Frequently asked questions
EA for Jews is a group of people committed to sharing the ideas of effective altruism in the Jewish community and building a community of Jewish effective altruists. Our ultimate goal is for Jews to contribute to the project of effective altruism: using evidence and reason to determine how to best help others and taking action based on that research to help repair the world.
No. EA for Jews is comitted to doing the most good we can, helping Jews and non-Jews alike.
Where we donate really matters. We all have limited resources, so if we want to do the most good with those resources it’s vital to find and support the most cost-effective organizations.
There are several charity evaluation organizations that focus specifically on identifying the best charities. We recommend you donate to these groups directly or to the charities they have identified as the most impactful.
One option is to use the EA Funds platform. EA funds employs a team of experts to guide your donation to the best projects and organizations they can find. EA funds is described in more detail here.
We also reccomend donating to the charities identified by the following charity evaluators:
- GiveWell evaluates global poverty charities.
- Animal Charity Evaluators evaluates charities focused on animal welfare.
If you would like to get involved with EA for Jews we’d love to have you! Please contact us and put “volunteer” in the subject line.
First of all, it’s worth noting that the JEGI is a great project that we’re really looking forward to collaborating with in our shared effort to promote EA in the Jewish world.
The emphasis of both projects is different, though: the Jewish Effective Giving Initiative focuses on spreading effective giving through the Reform Movement and on encouraging rabbis and synagogues to raise money for effective life-saving charities (mainly global health and development ones). EA for Jews aims to promote a broader range of EA causes and activities in the broader Jewish community and to build a network of Jews committed to the ideas of EA.
We believe both projects complement each other and we hope to see them help each other grow.