I recently finished reading The Life You Can Save by Peter Singer. It’s my second time through the book, recently prompted by the release of 10th Anniversary Edition.
Having grown up with Quaker grandparents who spent much of their careers traveling the world on projects with the American Friends Service Committee, international development has almost always taken up some space in my mind.
Later, I served a 2-year mission for the LDS Church (now preferentially called The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) in São Paulo, Brazil. I returned to Brazil a couple of years later as an intern teaching career skills in Recife, Pernambuco.
More recently, as a chiropractor I have found opportunities to serve overseas on a small, short, “mission trip” to Haiti and the Dominican Republic. While in school I began volunteering my time with World Spine Care, and have been working with them since, including a trip to Navi Mumbai, India in 2016.
All this to say that giving to - or, more importantly, working for - the poor feels like a moral obligation to me. And yet, non-profit work is not always what it seems to be. Many charities are ineffective and even harmful. Revered saints are not as venerable as we would hope. Sometimes what may appear selfish, is selfless, and vice versa.
Shortly after my second visit to Brazil, I wanted to learn more about how to give and work effectively. I began reading and listening to books that touch on non-profit work or international development. It started with The Heart and the Fist - because a Navy SEAL and a Rhodes scholar? How could that not be interesting? Then my aunt, Janet, recommended Chasing Chaos. From there, the books recommend themselves.
This is a non-exhaustive collection of the books that have impacted the way I look at non-profit work.
The Heart & The Fist
by Eric Greitens
One of the earliest in my collection of military memoirs, The Heart and the Fist really makes you question practicality of peaceful protest.
We can certainly donate money and clothing, and we can volunteer in the refugee camps. But in the end these acts of kindness are done after the fact. They are done after people have been killed, their homes burned, their lives destroyed. […] We have to behave the same way we would if any person–our kids, our sisters, brothers, parents–were threatened. If we really care about these people, we have to be willing to protect them from harm.
Chasing Chaos
by Jessica Alexander
This is the first book that opened my eyes to the possibility that humanitarian aid could be harmful, not just ineffective.
I could imagine the church fund-raiser or the elementary school benefit where these contributions came from. People were good-hearted and only wanted to help. What they didn’t realize was that there was a cost to transporting and ultimately disposing of unused donations. It was a waste of everyone’s time and money.
I’ve been following charity: water for years now and appreciate the modern approach to fundraising. Strong and positive imagery, engaging storytelling, video diaries that take you along the journey - I aspire to model the work I do after Scott’s organization.
As much as we were figuring things out on the fly, my vision for charity: water was crystal clear: I wanted to reinvent charity, to make giving a joyful experience, to bring donors back to the true meaning of love through acts of generosity and compassion.
My trip to Haiti made me realize the necessity of basics such as drinking water (although, Inside Bill’s Brain has changed the priority I think it should receive) for the world’s poor.
The Life You Can Save
by Peter Singer
This book would most likely be at the top of this list if ordered by measure of influence.
The opening story of the child in the pond should be enough to convince you that donating to effective charities is a moral imperative. But every chapter provides compelling stories and clear data that giving money to your local homeless shelter or museum is not the best way to spend your money.
Singer grapples with the ethics of giving along with the reality that people give to those closest to them, and that they make decisions with their heart, not their mind.
This “identifiable victim effect” leads to “the rule of rescue”: we will spend far more to rescue an identifiable victim than we will to save a “statistical life.”
His proposals are challenging and perhaps idealistic, but not radical. The 10th Anniversary Edition of his book can be downloaded in various formats for free.
The Most Good You Can Do
by Peter Singer
Peter Singer is a very convincing author. I’ve avoided reading his book arguing for vegetarianism for years, because I just don’t want to be convinced that I should give up meat.
In his second book on Effective Altruism, he shares some success stories and lessons learned as the movement grows.
“Suppose you see a burning building, and you run through the flames and kick a door open, and let one hundred people out. That would be the greatest moment in your life.”
One year after graduating, Matt was donating a six-figure sum—roughly half his annual earnings—to highly effective charities. He was on the way to saving a hundred lives, not over his entire career but within the first year or two of his working life and every year thereafter.
Doing Good Better
by William MacAskill
A protege-of-sorts to Peter Singer, William MacAskill continues developing the philosophy of Effective Altruism with sound arguments for the personal benefits derived from altruism.
We very often fail to think as carefully about helping others as we could, mistakenly believing that applying data and rationality to a charitable endeavor robs the act of virtue. And that means we pass up opportunities to make a tremendous difference.
80,000 Hours
by Benjamin Todd
A protege of the protege, Benjamin Todd founded 80,000Hours.org under the guidance of William MacAskill.
The argument is that the standard 9-5, 5-day-a-week job will add up to 80,000 hours over the span of a career. And yet most of us spend less than 1% of that time really trying to figure out what we should do with our lives.
We found six key ingredients of a dream job. They don’t include income, and they aren’t as simple as “following your passion”.
In fact, following your passion can lead you astray. […] Rather, you can develop passion while doing work that you will find enjoyable and meaningful. The key is to get good at something that helps other people.
Give Work
by Leila Janah
I love this book for what is possible by following the old adage of “teaching a man to fish.”
The world’s most destitute citizens are not poor because they are hopeless. They are not poor because they lack smarts, talent, motivation, or will. They are poor because they lost the income birth lottery, born in countries where but for those lucky few with resources and connections, the chances of finding work that pays more than three dollars a day are slim to none.
I’m saddened to have only just learned that Leila passed away of complications from epithelioid sarcoma.
Honorable Mention
Let Me Tell You My Story: Refugee Stories of Hope, Courage, and Humanity
Compiled by Their Story is Our Story
I learned of TSOS through my friend Garrett Gibbons who did some of the video and editing work for the organization. I appreciate the personal nature of this effort to document and share stories from individuals who have been forced to flee their native lands.
A copy is placed prominently on my bookshelf, but I have yet to do more than flip through it.