I Gave 10% Of My Income To The Humane League Today

Animal Welfare is Important

Last June, I wrote about taking the Giving What We Can pledge, and committing to donating at least 10% of my income each year in perpetuity. 

While 2022 ended a while ago, I am a disorganized person, and so I only got around to meeting the obligations of my pledge today. But I thought I’d write a little bit about where I gave, and why. 

Animal Welfare is Important: 

My giving this year was not particularly complicated. I didn’t split my donations between multiple organizations, or multiple causes. I gave the entirety of my donations to The Humane League, to fund additional work on promoting the welfare of factory farmed animals. 

The basic reasoning here is pretty simple. 

• Animals are conscious, they can suffer, and they have moral worth. 

• There are a great deal of animals who live in torturous conditions in factory farms around the world. 

• The Humane League does highly effective work to reduce the amount of animal suffering. 

I’m not 100% sure that The Humane League is the absolute most effective entity I could’ve given to in this space. They focus primarily on land mammals in factory farms; I think it’s plausible that total animal suffering is dominated by animals that are not as obviously sentient (e.g. fish, shrimp, etc). However, I tend to have a pretty high moral discount for non land animals, and I’m pretty skeptical that the organizations working on more speculative projects in the wild animal suffering space are actually more cost effective than The Humane League. So overall, I prefer to fund direct work on a cause I care deeply about, by an organization that I am confident is highly effective. 

You should also do this:

People often dislike moralizing. And there are social norms around publicly announcing how charitable you are. I think both of these things are probably wrong. It’s good to do good things, like giving large percentages of your income away. By publicizing my own actions, I want to help foster new social norms, where affluent people in developed countries have a strong sense that giving is not “supererogatory” – that is, “good to do, but not wrong not to do” – but rather a fundamental moral obligation. 

So I’ll say this: If you’re reading this blog post, you’re probably an affluent person, at least by any reasonable global standard. That means it’s incumbent upon you to think deeply about your moral obligations to other humans, and other sentient life. No one can force you to dedicate your time, energy, or hard earned income to the reduction of suffering. But morality is a real thing, and it matters. 

Here are a few links to charities that I think are highly effective.

• The Humane League

• The EA Animal Welfare Fund

• The Good Food Institute

• The Givewell Maximum Impact Fund

Happy giving :)