A guide
What is effective giving?
An introduction to the ideas behind EveryDrop
Effective giving means directing your donations to where the best available evidence shows they do the most good per pound. It combines two things that are usually kept apart: trusted, independent research on which interventions actually work, and your own personal choice about the causes that matter most to you. The result is generosity that is both heartfelt and informed.
This page is a map. It gathers, in one place, what effective giving is, who it is for, what your money can really buy, and how EveryDrop turns the idea into a calm daily habit. Each section links to a fuller essay if you want to go deeper.
Who effective giving is for
It is for anyone who means to give more than they currently do and wants a simple, trustworthy way to start. In particular, it is for people who find the usual on-ramps to "effective altruism" a little forbidding — the income pledges, the heavy moral arguments — and would rather begin with something light and genuinely good to do. We wrote about that gentler doorway in Lead with the good news, and about the personal search for impact that led here in The impact I missed.
The evidence: giving makes us happier
A robust body of research finds that spending money on others makes people happier than spending it on themselves — it adds meaning and is even linked to lower depression. Generosity turns out to be substitution, not sacrifice. That finding is the foundation of EveryDrop, and we explain it in The research that changed my mind about happiness.
What a pound can actually buy
The most surprising part of effective giving is how far a small amount goes. Roughly £1 can be six months of vitamin A for a child; about £19 feeds a child school meals for a whole year; under £1.50 provides a year of safe drinking water. Holding those figures against our everyday spending changes how it feels — the subject of What is a pound really worth? You can see the verified outcomes for yourself across our vetted charities.
Why it matters beyond the individual
Giving is contagious: the more we do it, and the more we see others do it, the more we give — which makes it a quiet answer to polarisation and a way to rebuild community (Generosity breeds generosity). At scale, it is a bet on ordinary people rather than on philanthropy dominated by billionaires (Why I'm betting on a million ordinary people). And it is practice for the harder, collective sacrifices the climate era will demand (Learning to sacrifice).
How we make sure the giving is effective
Effective giving only works if the charities are genuinely effective. Every organisation on EveryDrop passes a documented four-stage vetting framework built on public, verifiable evidence, explained in Why we vet every charity ourselves, with a public research summary for each. And the practice itself is designed to be calm and finishable rather than addictive, which is why EveryDrop ends after thirty days.
Common questions
What is effective giving?
Effective giving means choosing where to donate based on rigorous, independent evidence of impact, so that each pound does as much good as possible. It pairs trusted research on which interventions work with personal choice about the causes you care about.
Is effective giving the same as effective altruism?
Effective giving is the donation-focused part of the broader effective altruism movement. EveryDrop deliberately leads with the encouraging, practical side of it — verified high-impact charities and small daily gifts — rather than its most demanding philosophical arguments.
How much does it cost to make a real difference?
Often very little. Roughly £1 can be about six months of vitamin A for a child, about £19 feeds a child school meals for a whole year, and under £1.50 provides a year of safe drinking water. The barrier to effective giving was never really money; it was the lack of a simple, trustworthy way to start.
How does EveryDrop choose its charities?
Every organisation passes a documented four-stage vetting framework built on public evidence: charity-regulator filings and audited accounts, independent evaluators such as GiveWell and Founders Pledge, and the academic evidence behind each intervention. Each charity has a public research summary, and assessments are re-checked every year.
Try it for yourself
The best way to understand effective giving is to do it. EveryDrop is a 30-day journey: each day, meet a problem and a vetted organisation working on it, learn for five quiet minutes, and give a small amount. Join the waitlist to begin, or read more in the Notebook.