Why I'm betting on a million ordinary people instead of billionaires
Joseph Sarvary · 10 June 2026
One question I’ve always carried with me is: how can I, just one person, make a meaningful difference?
It’s a question many of us ask, and one that too often comes with a disheartening answer. The world teaches us that to truly change things, we need to be extraordinary. We need power. We need wealth. We need to become the next billionaire founder who, after “winning” the game of capitalism, turns around and gives some of it away.
That story never sat right with me.
Because if your goal is to make the world more fair, more just, more compassionate, how can it make sense to start by accumulating as much as possible for yourself?
The flawed hero story
The idea that billionaires will save us isn’t just misleading. It’s corrosive.
It suggests that the path to goodness runs through greed: that you must first extract, dominate and compete ruthlessly before you’re allowed to give. It breeds a kind of moral contradiction. Win at any cost, then try to fix the system you just exploited.
Worse, it places enormous trust in a tiny group of people to shape the world in their image. Some foundations do genuinely good work. But the broader trend, of billionaire influence reaching deeper into politics, media and culture, should give us pause.
And the belief that these figures will act for us makes us vulnerable. It robs us of agency. It lets us off the hook.
The power of the crowd
Here’s the thing most people don’t realise: charitable giving by ordinary people is already enormous. In the United States alone, annual philanthropy is roughly comparable in scale to the revenue of the world’s largest companies.
People already give. They give locally, to churches and schools and mutual aid funds. But that giving is often ad hoc, emotionally driven, and limited to what feels familiar.
Imagine taking that energy, that everyday generosity, and amplifying it with better tools.
Imagine millions of people giving intentionally, a small amount each day, to high-impact causes anywhere in the world.
We wouldn’t need to wait for billionaires to act. Together, we’d already be operating at the scale of major foundations.
A better system looks like this
The future I believe in is radically democratic.
It’s not about scrapping expert-led research. Quite the opposite: we need more of it. Organisations like GiveWell and Founders Pledge do extraordinary work identifying which causes deliver the most impact per pound.
The next step is making that knowledge usable by everyone. Not just analysts. Not just billionaires. Everyone.
A truly democratised giving system combines:
- Trusted research on where donations do the most good
- Personal choice on the causes that matter most to you
- Simple tools that make it easy to act every day
The result is a world that feels less cynical. A society less fixated on individual gain and more focused on shared progress. A culture where contributing to the common good is a source of pride, not pain.
This is bigger than charity
When someone chooses to put a pound towards a stranger’s health rather than another impulse purchase, something shifts.
It’s not just that single act. It’s a market signal. A cultural message. It says: I’m willing to pay for impact. I care about more than myself. I want to live in a better world, and I’m willing to build it.
And if we practise that with our giving, we’ll be readier to practise it elsewhere: paying a little more for low-carbon goods, eating more plant-based meals, supporting policies that prioritise long-term wellbeing over short-term gain.
Daily giving is a gateway to a more moral economy, one where generosity isn’t the exception but the norm.
What EveryDrop makes possible
That’s why I built EveryDrop.
It’s not trying to replace billionaires. It’s giving the rest of us a way to start.
Every organisation on the platform is independently vetted against a documented framework, so you can trust your money goes far. The journey makes giving a small daily choice, not a grand sacrifice. And each day pairs the gift with five minutes of genuine learning, so you don’t just feel good about what you gave. You understand why it matters.
Instead of spending a few pounds on something that won’t improve your day, you can fund a malaria net, a deworming treatment, a school meal, or clean water. It’s a better use of the money, and a better feeling.
Join the movement
We’ve waited long enough. We’ve deferred too much power to too few people. And we’ve underestimated how much good we can do together.
So here’s my bet. Not on billionaires. Not on politicians. On you. On us. On the power of ordinary people, giving one drop at a time.