2023-2024 financial year donations

As part of my promise to give 10% of my income to charity forever I gave $14,500 to charity over the 2023-2024 financial year. This constitutes slightly more than 10% of my pre-tax income + pre-tax superannuation over the year. You can see a detailed breakdown of my income/outgoings here

1. Five Percent Foundation

donated: $7250 (June 2024)

The Five Percent Foundation was founded by a group of 13 Australian lawyers, healthcare workers, public servants and others in 2018. I joined the group in 2023 because an old high school friend reached out to me about it. We all give 5% of our incomes to the Five Percent Foundation trust and the money is invested in a low-risk fund. The investment returns (minus inflation) are donated to one of a few different charities, mostly those recommended by the charity evaluators The Life You Can Save or GiveWell. Each donor chooses where their returns go. The trust currently holds about $225,000. Come and join us.

What I like:

  • It's long-term. We're building a trust to outlast ourselves. The fund will grow exponentially, so will the donations.

  • Powerful message: people with different careers and lives coming together to give to people who need it.

  • Giving can be lonely and scary. Doing it as a group makes it less so.

  • The members I've met seem like great people that share my values.

  • Tax deductable

What I don't like:

  • Doing good now rather than later accrues its own compound interest. You help someone today, they help someone tomorrow, that person helps someone the next day. The sooner you activate that chain the better. This is the disadvantage of investing now and donating later.

  • I am giving up some of my agency over where the money goes.


2. Seva

donated: $2000 (June 2024, via The Life You Can Save)

The Seva Foundation does preventative eye care and cataract surgeries in the developing world. Cataract surgeries are notable for being particularly cheap and quick to perform while also being completely life-altering, as it can restore a person's sight. It is a tragedy that there are still people in the world suffering from blindness only because they don't have access to a 15 minute operation.

The Fred Hollows Foundation also does this work. Both Seva and Fred Hollows are recommended by The Life You Can Save. I've chosen to give to Seva because I don't like some of the Fred Hollows Foundation's fundraising practices (they use door-knockers who are paid a commission of donations and they use telemarketers. Both strategies I think contribute to the public's general distrust of charities so I don't want to support organisations doing this).

The Fred Hollows Foudnation line is that cataract surgery can restore sight for $25. I don't believe that's true, I think they're just counting materials and not all the other logistics and operating costs. In reality the number is probably in the hundreds or a few thousand dollars, which is still a bargain to transform someone's life.

What I like:

  • It's listed by The Life You Can Save as a top charity. I trust their recommendations.

  • Fred Hollows (who dedicated his life to doing cataract surgery in poor countries) is a hero of mine, and I love the idea of supporting the sort of work he did

  • Fits with my intuitions as a doctor that restoring someone's sight would be massively beneficial to all aspects of their life

  • By their own annual report from 2022-23, on a budget of 10,000,000 they did 867,489 cataract surgeries, excluding all the other eye care they do.

  • I'm not aware of Seva using harmful fundraising practices from what I've seen, though I can't know for sure

What I don't like:

  • Their numbers are hard to believe. Surely they weren't able to fully fund 800,000 surgeries for less than $20 each. Were the surgeries also partly government-funded? If so, would they have happened anyway, without Seva's involvement?

  • They spend about 14% of their money of fundraising which seems pretty standard for NGOs, but it means that ~280 of my dollars will go to junk mail or running charity galas or whatever other fundraising junk they're forced to do because most people don't give to charity unless they're harrassed into it (don't be this kind of person)


3. Against Malaria Foundation

donated: (May + June 2024, directly and via The Life You Can Save)

Against Malaria Foundation has distributed $500M in mosquito nets since it was founded 20 years ago. Mosquito nets are cheap. We know that giving out mass amounts of free nets is effective at reducing malaria rates because they've done randomised controlled trials on it. For every few thousand dollars of nets you can expect a life to be saved (probably a child's, because they're most vulnerable to malaria).

What I like:

  • It's one of the few charities recommended by charity evaluator GiveWell. It's also recommended by The Life You Can Save, probably because of the GiveWell recommendation

  • Backed by field trials

  • Only 13 employees, barely any money spent on anything other than mosquito nets and their distribution as far as I know. Very clean

  • I was skeptical that they needed any more money given they have so much support but CEO Rob Mather wrote a post suggesting that because of decreased funding from The Global Fund, AMF needs more money. I believe that.

What I don't like:

  • Malaria vaccines are coming out. Maybe (hopefully!) bednets will be irrelevant soon.

  • If The Global Fund is reducing their funding of this program, is that because they don't think it's worth it? Do they have more effective things to fund that I should be funding?

  • I've seen criticism that bednets are actually bad because people use them as fishing nets and therefore cause damage either by overfishing or poisoning waterways with insecticide from the nets. This effect would have to be so outrageously bad to outweight the benefit of millions fewer malaria cases that I don't take it very seriously.


4. OneDay Health

donated: $2000 (June 2024)

OneDay Health operates in Uganda. They identify “black holes” in healthcare coverage where people would have to travel more than 5 km to get to a government healthcare centre. They set up basic nurse-run health centres in these areas, after conversation with the local community (they load up a car with goods and set these health centres up in one day, hence the name). They are able to provide basic treatments for common diseases.

What I like:

  • They estimate that a health centre costs USD$3000 to set up and run for a year. They estimate it costs about USD$1.50 per patient treated. This is an extremly cheap intervention.

  • Nick Laing is a very inspiring doctor and I really admire and trust his work. In addition to his work with OneDay Health, he recently wrote a really touching and heartbreaking piece on some of the patients he's helped in Uganda

  • Nick Laing has worked in the area for 10 years so isn't just a naive fly-in do-gooder

  • The group engages with local communities and employs local people

  • This seems like a neglected cause. OneDay Health haven't received a lot of money or attention and it seems like they deserve more of both.

What I don't like:

  • The evidence is really just what I've read from Nick Laing and the OneDay Health website. There is no RCT on this intervention.

  • The number of clinics doesn't seems to have grown since last year. Currently 36. Might have been 38 last year? It's not necessarily about growth if their current clinics are doing good work.

  • They're not tax deductable in Aus

  • International transaction fees


5. One For Health

donated: $1450 (Feb 2023)

One For Health is a group of junior doctors like myself who donate 1% of our incomes each year into a collective pool, then vote on where that money goes. It was foudned in the last couple of years.

What I like:

  • Giving as a group is nice and sends a more powerful message than giving alone

  • Particularly powerful message coming from junior doctors. Senior doctors who aren't donating at least 1% of their income to charity take note. Members of the public who think doctors are just in it for themselves take note that at least some of us aren't.

  • The choice of charities we can vote for seems sensible enough

  • New. I'm getting in early. Join us

What I don't like:

  • Giving up substantial control over this 1% of my money. It's a collective vote so I don't have much say over where it goes.

  • The Raisely platform they use takes a small cut

  • Only 1%? It's a start