Charity Is Not a Personality

Personality-level charity tends to be the publicly visible kind; the kind that involves identity, announcement, and the warm feeling of being a generous person.

Action-level charity is more boring but more effective.

It's the consistent giving to things that actually work, to causes you've taken the time to understand, in amounts calibrated to impact rather than to the feeling it generates.

The charity industry has, over many decades, perfected the art of producing that warm feeling without requiring the inconvenient question of whether the action is producing the intended result.

Some organizations in every cause area are significantly more effective than others. The research to identify them is not convenient. It's also not optional, if the actual goal is the result rather than the feeling.

The result orientation asks: what is this money doing? What would happen to this child, this problem, this cause, if this specific organization ceased to exist?

The identity orientation asks: does giving here make me feel like a charitable person?

These produce different giving decisions.

Be useful.

Not because being charitable is not admirable.

Because the admirable thing, fully pursued, leads to the question of whether it's working.

And that question is where the actual good is.

Be good at charity.

This is the work. Not the idea of it. The actual thing.