You want to help. Most of us do. We see a disaster on the news, feel that sharp tug in our chest, and reach for the credit card. It feels right. It feels "good." But according to William MacAskill, that's often where we mess up.
Honestly, the core premise of Doing Good Better William MacAskill is kinda uncomfortable. It suggests that our intuition is a terrible guide for charity. We like stories. We like seeing a picture of a specific child or a cute animal. But MacAskill, an Oxford philosopher and co-founder of the Effective Altruism movement, argues that if we actually care about the results of our kindness, we have to start thinking like cold-blooded data scientists.
It's not about being heartless. It's about being heart-heavy and head-smart.
The 100x Multiplier You’re Missing
Most people think the difference between a "good" charity and a "great" one is maybe 10% or 20%. MacAskill shows it’s more like 100x. Or even 1,000x.
Take the example he uses in the book: helping a blind person. In the US, training a guide dog costs roughly $50,000. It’s a beautiful thing to do. However, for that same $50,000, you could pay for surgeries to prevent blindness from trachoma in the developing world.
How many people? About 500.
So, do you provide one person with a dog, or do you prevent 500 people from going blind? When you put it like that, the "sentimental" choice starts to look a lot more complicated.
Why Your Career Might Be Your Best Donation
This is where MacAskill really ruffles feathers. He talks about "Earning to Give."
✨ Don't miss: How to Sign Someone Up for Scientology: What Actually Happens and What You Need to Know
Usually, if someone wants to "do good," they think they should work for a non-profit. They want to be on the ground, handing out the grain or teaching the kids. MacAskill suggests that for many talented people, that's actually a waste.
If you’re a brilliant coder or a high-flying finance whiz, you might do more good by taking that high-paying corporate job and donating 50% of your salary.
Think about it. If you go work for a charity, you’re just taking a spot that someone else would have filled anyway. But if you work on Wall Street and fund five charity workers’ salaries? You’ve just quintupled your impact. It’s counterintuitive. It feels "dirty" to some. But the math, as MacAskill lays it out, is pretty hard to argue with.
The Framework: Scale, Neglectedness, and Tractability
How do you actually decide where the money goes? You can't just guess. MacAskill uses a three-part framework that has basically become the bible for the Effective Altruism community.
- Scale: How big is this problem? Does it affect a thousand people or a billion?
- Neglectedness: How many people are already working on this? If everyone is donating to breast cancer research but nobody is looking at tropical deworming, your dollar goes way further in the deworming pile.
- Tractability: Can we actually fix it? Some problems are huge and neglected but nearly impossible to solve with current technology or politics.
He adds a fourth one for personal use: Personal Fit. Basically, don't try to be a surgeon if you faint at the sight of blood, even if surgeons save a lot of lives.
The PlayPump Disaster: A Warning Label for Kindness
One of the most famous stories in Doing Good Better William MacAskill is the PlayPump. It was a merry-go-round that pumped water while kids played on it. It sounds genius. It won awards. Bill Clinton loved it. Jay-Z supported it.
The problem? It was a disaster.
🔗 Read more: Wire brush for cleaning: What most people get wrong about choosing the right bristles
The kids got tired of spinning it after ten minutes. Then the women in the village had to manually push the merry-go-round for hours to get water. It was harder, less efficient, and more expensive than a simple hand pump.
But it looked good. It was a "story." MacAskill uses this to hammer home the point that without rigorous testing—like Randomized Controlled Trials (RCTs)—well-meaning projects can actually make lives worse.
What People Get Wrong About "Sweatshops" and Fair Trade
Brace yourself, because this is the part where MacAskill loses a lot of people at dinner parties.
He argues that boycotting sweatshops can actually hurt the very people you’re trying to help. For a woman in a low-income country, a job at a garment factory might be the best option she has. If that factory closes because of a Western boycott, her next best option might be grueling farm labor or even sex work.
Same goes for Fair Trade. MacAskill points out that Fair Trade certification is expensive, so it often helps farmers in relatively "richer" poor countries (like Costa Rica) rather than the absolute poorest (like Ethiopia).
Instead of buying a $5 Fair Trade chocolate bar, he suggests buying the $2 generic brand and giving the $3 difference to the Against Malaria Foundation. You’ll save more lives that way.
Does It Still Hold Up in 2026?
It’s been over a decade since the book first dropped. Since then, the movement has seen massive highs and some pretty public lows (the whole Sam Bankman-Fried situation didn't help the "image" of EA).
💡 You might also like: Images of Thanksgiving Holiday: What Most People Get Wrong
However, the core logic of Doing Good Better William MacAskill remains incredibly influential. Charity evaluators like GiveWell still use these metrics to move hundreds of millions of dollars toward things like malaria nets and vitamin A supplements.
Critics say the book is too focused on what we can measure. They argue it ignores systemic change or political movements that are hard to put into a spreadsheet. How do you measure the "impact" of a protest? It's tough. MacAskill acknowledges this to some extent, but his bias is clearly toward the "proven" and the "quantifiable."
How to Start Doing Good (The Better Way)
If you're looking to actually apply this stuff, you don't have to quit your job tomorrow. Here's the "cheat sheet" based on MacAskill's principles:
- Check the 100x Rule: Before you donate, ask if there’s a version of this cause that helps 100x more people for the same price. (Example: local animal shelter vs. preventing factory farm cruelty at scale).
- Focus on "Neglected" Causes: Look for things that aren't trendy. Parasitic worms aren't "sexy" to talk about, but deworming pills are incredibly cheap and keep kids in school.
- Evaluate Your Career Capital: If you're young, don't just look at the starting salary. Look at the skills you'll gain that will let you have a bigger impact 10 years from now.
- Stop Trusting Your "Gut": Your gut likes pretty pictures. Your brain likes data. Trust the data when it comes to other people's lives.
Doing good better isn't about being a robot. It’s about realizing that our resources—our time and our money—are limited. If we spend them on things that don't work, or only work a little bit, we are effectively choosing not to help the people who could have been saved.
Next Steps for Impact:
Start by visiting GiveWell.org to see their current top-rated charities. These are organizations that have been vetted through the exact kind of rigorous, data-driven analysis MacAskill advocates for. If you're curious about your career, check out 80,000 Hours, the non-profit MacAskill co-founded, which provides free research on which jobs actually solve the world's most pressing problems.