There’s a scene I can’t shake. A small-town food pantry, shelves half-empty, volunteers stretching every last dollar to feed neighbors they’ve known their whole lives. The kind of place where a $100 gift isn’t a drop in the ocean—it’s the ocean.

            The scene came roaring back when I read the Emma Goldberg’s recent New York Times Magazine piece What If Charity Shouldn’t be Optimized? exploring the pros and cons of the Effective Altruism movement that seeks to assure major donors get the biggest bang for their buck through heavy analysis in making their gifts.

            Now imagine explaining to those food pantry volunteers why their pantry didn’t “make the cut” on an Effective Altruism spreadsheet. The data says your money is better spent reducing malaria halfway around the globe. A worthy cause, no question. But here’s the rub: the spreadsheet doesn’t see the faces of the people lining up at that food pantry. It doesn’t hear the stories or know the names. It just crunches numbers.

            This is where Effective Altruism feels like it misses the mark. At a time when local charities are struggling—when millions of households have dropped out of giving altogether—does it really make sense to steer donations toward the causes that win the optimization game? Or is something getting lost in the numbers?

            From 2010 to 2016, 20 million American households stopped donating to charity. The organizations hit hardest? The small, community-based groups—the ones that hold bake sales to pay the rent, where every donor matters. These are the backbone of civic life, and they’re disappearing.

            Meanwhile, Effective Altruism preaches that every dollar must be optimized. It’s charity by algorithm. Donate where the impact is measurable, they say. Lead eradication in low-income countries, malaria nets, clean water.

            Again, all good causes. But when was the last time a community soup kitchen had the resources to write a grant explaining their “strategic cause selection”? Who’s looking out for them while the billionaires are busy funding their global experiments?

            This tension between metrics and meaning reveals the many philosophies around giving, each offering its own way of seeing the world and aspects of which we’ve covered in The Agitator and which the behavioral scientists at DonorVoice devote tons of research time:

1. The Emotional Approach: Giving as an act of empathy, driven by personal connection or a spontaneous response to need. It’s the subway rider who hands over change or the neighbor who donates to a family after a fire, guided more by the heart than by logic.
2. The Local Focus: Charity begins at home in this view. Supporting local food banks, shelters, or cultural institutions strengthens the social fabric of a community. It’s about tangible impact—seeing the change right outside your door and knowing your gift helped make it happen.
3. Effective Altruism (EA): The quantitative approach that emphasizes measurable impact. EA advocates for directing money to causes where it can do the most good, often globally, through interventions like malaria prevention or lead abatement. It’s philanthropy by algorithm, prioritizing efficiency over proximity.
4. The Magnificence Philosophy: Giving as a way to create beauty and meaning. Think parks, libraries, and museums—the spaces that elevate life beyond mere survival. This approach values the unquantifiable: inspiration, culture, and a shared sense of humanity.
5. The Justice-Oriented Model: Focused on systemic change, this philosophy channels funds to advocacy and grassroots movements. It’s about addressing the root causes of inequality and empowering marginalized voices to build a more just society.

            Of course these perspectives don’t exist in isolation. Many donors weave elements of each into their giving.

            In my view one element should be universally important regardless of the donor’s underlying philosophy—timing.  By ‘timing’ I mean that moment in an organization’s life when a contribution matters most or at least matters more than usual.

            Imagine this: it’s 1909, and the NAACP is barely more than an idea. A gift then might have kept the lights on, paid for a meeting hall, or printed that first pamphlet. Move forward a century, and it’s a different story. That same donation becomes a drop in an ocean of contributions. Does it still matter? Sure. But does it have the same weight? The same power to change the game? Probably not.

            Look at Margaret Sanger in 1916, opening the first birth control clinic in Brooklyn. Back then, one donation might have covered the printing costs for leaflets that women would stuff into their handbags, knowing full well they risked arrest for even possessing them. Would a gift to Planned Parenthood today, a global powerhouse, mean as much? It’s not a question of value—it’s a question of urgency. Of life-or-death stakes when the odds were almost too high.

            On to the Scopes Trial in 1925. The ACLU, still in its infancy, defended a Tennessee schoolteacher accused of teaching evolution. How many gifts, big and small, funded that courtroom drama? How many people gave to an organization that most of America hadn’t even heard of? Those gifts weren’t optimized—they were desperate, urgent, and critical.

            Then there’s Greenpeace, scrappy and fearless in 1971, sending a rickety fishing boat to the Alaskan waters to stop nuclear testing. The donors then didn’t receive glossy annual reports or metrics promising their dollars would move the needle. They gave because the movement needed them, right then and there. A movement like that wouldn’t survive without believers stepping in early, when failure wasn’t just an option—it was the most likely outcome.

            Today, those same organizations are global powerhouses. They still need support, sure. But are we really saying their needs outweigh the food pantry down the street or the LGBTQ+ center fighting to keep its doors open in a hostile state?

            The way a donation to a local charity strengthens the social fabric, builds community, keeps neighbors from falling through the cracks.  Or the need of a social change advocacy start-up for critical early money to allow the idea and movement to take hold.  The spreadsheets can’t quantify that. And maybe they shouldn’t try.

            Philanthropy isn’t just about maximizing impact—it’s about sustaining the communities we’re part of. It’s about seeing the need right in front of us and answering it. The world doesn’t need another permission slip for billionaires to amass fortunes while deciding who’s “deserving” of their charity. It needs more people to give where their heart is.

            So here’s the question we should be asking: At a time when local charities are struggling to survive and social change movements are facing immense threats  is “effective altruism” and measures of efficiency really what the world needs? Or is it just a convenient excuse to ignore the messy, beautiful, urgent work of giving where it matters most—right here, right now.

Roger