Global Impact: Awareness
Understand what global impact means, what's possible, and where you stand. About 15 minutes.
The resources you direct toward improving the world – through charitable giving, career choices, or advocacy – vary enormously in their effectiveness. Research by GiveWell shows that the best health interventions can be over 100 times more cost-effective than average ones addressing the same problem. Where you give matters far more than how much.
This is not just theoretical. GiveWell has directed over $2.6 billion to recommended charities, contributing to an estimated 340,000 lives saved – primarily through interventions like malaria prevention and vitamin A supplementation. Pledging movements like Giving What We Can have demonstrated that sustained, planned philanthropy from ordinary earners can create extraordinary impact over a lifetime.
Beyond effectiveness, giving reliably improves the giver's own wellbeing. Research consistently shows that spending money on others produces greater happiness than spending it on oneself, and this effect holds across income levels and cultures. Strategic generosity is one of the rare investments that benefits both the world and the person making it.
People approach global impact for different reasons. This site scores every global impact intervention across four core values. Later, you'll set your own weighting across these four values, and the site will rank interventions by how well they deliver on the things you actually care about.
Impartiality
Directing resources toward causes based on evidence of impact rather than personal connection or emotional appeal. Cost-effectiveness analysis, cause prioritisation informed by research, and willingness to support unfamiliar causes if the evidence warrants it. People who lean towards this value treat philanthropy as a problem to be optimised.
Passion
Contributing to causes you genuinely care about – areas that resonate with your personal experience, interests, and values. Volunteering in areas that energise you and choosing impact channels that sustain your motivation over decades. People who lean towards this value believe sustained commitment requires personal meaning.
Sustainability
Maintaining your global impact practice over the long term without burnout, guilt, or financial strain. Setting sustainable giving levels, building impact habits that fit your life, and ensuring that your philanthropic practice enhances rather than diminishes your wellbeing. People who lean towards this value plan for decades of contribution.
Fulfilment
The personal satisfaction and sense of purpose derived from making a positive difference. Feeling that your contributions matter, experiencing gratitude and meaning from giving, and ensuring that your impact work is a source of joy rather than obligation. People who lean towards this value see giving as enriching their own life.
The Top 0.1% band represents roughly 1 in 1,000 people. To give you a sense of what that looks like for each global impact value:
Toby Ord is a moral philosopher at Oxford who co-founded Giving What We Can and wrote The Precipice on existential risk. He has pledged to give everything he earns above £18,000 to the most effective charities he can find, and his research on cause prioritisation has influenced billions of pounds in philanthropic allocation. His approach treats global impact as a rigorous intellectual and moral project.
Rebecca Gomperts is a Dutch physician who founded Women on Waves and Women on Web, providing reproductive healthcare access to women in countries with restrictive laws. Her work stems from direct clinical experience treating women harmed by unsafe procedures. Over two decades, her organisations have assisted hundreds of thousands of women, driven entirely by personal conviction about a cause she witnessed first-hand.
David Goldberg co-founded Founders Pledge, through which technology entrepreneurs commit to donating a percentage of their proceeds from company exits to effective charities. The organisation has facilitated over $10 billion in pledges from more than 1,800 founders. It demonstrates how building giving into the structure of a career creates sustained, compounding impact over a lifetime.
John Wood left a senior role at Microsoft after visiting schools in Nepal and seeing empty library shelves. He founded Room to Read, which has benefited over 40 million children across 23 countries with literacy and gender equality programmes. He frequently speaks about how leaving a lucrative career for philanthropic work was the most fulfilling decision of his life.
Awareness means knowing your starting point. Answer each question below – some you might know off the top of your head, others might take a few minutes to reflect on.
Impartiality
Passion
Sustainability
Fulfilment
Your estimated position
Percentiles are estimates based on published population data on charitable giving, volunteering, and philanthropic engagement among adults. All items in this area are scored.
You now understand why global impact matters, what different people get out of it, what's achievable, and where you currently stand. The final step is to set your personal value weightings and see which interventions are the best fit for you.
On the interventions page, adjust the sliders to reflect how much you care about impartiality, passion, sustainability, and fulfilment. The table will re-rank interventions to match your priorities.
Awareness assessment complete
You've built your foundation in Global Impact. Your self-assessment and value weightings are saved.
View Your Interventions