Infinite Scroll x GiveDirectly
Do some good this holiday season
This week I’m joining a whole gaggle of Substackers to help raise money for GiveDirectly.
The pitch here is simple. Most people in extreme poverty around the world aren’t in poverty because of choices they made - they simply live a very poor country, in very poor communities, and don’t have the resources to escape the poverty trap they were born into. Giving these folks money directly can do an enormous amount of good. It can help them kick start a business, finish school, finish building a small house, or help buy medicine so their children won’t get sick. A few dollars given to your local food bank does good, but those same dollars given to folks in third world countries can be life-altering even at very low amounts. The effectiveness of your charity dollars is multiplied when you give to the very poorest communities.
Matt Yglesias at Slow Boring already did the hard work of writing up exactly how GiveDirectly works and all of the evidence it’s a good, effective program, so I’ll just link that here:
If you want to donate, please click this link. I will note, with some pride, that when we participated last year Infinite Scroll was the #3 fundraiser despite being one of the smaller blogs that participated. I’m fairly sure we were #1 on a donations-per-subscriber basis. You guys were awesome last year, and I’m pretty sure you’re still awesome. If you can afford to give a little bit this holiday season, please do so:
http://givedirectly.org/scroll
Happy Holidays, Merry Christmas, and let’s all get into the spirit of giving.