Astrid, the engineer who donates 15% of her income for a better world
Thursday 21 November 2024, Reading time: 10 mins
Introduction
Astrid is a 35-year-old IT engineer who has chosen to donate 15% of her income to high-impact charities. She shares with us her motivations and her advice for those considering doing the same. Her story illustrates how committing to giving can transform not only the lives of others, but our own lives too.
How did you find out about high impact giving?
I discovered this subject through the videos of Science4All and Monsieur Phi on YouTube (this one, for example), which introduced me to the concept of high impact giving and, more broadly, to the effective altruism movement (which I discuss below). I then delved deeper into the issue by exploring the websites of Altruisme Efficace France, Giving What We Can (GWWC) and a few others. I also read Julia Galef’s book “The Scout Mindset”, which talks about how to form as accurate a picture of the world as possible, beyond our cognitive biases, in order to make the most rational choices possible. I found this book very useful and inspiring. I started my first ‘effective’ donations at the end of 2021, and then in 2023 I made a commitment to donate 5% of my income. This year, 2024, I’ve decided to go up a gear and commit to giving 15%*.
What does effective altruism mean to you?
The Wikipedia page explains that effective altruism “aims to adopt an analytical approach in order to identify the best ways to have a positive impact on the world”. To put it simply, it’s about combining generosity and rationality; not letting ourselves be guided by our empathy, which is too easily fooled by moving images and stories, but relying on the available evidence of effectiveness to choose the causes to which we give.
If we wanted to define effective altruism in a very pejorative way, we could say that it involves discriminating against people on the basis of the cost of getting them out of trouble. But I’m proud of this ‘discrimination’; even if I can’t save the world on my own, it seems immoral to me to use my money to save or improve the life of just one person when the same money given elsewhere would have saved or improved the lives of ten others.
You talk a lot about giving to save or improve lives, but isn’t effective altruism a more global approach?
It’s true. Beyond donations, effective altruism invites us to think globally about our lives: what career choices, what use of our free time, are most likely to improve the world. Personally, I haven’t gone so far as to choose my job on the basis of this criterion, but I always think about the ways in which I can make a difference to the world in my spare time: I do a bit of voluntary work for the Mieux Donner association, I try to talk about effective altruism to those around me, I offer to replace my Christmas present with a donation, and so on.
In terms of causes, effective altruism is not just about saving or improving lives today; it is also concerned with animal welfare and the global risks that could impact the future (global warming, the risk of pandemics, the risk of nuclear conflict, issues relating to artificial intelligence, etc.).
What led you to decide to make a regular donation of 15% of your income*?
There are a huge number of causes to support in the charitable sector, and it’s very difficult to distinguish between those that are really useful and effective and those that are not (or are less so). For me, the fact that I wasn’t sure of my impact was very discouraging, and until now I’d limited my donations to a marginal proportion of my income.
Effective altruism has taught me that you can, at least to some extent, identify the most pressing problems and the most effective ways of dealing with them. It removed my reticence and encouraged me to give much more.
There’s another aspect that drives me to give: my particularly privileged status. Of course, my gross salary is ‘only’ in the French average and looking ahead, there are people who are immeasurably better off. But in saying that, you forget that France is a very rich country; using the ‘How Rich Am I Calculator‘, I realise that I’m in the top 4% of the richest people in the world. So I’m one of the people best placed to take action. What’s more, my wealth is largely due to my good fortune: the good fortune of having been born in a rich country, the good fortune of having had the education to qualify for a well-paid job. So I feel I have a moral duty to use what I earn to help those less fortunate than myself.
What causes or organisations do you mainly support, and why have you chosen them?
I relied heavily on the recommendations of Altruisme Efficace France. I allocate my donations as follows:
Health and poverty (23% of my donations): Against Malaria Foundation, Helen Keller International (vitamin A programme), New Incentives, Organisation pour la Prévention de la Cécité.
Animal welfare (23% of my donations): Anima (formerly “Assiettes Végétales”), Convergence Animaux Politique, The Humane League, Good Food Institute and, to a lesser extent, L214. I also donate to GWWC’s Effective Animal Advocacy fund.
Global warming (23% of my donations): Clean Air Task Force (CATF) and Founders Pledge Climate Change Fund.
Other global existential risks (23% of my donations): EffiSciences, GWWC’s Risks and Resilience Fund and soon Mieux Donner’s Preserving the Future Fund.
Effective Altruism (8% de mes dons): fonds “Effective Giving Research & Advocacy” de GWWC.
All the cause areas seem important to me:
I donate to the ‘health and poverty‘ cause because it is in this area that the evidence of impact is the strongest; statistically, we are almost certain to save and improve human lives by making donations.
The cause of animal welfare is also paramount, given the extremely large scale of the problem. For example, there are almost three times as many broiler chickens (chickens raised for meat) as there are human beings (source). And since animals seem to have a similar capacity to suffer as we do, we cannot be indifferent to their often appalling farming conditions.
The cause of global existential risks seems to me to be even more fundamental than the previous two, because the fate of the whole of humanity is potentially at stake. Unfortunately, this is the area where the evidence of the impact of our actions is weakest, but since the stakes are so high, I think it’s crucial to give something despite everything. What’s more, it’s a cause that is often overlooked by other donors, hence my decision to allocate a larger proportion of my donations to it.
Finally, I’m giving a little money to the cause of effective altruism itself. The money can be used to identify the best associations, promote effective altruism or cover the costs of donation platforms.
How has your commitment to giving influenced your life?
I wouldn’t say it’s changed my life, but there’s no doubt that giving is very gratifying; it makes me feel useful and good. On days when I’m feeling down, it’s one of the things I can hold on to: even when my job or my daily life feel like they have no meaning, at least I know that my donations do.
It’s quite funny, actually; I claim that I give to help others, but you could just as easily say that I buy my own happiness! However, I don’t find it shocking that there’s a bit of selfishness in my altruism; after all, it doesn’t matter what my intentions are, in the end what counts is the impact of my gifts.
Other than donating, are there other ways in which you try to have a positive impact?
As well as striving to be positively useful, I also try not to cause too much inadvertent harm through my lifestyle choices.
For example, my greenhouse gas emissions are contributing to global warming, which is causing and will continue to cause a great deal of suffering and death. So I think it’s my duty to reduce them as much as possible.
With this in mind, I regularly carry out a carbon audit on nosgestesclimat.fr. I like this approach because it makes it easy to identify our biggest emission sources and the levers we can use to reduce them. I deplore the fact that many people who really want to take action don’t think about it systematically, and sometimes concentrate their efforts on relatively ineffective actions, such as deleting emails or buying local meat.
In my case, drastically reducing my emissions has meant :
stop travelling by plane; a single return trip from Paris to New York emits around 2 tonnes of CO2 eq, which is the annual carbon budget generally chosen as a target. (More details here).
Buy a house close to where I work, so that I could live without a car (of course, this meant having less choice for my house).
Insulate my attic and use my heating sparingly.
Buy as few goods as possible (clothes, furniture, household appliances, IT equipment).
Eat meat only in exceptional circumstances and reduce other animal products (also for reasons of animal welfare).
Stop one of my hobbies (parachuting).
I’m still a long way from ‘net zero emissions’, but thanks to these actions, I only emit 4 tonnes of CO2 equivalent per year. In comparison, an average person living in France emits around 8 tonnes (according to ADEME for the year 2022).
Can you tell us about another type of commitment you have made with Mieux Donner?
As I said earlier, I’m a volunteer at Mieux Donner where I help proofread and reformulate content for the site and publications.
I think it’s important to have a French initiative that simplifies high impact giving and makes it accessible to a French-speaking public. Some of the charities identified as the most effective are based abroad, so having a French platform that allows you to pay in euros can reassure some people who want to make a donation. In addition, Mieux Donner helps to minimise bank charges for converting euros into dollars, and offers tax relief for donations to some of the charities. This tax reduction is not insignificant, as it allows donations to eligible associations to be trebled.
What advice would you give to someone who is beginning to take an interest in effective altruism?
Give 5, 10, 15% of your income to have a positive impact on the world… Reduce your CO2 emissions, your meat consumption… Not everyone is ready to make such efforts! Nor was I necessarily ready to do so 5 or 10 years ago. It’s all happened gradually.
So my advice would be: start small. A simple donation to an effective charity is enough – take that first step! Don’t compare yourself to those who are doing (or seem to be doing) better than you; compare yourself to your past self. Doing just a little better than him or her is already progress.
And of course, donate to effective causes that are close to your heart. If animal welfare seems secondary to you, if actions for the future seem too hypothetical, you can still make a big difference to the world by giving to high-impact associations that help people (Helen Keller’s vitamin A supplementation, distribution of mosquito nets against malaria with AMF, actions to promote vaccination with New Incentives).
Finally, if you have a conflict between your heart and your head, for example, because you are keen to help a particular charity, even if it is not considered to be effective, there is nothing to stop you from compromising: you can allocate yourself a certain monthly budget to give to charities that you like, while also giving a certain amount of money to effective charities that you are less enthusiastic about.
[Note: * The 15% is the percentage after tax reductions have been deducted. Thanks to the tax reductions applicable to certain donations, the actual percentage is in fact over 15%. Read about to make your donations go three times further with beneficial tax deductions in France].
Take action
Want to make a difference?
Donate to high-impact charities.
Read more about taking the pledge to donate a percentage of your income
Share this article with your friends and family to make more people aware of effective atruism.
Romain Barbe
Romain is co-founder and co-director of Mieux Donner. You can get in touch with him at romain@mieuxdonner.org or by using the contact form.