Crypto for Charity is proud to announce our new partnership with The Life You Can Save.

Here’s a quick snapshot of TLYCS’ work and how you can leverage their research to maximize your crypto giving. 

David

Crypto for Charity 🤝 The Life You Can Save

The Life You Can Save evaluates nonprofits' impact, recommending cause areas and specific charities where your donations can go the furthest, based on their criteria. They make smart giving simple. TLYCS focuses on helping the 700 million people who live below the international poverty line of around $2 per day, as donations to evidence-based programs serving this demographic can have extraordinary bang-for-the-buck.

TLYCS, itself a nonprofit, was founded on the principles of Effective Altruism and named for Prof Peter Singers' book, The Life You Can Save: Acting Now to End World Poverty (which is available for free as an e-book or audiobook). Singer argues that if you can provide immense benefits to someone at a minimal cost, you should do it. But with 1.5M nonprofits in the US and more than 50,000 added each year, picking one organization over another is a huge task for donors looking to make a difference. 

That’s where TLYCS’ work shines. They measure outputs like lives saved, life-years added, income generated, and carbon reduced, ultimately curating a list of 25 ‘Best Charities’ spanning poverty and climate change. Everything is scored against core principles like scalability, solvability, and current funding – all qualities that align with the crypto community’s general outlook and orientation.

TLYCS received some modest crypto donations starting in 2017 but has really started prioritizing crypto in the last two years. They see the crypto community as a great way to raise funds and awareness for their recommended charities, which range from crypto-novices to crypto-savvy. 

GiveDirectly is one of TLYCS’s recommended charities that show how crypto and effective giving can go hand-in-hand. GiveDirectly quite literally sends funds directly to people across Africa, meaning a technology providing instant global transactions has an obvious appeal. Donors, meanwhile, can send funds without losing out on processing costs (Crypto for Charity does not charge transaction fees, unlike other crypto donation platforms and credit card processors). 

GiveDirectly accepted their first crypto gift in 2017 from the Pineapple Fund and has since earned the support of Vitalik Buterin, Sam Bankman-Fried, and Jack Dorsey, who donated the $2.5M proceeds of his twttr NFT to TLYCS. In May 2021, GiveDirectly’s Managing Director, Joe Huston, penned a piece for CoinDesk: Crypto-Philanthropy Is Here. What Will It Do? Last year, 17% of their annual operating budget came from crypto-gifts. In December 2021, GiveDirectly and The Life You Can Save co-hosted an online event called What Good is Crypto? This event raised over $1 million for GiveDirectly, enough to provide over 3,000 people in Liberia with Universal Basic Income (UBI) for one year.

TLYCS started making crypto a strategic priority after being approached by The Fugue Foundation with an opportunity to be granted the staking rewards Fugue Foundation earns by running an ETH validator in exchange for running a testnet validator node. As Fugue Foundation had hoped, this experience started TLYCS going “down the crypto rabbit hole.” TLYCS is now eager to help individuals and communities in Web3 leverage their generosity in efficient and effective ways that will radically improve or even save the lives of people living in extreme poverty.