The lack of systematic guidance for individuals pursuing "earning to give"—maximizing philanthropic impact by earning and donating significant sums—often leads to missed high-impact opportunities. Current decision-making tends to rely on intuition or incomplete information, which could mean bypassing ventures with the potential to generate far greater resources for effective charities. Even a tiny chance of success in a high-reward venture (e.g., a $100B+ opportunity) could surpass the impact of traditional high-earning paths like finance or tech.

How It Could Work

One way to address this gap would be to systematically identify, evaluate, and prioritize earning-to-give opportunities through a structured framework:

• Opportunity Discovery: Scout high-potential ventures, such as untapped markets, scalable business models, or emerging technologies, with extraordinary return potential.
• Impact Valuation: Estimate expected value by combining financial upside (e.g., $100B potential) with probability of success (e.g., 1%).
• Prioritization: Rank opportunities based on expected impact, adjusted for feasibility, personal fit, and time horizon.
• Dissemination: Share findings through reports, databases, or tools to guide earners-to-give toward the most promising paths.

This approach could benefit aspiring earners-to-give, high-net-worth individuals, and effective altruism organizations by providing data-driven guidance on high-impact earning strategies.

Execution and Challenges

A phased approach could help refine and scale the idea:

1. Research Phase: Develop an evaluation framework and analyze past successes/failures (e.g., FTX, high-growth startups) to identify patterns.
2. Pilot Phase: Publish preliminary findings, gather feedback, and test assumptions (e.g., surveying earners-to-give on willingness to act on recommendations).
3. Scale Phase: Expand into a platform or consulting service for ongoing opportunity discovery and personalized matching.

Key challenges include the speculative nature of estimating probabilities for novel opportunities and avoiding overfitting to past successes. One way to mitigate this could be using transparent uncertainty ranges and exploring diverse sectors (e.g., biotech, policy, emerging markets).

Comparison with Existing Efforts

While organizations like 80,000 Hours offer career advice for social impact, they focus on stable, lower-risk paths. This idea would complement their work by targeting high-risk, high-reward opportunities. Similarly, GiveWell evaluates charities for cost-effectiveness but doesn’t address funding generation—this project could bridge that gap by identifying ways to earn more to donate more.

By focusing on systematic, evidence-based guidance, this approach could unlock philanthropic potential that traditional earning-to-give paths might overlook.