people usually ask next.
Organizations
A tour of some of the organizations doing work in and around effective altruism.
Finding effective charities
GiveWell is a non-profit that evaluates charities to find outstanding giving opportunities. It seeks out charities that can show strong evidence of impact per dollar and room for more funding, and that are trustworthy and transparent. GiveWell recommends only a handful of charities at a time, and those recommendations guide the donations of many effective altruists.
Giving What We Can encourages people to give effectively, and to take a pledge committing a share of their income to the charities that do the most good with it.
The Life You Can Save was founded by the philosopher Peter Singer. It promotes effective giving with a focus on extreme poverty, through public outreach and its own recommended-charity list.
Animal Charity Evaluators investigates the most effective ways of reducing non-human animal suffering. Given how many animals live in painful conditions on factory farms, this may be a very high-impact cause area.
Careers and community
80,000 Hours researches how to use your career to do the most good, and offers free advice and a job board. The name is roughly how many hours you will work in your lifetime.
Centre for Effective Altruism supports the effective altruism community: it runs the EA Forum, EA Global conferences, and support for local groups like ours.
Charity Entrepreneurship, part of Ambitious Impact, researches promising charity ideas and then incubates new organizations to carry them out, with training, co-founder matching and seed funding.
Rethink Charity runs a range of projects supporting effective altruism from the bottom up. The template this website is built on came from them.
Raising for Effective Giving encourages professional poker players to donate a share of their winnings to effective charities.
Center for Applied Rationality runs workshops on applied rationality, and often offers discounts to people involved in effective altruism.
Long-term risks
Several organizations study risks that could permanently affect humanity’s prospects, using the tools of mathematics, philosophy and science: the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk at Cambridge, the Future of Life Institute, and the Machine Intelligence Research Institute, which works on making advanced AI systems safe.
Oxford’s Future of Humanity Institute was a prominent centre for this research for nearly twenty years; the university closed it in April 2024.
Reading material
A lot has been written about how to do good well. Here is some of the best, roughly in the order we would suggest working through it.
Start here
The Introduction to Effective Altruism Handbook is the standard starting point: eight chapters covering the core ideas, arguments about which problems are most pressing, and how you might contribute. There is a free introductory program built around it if you would rather work through it with other people.
Shorter than that, Introduction to Effective Altruism covers the same ground in one article.
If you prefer video, Peter Singer’s TED talk The Why and How of Effective Altruism is a good twenty minutes, and The Life You Can Save in 3 minutes is a good three.
On giving
Giving 101: The Basics is GiveWell’s primer on charity effectiveness and global poverty.
How much does it cost to save a life? is worth reading alongside it — it walks through how that number is actually estimated, and why treating any single figure as exact is a mistake.
On careers
80,000 Hours’ career guide is the most thorough thing written on using your career to do good. Their job board is worth a look too.
Books
Doing Good Better by Will MacAskill is the standard introduction to effective altruism.
The Life You Can Save by Peter Singer makes the moral case for giving to reduce extreme poverty. It is available as a free ebook and audiobook from the organization of the same name.
The Most Good You Can Do, also by Singer, looks at the people who have taken these ideas furthest.
The Precipice by Toby Ord is on existential risk — the argument that safeguarding humanity’s long-term future deserves far more attention than it gets.
What We Owe The Future by Will MacAskill makes the case for longtermism, and is a good counterpart to the more near-term focus of the giving material above.
Blogs and ongoing discussion
The EA Forum is where most of the community’s writing and argument happens, including plenty of criticism of effective altruism from people within it. It is a good place to follow what people are currently working on and disagreeing about.
Ben Kuhn keeps a reading list of essays worth your time.