Unrelated, but full of cute.
I thought it was pretty cool of Facebook’s founder Mark Zuckerberg to join Gates’ pledge to give the majority of his wealth to charity. But that’s not nearly as impressive as the decision of Toby Ord, an Oxford University researcher, to give £1m to charity – over the course of his lifetime.
It’s impressive because it is coming from a man making a little over the average British salary, a man who decided to give away more than a third of it. And not only that, but he has also started a movement called Giving What We Can to convince other “regular” people to give up at least 10% of their lifetime’s earnings for good causes.
I recognise that I can use part of my income to do a significant amount of good in the developing world. Since I can live well enough on a smaller income, I pledge that from today until the day I retire, I shall give at least ten percent of what I earn to whichever organizations can most effectively use it to fight poverty in developing countries. I make this pledge freely, openly, and without regret.
So far his movement has 64 members with $22,100,000 dollars pledged. Quite impressive what a few average people can do together.
