Doing Good Better: Effective Altruism and a Radical New Way to Make a Difference

by William MacAskill

This means you should try to volunteer only in ways that cost an organisation relatively little. For example by contributing high-quality work to Wikipedia, you can provide a significant benefit to many people at almost no cost to others. Some organisations also have opportunities that are designed to take on board volunteers with little cost. Mercy for Animals, for example, is a vegetarian advocacy organisation. It has volunteers contact people who have commented on videos on factory farming on Facebook. These volunteers then discuss the option of going vegetarian with them. This provides a significant benefit while costing the charity very little in management time. An alternative route to having an impact without imposing a burden on charities is to work additional hours instead of volunteering and donate the money you make. However, you don’t need to limit yourself to this. Instead, I’d encourage you to think about volunteering primarily in terms of the skills and experiences you’ll gain, which will enable you to have a greater impact later in your life. Because the total time you’ll spend volunteering will be only a tiny fraction of the total time you’ll spend on your career, the impact volunteering has on other areas of your life will generally be much greater than the impact you have via the volunteering itself.