Centre for Exploratory Altruism Research

Philosophy

We prioritize impact (i.e. saving and improving lives as much as possible).

In practice, that means we and the donors we advise prioritize overseas giving – giving to low and middle-income countries. We see a number of reasons in favour of such an approach:

• Disease and poverty are much more prevalent in poorer countries, and can generally be averted or alleviated at very little cost.
• We in the rich world lead safe and happy lives, just by virtue of where we were born, while people in poor countries can expect to live in deprivation and even die young, through no fault of their own except being born in the wrong country – and trying to address this inequality is only basic fairness.
• Addressing poverty in poor countries potentially weakens the economic incentives to immigrate – which can be a benefit from the perspective of more culturally conservative citizens in wealthier countries.