How To Give Effectively

Written August 16 2025

Est. 5-10 minute read

TLDR? Donate to one of the following CFI top recommended charities:

1. Give to charities that maximize the outcomes you care about per dollar donated.

The first rule of effective giving is to give where your donation has the most impact: where it results in the largest amount of the thing you want to achieve with your donation. For example, for feeding the hungry, this would mean giving where your money can be used to feed the largest number of people. What matters isn’t which charities are doing the most good in total, or who’s giving the most money, but how much you can accomplish with every additional dollar you give.

This approach doesn't tell you what goals you should prioritize, so think carefully and prayerfully about the kinds of change you want to see in the world. The Bible highlights many such outcomes:

  • People coming to know God

  • Justice for the poor

  • Comfort for the sick

  • The gospel being preached and believed

  • Creation being cared for

It’s worth comparing these outcomes with concrete examples, not just rhetorical ideals. One way to do this is through moral weights, e.g., how valuable is saving one additional life from malaria versus doubling the income of a family of four living in extreme poverty for a year?

Questions like this might seem hard or even impossible to answer. On the other hand, you are already making decisions like this whenever you are donating, whether you are aware of it or not. Every dollar donated to evangelism in India is a dollar that cannot be used to help a local soup kitchen in the US or UK, every donation to an animal shelter is one less donation helping sick people, and so on. 

Examples of what $1,000 can do (estimated):

  • Missions (low–medium certainty): Fund 8–10 local church planters for one year, potentially resulting in dozens of churches planted and multiple baptisms.

  • Income doubling (high certainty): GiveDirectly: Transfer cash to two families of four in extreme poverty, doubling their income for one year.

  • Malaria prevention (high certainty): AMF or Malaria Consortium: Purchase enough nets or medicine to save approximately 7 years of healthy life.

  • Animal welfare (low–medium certainty): The Humane League: Support cage-free campaigns enabling several thousand chickens to live outside of cages.

The best charities often have 10–1000x more impact per dollar than average ones. Some charities, unfortunately, may do harm per dollar donated. A famous example are Scared Straight programs to that intend to prevent crime in at-risk children and teenagers, but actually increase participants’ crime rates according to studies.

Shortlist of recommended charities (via GiveWell):

2. Give to charities that are highly transparent.

Look for organizations that publish clear impact data. Look for information on not just outputs (like meals served, Bibles printed) but outcomes (like lives saved, conversions, income increases). Outputs are usually easier to measure and often organisations only report those. However, outcomes are the things we really care about, and outputs don’t automatically lead to outcomes. For example, providing students in developing countries with textbooks (output) doesn’t always result in improved learning (outcome). Because of this, information of actual outcomes is so important and clear outcome reporting is a very promising sign that an organisation is taking a rigorous approach to their impact.

Seek organisations that reason about counterfactuals: what would have happened without their program? Counterfactuals are important because real change is not about before-after comparisons but rather about what would have happened otherwise. If something similar would happen anyway (e.g., someone else had run a similar program), the difference might be much less than you’d expect, and the main counterfactual effect of the program might actually be on resource allocation between and within organisations rather than program recipients.

Ask whether the organisations you are thinking about disclose how marginal dollars will be used, not just highlights from past successes. Be wary of glossy reports that only showcase best-case stories. Those often don’t represent the typical or future use of your donation. One very good sign is if an organisation publishes evaluations that admit shortcomings in its projects.

Even organisations that have very good documentation of their programs usually don’t have the numbers and evaluations on the front page. You’ll usually need to dig a bit deeper into their website to find those. Look for website sections like evaluations, impact, research, reports, etc.

3. Give to what’s impactful on the margin.

The point of donating is to convert your money into things you care about, such as food for the hungry etc. For this reason, you should ask how much more good an extra dollar to an organisation will result. Will they be able to effectively convert extra funding into the outcomes you care about? 

Fund organizations with clear, unmet needs. Some nonprofits raise far more than they can effectively deploy due to staff, infrastructure, or strategy constraints. Example: A church raising $3M may only need $1M for a building and $500K for staffing. The remaining funds may sit unused or be inefficiently allocated.

Questions to ask:

  • Is this charity or program already well-funded without my gift?

  • Will most of its good still happen even if I don’t give?

  • Is this among the most impactful options per dollar?

  • If unsure, revisit the evidence (see Point 4).

Another thing to remember: just because something was impactful previously doesn’t mean it still is. For example, polio eradication no longer needs much funding, but malaria still kills hundreds of thousands annually. The funding landscape may also change in the other direction so that previously well-funded areas suddenly need more money again.

4. Give to organizations that have a good evidence base.

Some organisations have much more evidence backing them up than others. There can be evidence on the effectiveness of particular organisations or more generally on the types of programs they are running. 

For global health and development, look for randomized controlled trials (RCTs), the gold standard for demonstrating effectiveness. For a high level of certainty, look for academic publications researching the program model in context (e.g. a peer-reviewed study of the impact of insecticide-treated malaria net distribution on health and livelihoods for rural Kenyans). 

Diving into research literature may sound daunting (though some people enjoy it), but luckily top research organisations like GiveWell, the Happier Lives Institute, and Founders Pledge have reviewed thousands of studies to recommend the highest-impact charities in global health and development. For animal welfare, check Animal Charity Evaluators. Founders Pledge also has resources on climate charities.

In less measurable areas (e.g. missions, evangelism, systems change), evidence is harder to come by, but thoughtful reasoning, cost-effectiveness modeling, and qualitative analysis can still guide your giving. See, for example, our missions report. Other promising yet complex areas include, among others:

  • Policy reform and lobbying

  • Climate change mitigation

  • Institutional reform (e.g. improved governance, education systems)

5. Give in a tax-advantaged way.

Giving in a way that minimises the taxes you pay for the money you donate enables you to donate more.

US donors: see this guide

Consider a donor-advised fund (DAF). This allows you to:

  • Receive immediate tax benefits

  • Invest the donation

  • Distribute it strategically over time

6. Give regularly.

Give regularly. Regular giving also enables better financial planning, both for you and the charities you support. Many people give only or mostly at the end of the year, but monthly giving helps avoid decision paralysis at year’s end and makes generosity a consistent habit.

Automate your giving. Consider setting up an automatic monthly donation or similar. This makes your giving less vulnerable to human error and forgetfulness, and ensures regularity. It can also make the decision to give easier: if you’re automatically giving by default, you will be less tempted to use the money for something else instead. Research suggests that people who give more frequently give more.

Give even if you’re unsure. US givers can contribute donations today to a donor-advised-fund (DAF), reap tax advantages in the current year, and allocate the recipient charities in a future year. The funds in a DAF can be invested in the meantime. Plus, you don’t need to know which charity is absolutely the most effective to make a good decision (e.g. donating to a CFI top recommended charity). 

Take a giving pledge. A giving pledge is a commitment to donate a certain amount (see examples of different pledges below). We are often less consistent in our giving than we would like to be. People also often overestimate the amount they are giving. A pledge sets a clear standard. It can serve as a tool to keep you accountable and honest – not so much to others, but to yourself. A pledge can be taken privately so that only you and the organisation you pledged through know about it. Consider:

  • A 10% lifetime income pledge (e.g., via Giving What We Can)

  • A “finish line” pledge to give everything above a set income cap

  • A pledge to cap your net worth – particularly relevant for retirees

See Jason Dykstra’s story for an experience of what it’s like to cap your expenses and donate income above that.

7. Earn to Give.

You can choose nearly any ethical career, earn a high income, and give a significant portion away, doing enormous good through donations.

See our Earn to Give guide. This path has downsides:

  • Your values might drift

  • You could end up working in a morally questionable environment

You should prayerfully consider whether this path is right for you while taking into account the Biblical warnings about love of money and dangers of riches.

However, if you're already giving significantly, working in an ethical role, and developing valuable career capital, this is a powerful and sustainable way to do good, often while doing work that suits your gifts and preferences.

Want to learn more about how you can be effective in your giving? Visit our website on Christian effective altruism.