Who would do your work if you didn’t? – Podcast #6

Devon Fritz: Well, I was just basically thinking, OK, I have a decent salary, not a crazy salary, but pretty good. I have some savings. And if I just keep going on like this, I won’t need to make the salary for a long time in the future. I’ll invest the money, it’ll grow. And that made me realize I can actually stop what I’m doing now. I don’t need to command such a high salary. I can have a more down-to-earth salary, let’s say, and work on projects that are actually really important in the world, rather than, like you said, building tech software, which is what I was doing.

Basti Schwiecker: Yeah. And you also made a big change in your life. You moved to Germany. And one of the first things, doing good or trying to do good, was during the refugee crisis in 2015. Can you tell us a little bit more about that and why you didn’t continue that kind of work?

Devon Fritz: Yeah, sure. So I kind of went from the private sector, which I thought was very fast and bustling, and there were really smart people working on it. And I always had this cliche of the nonprofit sector as being slow and not so impact-driven. And I think to some degree that’s partially true, or it can be for a lot of organizations. But I wanted to switch into something more socially impactful. And I lived in Heidelberg at the time, and there was the refugee crisis, as it was called. And a lot of people were brought into the old American bunker base that was in Heidelberg. And I really wanted to help out and make sure that those people could get connected with German society and have a good life here. And I knocked on a few doors of different NGOs and basically didn’t get any answer. And the answer I got was like, you can do this very menial task. And it just felt like very kind of slow in the way that I expected. Ultimately, I didn’t feel like I could be that helpful there. And so I like to think of this as kind of like a Goldilocks moment. I think this is Märchen, this fable isn’t so popular in Germany, but it’s one from the US where I’ve grown up. There’s a girl that goes into three bears and she eats their food and one is too hot, one is too cold and one is just right. And so I think of my time as the private sector was a little bit too hot. This NGO sector was a little bit too cold. And then I really got involved in more impact-driven NGOs in the effective altruism movement. And that felt just right for me. So that was a real match. And that’s where I’ve been ever since.

Basti Schwiecker: Yeah, yeah. That’s what I wanted to ask about. Around that time, you probably first heard about the effective altruism movement. How did that happen and how did that shape you?

Devon Fritz: Yeah, so I probably started Googling something about impact. I probably came across 80,000 Hours, which is a site that helps you gear your career towards more effective, have a more effective career. And I remember hearing the name effective altruism. I didn’t really know what it was. And kind of unlike me, I went to a conference for this, effective altruism, and met a whole bunch of people. And that was the real moment where I thought, aha, this is the community that’s for me. And this is where I want to spend my time.

Basti Schwiecker: Yeah, great. So your first big career switch in that area was joining Founders Pledge. Founders Pledge is an organization we’re also working with at Effektiv Spenden. They are basically asking founders to pledge, to donate generously and effectively to a charity once they sell their company. So when the company joins a stock market or sold in another way, they are supposed to donate. And Founders Pledge is helping with that and finding the right opportunities. So how come you joined Founders Pledge and what role did you join?

Devon Fritz: Yeah, so I went to this conference, the effective altruism conference in Oxford, and David Goldberg, who was the CEO, now I think the president of Founders Pledge, gave a really compelling speech that really moved me. And he said at the end of the speech, we need somebody who will be the managing director of Germany, and we need somebody who will be the global CTO of the organization. And I basically approached him at the end of the talk and I said, I’m ready to do both. Let’s do this. I live in Berlin. So that wasn’t obvious because we were in Oxford. So I’m in Germany. I’m in the hot spot in Germany. And I can do the CTO stuff because I have a technical background. That’s what I’ve done for a long time. It’s not a very technical organization. It’s also not crazy work. So I thought, this isn’t going to be super crazy work. Could be an interesting job, but won’t be crazy technical and also I don’t want to do that much technical stuff. So I kind of struck a balance where I said, yeah, my strong suit is the CTO side. My weak suit is the business side. So let me do both of these things 50-50. And we struck that deal. And then that’s what I did.

Basti Schwiecker: Yeah. And at that time Founders Pledge was quite a small organization, right? I think less than 10 people working there. Only a couple of millions pledged and probably not a lot of money already went to a charity. Now they are much bigger, have billions in pledged money, moved hundreds of millions in actual money to effective charities. So how did you experience the growth and did you expect it to grow so fast and become so big so fast? And what was your part in it?

Devon Fritz: Yeah, sure. So I did not expect it to go so fast. It’s amazing how many people have signed the pledge. Basically, you ask, as you said, startup founders to sign a pledge that they’ll donate money effectively upon their exit. And the real growth model and the engine, and I think this works for a lot of charities, is to have dinners with trusted people or events with trusted people. So what their model, that at least we did at the time, was host events with founders who have taken the pledge, let’s say a third of them, and at a house, an intimate setting with one of the founders. And then they invite their friends to an event, maybe 15, 20 founders. And yeah, two thirds of them haven’t taken the pledge yet. And then just talk about the ideas, talk about the impact, talk about charities that are particularly impactful. And then convince the other people who haven’t pledged that this is a good idea. And so through that, organic growth ensued. So rather than ads online to try to pick up founders or other growth avenues, you could try, this is a really good way to get people bought in because they see that people in their peer group and other people like them are doing this thing, and then they feel compelled to do so as well. And that’s one part of the equation, getting people to take the pledge. But another important part is building trust with the people who have pledged over time. We have a research advisory group, or they do now, who worked with the founders to figure out what kinds of impact they want to have, what kind of match they have for their profile. So somebody comes in and says, I don’t know, somebody in their family has cancer. and they want to donate to a cancer society or something like this, then Founders Pledge will work with them and say, ah, it sounds like you really care about improving people’s health or improving longevity. And then we’ll tailor to them a profile of organizations that really solve that underlying goal that the founder has,

Basti Schwiecker: to kind of nudge them to give more effectively. Did I get that right?

Devon Fritz: Yeah. Yeah. And show them and also do a portfolio approach. So there can be some things that aren’t purely impact driven in that portfolio and then other things that are. And so it kind of gets at all parts of the human soul because most givers don’t want to just do one thing like impact. They have other parts that they want to do with their donations. And so Founders Pledge tries to strike a good balance of doing the most impact they can by recommending charities that are extremely impactful, but also organizations that scratch these other itches that people have.

Basti Schwiecker: So you were part of Founders Pledge. Founders Pledge was growing like crazy. You had a lot of ambitious people around you, but you still left. Did you run the numbers again, or how did that happen?

Devon Fritz: I gave a talk about this at an effective altruism conference in San Francisco this year, but it has something to do with what I call replaceability. So I felt over time that at Founders Pledge I had given the important parts that I needed to give, the team was getting bigger, there were a lot of people who could do the things that I could do, and I felt like my sort of magic was going away. And at that point then I usually get the itch to go somewhere else to do something new with the thought that if I’m not really needed here, I’m sure I’m helping a little bit. But if I’m not providing the difference, then I can do something new that’s different and that somebody else wouldn’t do. And that makes the real impact. Because if you are just doing a role that’s replaceable by somebody else, then you’re not really changing the world that much in my view. And it’s also a fun quest. I find it fun to think of my life and my career as a series of steps of different organizations where I can make the difference. And that’s a real driver for me in the way I think about my career.

Basti Schwiecker: Yeah. Okay. I’m glad to hear that fun was at least partly involved and it wasn’t just all numbers. But yeah, still pretty hardcore and a good example for eating your own dog food. We will come to that later when we talk about your book. But yeah, what was your next step? What got you so excited?

Devon Fritz: After that, what did I do? Then I helped out with Effektiv Spenden for a bit. So then I was looking for my next step. It wasn’t exactly clear what I wanted to do. I like this space of what’s called meta, but is basically not working for a direct charity. So I don’t go distribute bed nets in Africa or work on the direct intervention. But I really like marshalling in resources, whether that be financial resources like Founders Pledge tries to do into effective organizations or talent, getting more people to work on these ideas and make organizations great and impactful. I really like this space and that felt right for me. So the next step was working with Effektiv Spenden for a bit to open up the office in Switzerland, as you mentioned. And that then can help people in Switzerland hear about effective ideas and also have a tax-deductible way for them to donate to top charities around the world.

Basti Schwiecker: Yeah, I mean, I obviously kind of set you up with that question, but yeah, in this case, thanks a lot, and I think your bet or your numbers really, your calculations paid off, because the alternative for you helping us out would probably not exist at that time. Effektiv Spenden was growing very fast, but we were basically two or one and a half people and just didn’t have the resources to set up something in Switzerland. And probably without you, we wouldn’t have done it, at least would not have done it in 2021, which would be a shame because we got a quick start there, raised a couple of millions in our first year there. So, yeah, thanks. Thanks a lot. And probably a good example of counterfactual impact you had. But in any case, you also didn’t stay long at Effektiv Spenden. You went up to your next venture joining AIM or Ambitious Impact. So what did you do there?

Devon Fritz: Well, first, I joined the incubation program at Ambitious Impact. So I made a nerd spreadsheet called the weighted factor model of all my different options of what I could do.

Basti Schwiecker: Running the numbers again.

Devon Fritz: Yeah, running the numbers. But there’s a human part to it. I’ll get to that.

Basti Schwiecker: I’m glad.

Devon Fritz: But I basically built a spreadsheet of my 10 best options. And I have all these factors called weighted factors of the different things that I care about, including impact, but also including personal fit and will I like my colleagues and salary and all these other things that people care about, weighting them according to how important I think they are, and then just trying to figure out which kind of options bubble to the top.

Basti Schwiecker: Yeah, and obviously Effektiv Spenden didn’t bubble up to the top, and you left us. Unfortunately not.

Devon Fritz: But I think this tool, yeah, it could be seen as overly numbers-based, and I think in some sense it is. I don’t just read the final answer and say, oh, it said that. That’s, I guess, the right answer. You can look at the top ones and just kind of feel like, am I missing something? Did I include all the things I care about? You’ll understand intuitively if that’s the right way to approach

Basti Schwiecker: it. Also, isn’t there a temptation to make the numbers to give the result you kind of intuitively feel, tweak the numbers a little bit so the results will be what you want them to be?

Devon Fritz: Yeah, I think that happens, and I think that’s fair enough. But going through the exercise gives you a much more robust answer than if you just kind of sit with your thoughts and be like, do I like this one, or do I like this one? So I find it to be a good mix of taking it seriously and analytically a bit, but also using your intuition to fill in the gaps, or your just feelings where you know something’s off. But in any case, I had two high options there. And one was working in effective giving, like Effektiv Spenden, but more broadly. Or doing the same thing but going through the incubation program at Charity Entrepreneurship now called Ambitious Impact.

Basti Schwiecker: Maybe just to make sure everyone knows what we are talking about. So Charity Entrepreneurship is like an incubator for hopefully effective charities. You probably also call it the Y Combinator of the charity world. So helping people who want to found an NGO basically to do it better and help them with setting it up and finding the right ideas and co-founders and stuff like that.

Devon Fritz: Yeah, that’s right. So Charity Entrepreneurship, the incubation program has a few main components. One is they have a research team that looks across the whole world of all possible interventions that you could do to help people or animals and tries to identify the ones that are the most impactful that haven’t been started yet. So there’s a research team that works on that for four months, and then they come out with their golden answers, their top five or so top interventions. Running the numbers. Running the numbers.

Basti Schwiecker: I’m not surprised you joined.

Devon Fritz: Then they find talent across the board, I think except like 1% or some very low percent of people, to then work on those projects and then try to marry both co-founders, they come in separately, they don’t come in as co-founders, but they come in separately so you kind of date, if you will, other co-founders and try to find out where there’s a match with both co-founder and idea. Then you work on the project and then you come up with a funding proposal and then a seed funding network that is independent from the organization comes in and decides which proposals they’re going to fund. And then those charities kind of get kicked out of the nest and then are off in the world. So I went through this program and worked on this for a couple of months and then came out with an organization called High Impact Professionals, which I co-founded with somebody, Federico Speziali.

Basti Schwiecker: So High Impact Professionals, what is that about?

Devon Fritz: What is it about? So High Impact Professionals is an organization that really tries to get mostly talent to come out of the private sector and then work on really impactful ideas. So you can picture a consultant who’s maybe like me. I think my journey is a good example of the archetype of person that goes through High Impact Professionals. They’ve been in the private sector. They realize, gosh, this isn’t scratching my itch. I want more out of my work. And importantly, I want to have more impact. But I don’t know how to get there. This journey took me a while. We skipped over some parts. It took me a few years to figure out this switch. But High Impact Professionals‘ goal is to then help people navigate this transition much more quickly and then work for a really high-impact NGO. A lot of people end up going through our course called the Impact Accelerator Program and then end up working for a high-impact NGO at the end. We really try to facilitate that.

Basti Schwiecker: Before you mentioned 80,000 Hours, also an organization, part of the effective altruism community that also focuses on career advice. So where did you see there’s still something missing or there could be value add with a slightly different approach?

Devon Fritz: Yeah, so I like to think of ourselves in the High Impact Professionals in the EA ecosystem as kind of the faster, more pragmatic organization. In EA there’s a lot of philosophy and a lot of thinking, which I think is good to be clear. But I think there was a missing complement of just getting people to do stuff, essentially, and quite quickly. So the Impact Accelerator Program is focused on, OK, you have six weeks. You learn a little bit about the kind of basics of effective altruism and effective impactful ideas, but it’s really geared towards you make a plan, you work on the plan, you, through the course of the weeks, move that forward and by the end, you’re already applying to jobs. And then also importantly, there’s a component of the human component of the participants are broken up into cohorts and they work together to solve their issues. And so one week, for example, each person in the cohort is in the so-called hot seat, where they talk at length, I think like an hour, about their issue that they’re having, the biggest barrier to impact they’re having. Like, I don’t understand the space, I don’t know where to apply, or I have imposter syndrome, or whatever it is. And then the rest of the group, including the facilitator, coaches them and tries to help them overcome the barriers. So that could be working with them on imposter syndrome, or providing them a resource that helped them with imposter syndrome, or if it’s like a book, telling them a book they could read, or making a connection to an organization. So quite practical, but also quite emotions-based to help people get over the line. Because the answer isn’t always, I don’t know what organization exists that I should apply to. Oftentimes it’s like a more human, psychological struggle. And so we try to help people with that as well.

Basti Schwiecker: Yeah, maybe they didn’t run the numbers.

Devon Fritz: Yeah, maybe not.

Basti Schwiecker: So could you give us some examples what kind of career changes you facilitated through HIP?

Devon Fritz: Sure. So at HIP, we have a great network of very impactful organizations. So I think 300 to 400 that we’re connected to. And so we try to get people placed best. We have a good understanding of the landscape and then try to fit people into the right spots. I was actually talking to Nina, who now runs HIP, Nina Friedrich, and she said that, surprisingly to everybody, animal welfare was the number one transition. So I think 27% of the participants who’ve gotten a high-impact job have gone into animal welfare. So many different organizations in the space, a lot actually at Ambitious Impact or Charity Entrepreneurship. So the incubated charities that come out of there, people will move on to those organizations. A lot that are going into AI safety at different organizations to date, and that’s been a growing percentage. So really all over the map, people moving out of their careers from the private sector and then joining these impactful organizations.

Basti Schwiecker: Yeah. One number I found about your impact or HIP’s impact was that you helped enable around 100 career changes, probably a number much higher now. You also tried to give value to that or pin a number to it. And I think you calculated that this represents like $4.9 million in value, which seems pretty, I mean, congrats, big number, also seems pretty precise. But how did you calculate or even estimate that?

Devon Fritz: Yeah. So I think this is really tricky and I wouldn’t say it should be so precise. Yeah, we take this pretty seriously. As I tried to say with the replaceability argument, I’m not interested in doing something that’s not impactful. So a lot of NGOs, I think, stick around way too long. And even if they’re not showing impact, they just kind of exist and suck up funding, which I think is really bad. So I’ve always been of the opinion, if this doesn’t work, let’s shut it down. So we try to take this very seriously. And HIP does a couple of things. So let me try to explain. So one is, we try to measure the extent to which the program made the difference. So we ask participants, how much more likely are you to switch your career, given that you went through the program? So that puts a number on it, because if people are just going through the program, but they were going to switch otherwise, and we have no value add, then we shouldn’t exist. So that’s one thing. And then we talk to the organizations who make the hires and we ask them, how much better is this candidate that got the job than the next best candidate? Because if we’re merely replacing somebody who was just as good, then that career transition is also not that valuable. And so we tried to get a sense of that as well. And then we also try to estimate the impact of the organization, because if the organization is really impactful, it’s much better to get people to those organizations than to ones that are less impactful. So these are all a little bit loose numbers. They’re not perfect. You could pick at one or the other. But we then multiply those together to get a sense of what the value of the transition was.

Basti Schwiecker: Yes. Yeah. I mean, I see how hard it is to get the precise number, but well, I think the attempt seems logical. And yeah, better to try to see if you can create value than just trust your gut.

Devon Fritz: Oh, maybe actually one other component that I didn’t mention. That’s kind of the benefit side, but there’s also the cost side of the equation. If it costs millions and millions of dollars to do this, it doesn’t matter if we make $4.9 million if we’re soaking up more than $4.9 million of funding. But interestingly, we don’t just consider our salaries and staff costs as the cost of the organization. We kind of consider our counterfactual cost, if you will. We’re taking NGO salaries, but we could actually have much higher salaries in the private sector. And I mean, I did have that. So I know that that’s true. It doesn’t just feel like I’m making it up. And so we actually consider our cost to be what we would earn in the private sector, like our best guess of what the value we’d earn elsewhere or like our next best option, because that’s also Yeah, it’s also important to be honest with yourself there, because if you just take no, let’s say you’re rich and you take no salary or take a one dollar salary, well, you look really effective because your organization is running on a shoestring budget. But really, the cost is what your value is and what you could be earning otherwise.

Basti Schwiecker: Yeah. So, I mean, I was talking about the $4.9 million of value at first. Which time frame are we talking about and how big were your costs in that time, like your counterfactual opportunity costs?

Devon Fritz: Yeah, I think that’s the total over the past few years, so since 2021. And our budget’s been around a few hundred K. So when we first started, it was 100 K the first year, US dollars. And then I think this year is more around 300 K. So still a relatively small budget to be creating that kind of value.

Basti Schwiecker: But 300 K doesn’t include the opportunity cost you were talking about, right? So that would be a little bit higher, I assume.

Devon Fritz: Correct. I think we put our salaries at something like 200 K counterfactual. Yeah, so that’s based on that. So let’s say three employees at 200 K, so 600 K plus whatever operational costs are at the organization.

Basti Schwiecker: So still a pretty good multiplier. But so far we were just talking about career change, which is the main goal or the name of the organization kind of implies it. But you also got a bunch of people to donate much more generously, like a couple of people pledged to donate 10% in the future of all future incomes. Was that surprising for you to have this kind of influence or you actually pushed it from the beginning?

Devon Fritz: Yeah, it was surprising how many people have taken the pledge in that way, for sure. And we started off just doing career transitions, so if you’ll allow me a little aside. When we first started the organization, we had no idea what would work. Kind of like in a for-profit, we did product-market fit for the better part of two years, and we had totally different models, and HIP today looks nothing like it did in the beginning. But then we landed on, okay, we’ll do this course, the Impact Accelerator Program, six weeks, and we’ll teach people about donations, and we’ll teach people about talent, and we’ll teach people about all these different things. And then we did intake interviews, and we announced that to the world, we’re going to do this program. People applied, and we did intake interviews, where we’re interviewing them to see if they’re a fit for the program. But sneakily, we also did the user interviews there. So we asked them, like, what are you most excited about? And everybody said talent. So we’re like, Crap. We built all this stuff about donations, but people actually care about talent. So we scrapped all of our content. And then while the course was running, built up next week’s content and is all about talent. And so then we got really talent filled and worked on that. And then at some point, Nina and I sat back and we said, okay, what if we just ask them to do donations as well? We don’t build it into the course super strongly, but we just say like, you could do this thing.

Basti Schwiecker: You can

Devon Fritz: do both. And people took us up on it. And so actually, I think 100 people also have taken the pledge. So I don’t remember what percent is the 10% Pledge. There’s also you can pledge anything from one to 10%, the Trial Pledge, Try Giving. But 100 people have done that. Yeah.

Basti Schwiecker: And I mean, 1% is quite a lot or much more than the average German person.

Devon Fritz: Yeah. So yeah. So very happy with that result.

Basti Schwiecker: Yeah, yeah, congrats to that. But yeah, next, I mean, true to yourself, you thought about replaceability again and kind of decided you are replaceable already in the organization you founded yourself. So it makes me feel a little bit better about you leaving Effektiv Spenden. So if you’re also willing to leave your own organization. That leaves us in a kind of good company. So you left, you found a great new CEO, Nina, I think, and went back to AIM, I guess, right?

Devon Fritz: Yeah, then I joined AIM, Ambitious Impact, as the COO. And that was actually a hairy time. So I wouldn’t just say, like, I’m replaceable now. I’m going to get out of here. Joey Savoie, who ran Ambitious Impact at the time, tried to poach me and say, like, yeah, we think we really need you as COO at AIM. And I took that seriously. But HIP was just at a time where it felt like we found this product-market fit. We’re running this program. It looks like it works. But it was still early days. And it was unclear how much we could scale it up. We had some talented people go through the program and they were getting jobs, so it looked good. But you don’t know the answer to empirical questions like, how many talented people will go through this program? Can we scale up the number of talent or is it going to cap out at 20 or 50 or something? So there were real questions about how much it could scale. But important to the replaceability argument was that we found Nina who was really aligned with the goals of the organization and I was confident could take the organization and really do good with it. So I thought in a world where I go to AIM and help them out and Nina continues to run HIP is the best version of the world because both things are running and going well, compared to me just continuing at HIP. And AIM didn’t have a good second best COO, as I understood it at the time. So it was a hard conversation and a lot of work with both AIM and High Impact Professionals on the board and trying to grapple with it. But I think we came up ultimately with the best answer. And Nina, definitely looking back now with the benefit of hindsight, Nina really nailed the organization and even massively exceeded my expectations. And sometimes I think it’s good that I got out of the way because their execution is just so strong. It’s probably a value add no matter what, even if I had stayed.

Basti Schwiecker: Maybe I should try it. Yeah, you’re the bottleneck now. So you joined AIM, and one of the jobs there was not working with the incubation program we just talked about, but also working with external foundations and helping making their giving more effective, which I think is a great cause and I think a lot of foundations, especially in Germany, could probably give more effectively. So what exactly did you do? How did you get them to listen to you? What kind of arguments did you bring and have you been successful at all?

Devon Fritz: Yeah, so AIM also runs something called the Impactful Grantmaking Program, and it’s a program that tries to skill up grantmakers, whether they be the principal at a foundation or the actual grantmaker on the ground who’s doing the grants, or a philanthropic advisor. We take these people in, they apply because they want to be more impactful, and then we give them the tools to do that. And we also network them together so that they meet each other and see other people who are going through the same journey. And so we have a course that changes week length. We always tinker with the week length, but I think it was six weeks last time we ran it. And basically every week try to get them to be more impactful in different aspects of their foundation. So one could be build a spreadsheet and again, try to put numbers on things. Most foundations don’t do that. Another thing is running an open process. So another thing we see is that a lot of foundations just hear through the grapevine or at a networking event about a great opportunity, almost like when your uncle says, I got this great stock tip for you. Foundations say, yeah, you got to donate to this thing. And then they just do that. And they don’t have the kind of breadth of the opportunities that are out there. So we encourage them to run an open process where they put up a request for proposals online and then vet them. And try to not only do some spreadsheets, but also make your process really good. But also there are other things too, like a grant maker says, gosh, my principal or the family behind the whole organization is really not letting me do this impactful thing, or I’ve reached this block, or how can I talk to them and convince them that this is good, or how can I make this work? So there’s sticky stuff like that that’s more on the, let’s say, business side of things. But we try to get them to then donate to more impactful things and make their processes better. And I would say there’s a good German expression, Luft nach oben. It’s amazing. Even the people who self-select into wanting to be more impactful, which is not every foundation out there. They’re working with really basic resources and there just aren’t resources out there in the world for foundations to be more impactful. Except Joey, who co-founded Ambitious Impact, he wrote a book called Twice As Good that’s out there now to fill this gap. So it’s basically the course content, but in an accessible book that all foundations can have access to.

Basti Schwiecker: But in my limited experience, it isn’t really the content about how to be more impactful, how to be more effective, that’s the limiting factor. But just getting the foot in the door and get people to be open to do things differently. As I mentioned, my experience in this space is limited, but I feel like sometimes it’s almost hostility you encounter, and people say, you just want to tell me to do it right, which kind of implies I was doing it wrong so far. And like your arrogant spreadsheet guys, I want basically, I mean, they don’t say it like that, but I want to continue following my gut feeling and just be the benevolent, rich dude, person, foundation manager. And continue doing it like we have always done it. So what’s your experience in that regard? Did you encounter anything like that?

Devon Fritz: I think that’s true. So in this case, there’s selection effects because people apply because they want to be more impactful. So that’s kind of baked into it. But I think more broadly, you are correct, unfortunately. That’s been my experience too. And I see my mission both at High Impact Professionals, but also at AIM and more generally, as these days finding people for whom this just clicks. And they’re like, ah, I didn’t know there were words for these things. I kind of feel like this is true, but I just didn’t know about this community or these ideas. And then bringing them into the fold rather than trying to convince somebody who doesn’t care at all that they should care. I think that’s a really hard and perhaps impossible battle. But luckily there are still a lot of people out there, whether they run a foundation or they want to work on impactful things that just don’t have the toolkit yet. But yeah, it clicks for them and then they get involved. So these organizations, these foundations wanted to be more impactful and they just didn’t have the toolkit. And then I’d say, going back to my Founders Pledge comment, I also see that there’s this kind of social group dynamic. So here too, there are some people who are more impact focused in the foundation program. There are some people who are less impact focused. And they kind of, it kind of raises all ships, it feels like. By the end, some people hear that half of the group is talking about more impactful things, and then they say, oh, that is a good idea, I’ll build that in. So I do think you can move the needle that way, so not just like, you should care about impact because it’s good and I have the spreadsheet, but because they see other people are doing it, we’re social beings, and I think that plays a factor too, yeah.

Basti Schwiecker: Yeah, let’s raise all the boats. Sounds like a worthy goal. But while you were still at AIM, you had HIP at the back of your mind and actually decided to become an author. And earlier this year, you published The High-Impact Professional’s Playbook. I don’t want to praise it, I want to quote someone else who did. Some of you might know the famous Dutch historian and author Rutger Bregman. And he recently said he doesn’t really like self-help books, kind of hates them, but there are three exceptions and your book is one of them. So congrats to that endorsement. Tell us about how come you decided to become an author? I mean, probably you ran the numbers, but was it always a dream of yours to write a book or did you have to force yourself to do it? And again, there are some resources out there from the effective altruism community about career advice. So once more, where did you see they were missing out or there’s value to be added?

Devon Fritz: So actually, I never planned to be an author, at least not super consciously. As I mentioned, I left High Impact Professionals kind of quickly. We found Nina, but then I joined AIM kind of on a dime. And I had a lot in my head that I wanted to get down on paper and that I wanted to communicate to Nina. But we have mentoring sessions to this day, but they’re every couple of weeks. And I had this feeling that if I switch context and I join a new organization, I have a horrible memory. All this stuff’s going to disappear. So I just started jotting down a lot of notes of stuff that I had learned from coaching professionals and running these sessions, the Impact Accelerator Program. And I just started writing that down in my free time. So I didn’t actually crunch the numbers here. I didn’t think this was the most impactful thing I could do. I sort of saw it between hobby and work. It was kind of fun, but also felt important. And I guess I always wanted a version of HIP to be also quite, let’s say, democratic or scalable. The Impact Accelerator Program. It has a hard cutoff. I think they accepted 100 out of 1,000 applicants in the last process. So that leaves 900 people kind of twiddling their thumbs. And those people want to do things. They applied to the program. They want to make these changes. But we didn’t have any offering for them. And I thought this was a good way to fill the gap. This has a lot of the materials from the course, but in a way that you can do it on your own time and hopefully get a lot of the value out of the program without actually having to go through it. And so then at some point, this document that I was writing got longer and longer. And I thought, oh, this is getting book length. I could find a publisher to publish this. Maybe that’s a good way to put it out in the world. That’s what I did. And that worked pretty quickly. So I was really, really happy with the result.

Basti Schwiecker: Yeah. Yeah. Congrats for finishing the book, getting it out there and getting some great reviews so far. So yeah, let’s talk about the book. And you start the book with a kind of famous example, at least in our community famous example, The Tale of the Drowning Child. I think it’s Peter Singer came up with it. For people who don’t know it, it’s about a situation where you see a child drowning while you’re on your way to a job interview, having your best suit on. But yeah. still decide to jump in the pond, ruin your suit, ruin your new and expensive shoes to save the life. And yeah, assuming pretty much everyone would do that without even thinking. And then it gets more complicated. And you also use some actual numbers from effective charities that you actually could save a life of a child by just donating. I think currently best estimates are around 3,000 euros, so a really expensive suit but still kind of in a suit ballpark, I guess. And yeah, asking people why don’t you donate $3,000 every year, depending on your income, every year, every month, every couple of years, to save a child. And I’ve also been asked about it recently. And one challenge, I think, is that it feels different, like sending money and then, theoretically, in expected value, you probably will save a child. But it’s obviously very different to really pull it out, the drowning child out of a pond. What do you make out of this or this challenge that on the one hand, it is comparable when you just run the numbers, but for a lot of people, it probably doesn’t feel comparable.

Devon Fritz: I think that’s an unfortunate truth about human psychology. It’s hard to get excited about the numbers. But nonetheless, I think if you inhabit the space and really try to make it real before your eyes and your mind’s eye, I think you can get there a bit. And importantly, in the book, I think what Peter Singer did was very pivotal, and also for me back in the day. When you asked me how I got into this, I also read Peter Singer, and he really motivated me to work on this sort of stuff and become vegetarian and a whole set of things that Peter Singer is influential about. But his argument is ultimately very duty-based. And I tried to make the, I think, much more compelling argument about this. This is actually something you would really love. So in the book, it is a spin on Peter Singer, but I say more that you see somebody drowning and you go in to save them and you pull them out and you realize they would have died without you, that on your deathbed, that would be one of the top five things you look back and say, like, wow, that was awesome what I did. That was really good. I rose to the challenge. And so kind of trying to pull this feeling out of people. And I mean, your point is still true. When you make the $3,000 transfer or whatever, you don’t feel that way. But I think if you try to cultivate this feeling of like you actually did that, that’s the actual comparable thing that happened in the world. That’s the best you can get. And I think that’s achievable for a lot of people. I mean, $3,000 is a lot of money, but even if you do $100 a month or whatever, what is that, a thousand, for three years, right? You can have that impact as if you saved somebody, like pulled somebody out of the water, which is pretty astounding.

Basti Schwiecker: Yeah, yeah, definitely, definitely. Let’s help people just feel it and not just calculate it. Another concept that’s pretty central in your book is counterfactuality, a challenging word, also in German probably even less heard of, kontrafaktisch. So yeah, could you try to explain it to me like I’m five and also how it applies to having impact?

Devon Fritz: Yeah, sure. So counterfactuality is the idea that humans have the capacity, I think other animals don’t, to realize and envision what the world would look like if some other things were true. So imagine cars could fly today, or imagine there were never dinosaurs. What would the world look like? How would it be different? You can’t get exactly the truth here. It’s very hard, but you can envision in your mind’s eye what would be different. Like if cars could fly, maybe we’d all get to work faster. Maybe people would be more productive because they’d be more at the office. I don’t know if this is true, but you could speculate on that. You could try to come up with that vision. And so applied to your career, or your donations, or whatever, what have you, it’s very important in my view to ask the question, what would happen otherwise? And so my replaceability argument is a good example of this. If you picture you’re at your job, you’re at your consultancy, and you went poof in the thin air, and you had never existed, what would be different for the consultancy? Well, there’s so many people out there who want to be consultants and didn’t get that job that probably there’d be somebody doing the same role you did. Even if it’s impactful and it’s good, and I’m not saying consultancies are bad, I think they’re valuable. But somebody would just be doing the work that you’re doing. And there’s usually a cap on these sorts of things, so it’s not like you’ll be adding the next consultant to the pile. It’ll be the same sort of pie. And so then you can say, well, if I didn’t exist, then basically the world would be the same. And so this example, when you think counterfactually, you can think about, OK, then where is it that that’s not true? Where is it that there is an area that I think is impactful on the one hand, but also I’m making the difference? And you can just think about this and try to do your best guess. You don’t have to over-engineer it. But I think this can be a very valuable way to look at your career, your donations, and anywhere you want to be impactful.

Basti Schwiecker: Yeah, definitely. And I had some experience like that, I mean, long before I knew the word counterfactuality and even before I knew the effective altruism community. But when I started my first job at KfW Development Bank, a German official development aid, I applied like a lot of people, also some people I know, it was in this area, kind of a competitive job to get. And I was lucky to get the job, but knew a friend of mine who didn’t get the job. And I studied with her. I knew her quite well. And I always thought, she’s probably better than me. And they missed out on her, maybe because I just was lucky in the interview, had a good day. I don’t know. Maybe she was too nervous, or whatever it was. But I thought, OK, if I didn’t work here, she would probably work here. And would the world be worse? Maybe the world would actually be better, or maybe a little worse, but the difference would be quite small. So I also started to think, what is the real value I add here? And it might be much smaller than what I had thought before.

Devon Fritz: Well, it sounds like you have imposter syndrome, and you need the Impact Accelerator Program.

Basti Schwiecker: Maybe I do. But I encourage people to think a little bit harder about your actual impact, I think. And yeah, maybe this book will help you with that. You also gave some examples. I mean, a career change is quite a big step. Donating, depending on how much you donate, could be a smaller start. But you also give other examples of potentially small actions that could yield a big impact, like emailing a bunch of people is one of the examples I think you give. Whom should I email and what can I expect from doing so?

Devon Fritz: Yeah, so I think, going back to a question you asked me earlier, how does this book differ from 80,000 Hours? I think this book is much more practical than other books in the EA space, or 80,000 Hours, for example. And it also meets, I think, people more a bit where they’re at, rather than, I think, other stuff in EA tries to get you to do the ultimately crazy impactful thing of career switches and everything else. It’s kind of second fiddle. And my book is more trying to recognize that people have constraints on their lives. Some people can make career switches and that’s great. And I definitely don’t shy away from saying I think that’s the most impactful thing the majority of people can do if they can pull it off. But other people have families or they’re stuck somewhere and they just have other constraints on their life. And so in the book, I try to illuminate kind of wherever you’re at and whatever your constraints are, there’s something for you to do that you’re probably not doing. And so in addition to switching your career and donations, and I think it’s worth saying donations is a track that I think many, many people can make good on that aren’t making good on. So that’s a very absorbent path where a lot of people, and especially in Germany and other quite rich countries, can do more than they’re doing on average. There are other paths. So there’s joining the board of an effective organization is an example. I see quite a lot of boards usually aren’t so great. And I think from the outside, people think, ah, the board is probably already quite good and helping people out. And again, imposter syndrome, where could I possibly help out? But you’d be surprised when you go behind the scenes of the chaos that can ensue at an organization. There’s mentoring people, either junior people at an organization or the leadership. There’s volunteering at an organization. A lot of places, I don’t know so much in Germany, but a lot of organizations in the US where I’m from, they build in time to the schedule to volunteer at an organization. I think usually people think, I’ll go pick up trash by the side of the road. But no, if you’re a data scientist, you can work for some organization that’s underpowered data-wise and then provide graphs and cool stuff for them. There’s a lot of stuff you can do to bring your skills to bear for organizations that need it and probably have that gap. because they’re not so well funded. You can do workplace initiatives, which is really cool. Actually, I found my co-founder Fede in the incubation program. I really picked him because he really put his money where his mouth was. And in his small startup in Switzerland, ran what I call workplace initiatives to generate more impact in the workplace. So he, around giving season at the end of the year, people got a bonus. I think it was like three K Swiss francs. And he got a lot of his colleagues to donate all of that to effective charities. He gave them a pitch about like, here are great charities. Here’s one in climate. Here’s one in animal welfare. Here’s one in global health and development. Here’s why they’re great. Okay, now pony up. Provided an easy way for them to donate. Went through the even pre-tax, I think on the, like set it up with the HR so that it didn’t even get taxed on anybody and then raised, I think, 35,000 Swiss francs over the couple of years he was there. And then left and joined me. And then I think that’s still running to date without him. So also cool in his wake, wouldn’t have happened otherwise for sure. But that’s an example of a workplace initiative that you could do if you have the proactivity and the desire for impact. You don’t have to leave your job.

Basti Schwiecker: I mean, sometimes just ask people to do something, right?

Devon Fritz: Yeah, yeah. And nobody thinks, I mean, everybody does their job. They’re tired. They go home. They don’t think, I can add this other stuff to my life. But I think probably it costs them 40 hours or something. Not a crazy lift and a bit of courage. You have to say, I care about this stuff in my free time. I’m also a personal human. I’m not just a worker. I have these other interests and here’s what they are. You got to put that on the table a little bit. But I think it’s not that scary.

Basti Schwiecker: You have to accept that some people won’t join your cause. Yeah, of course. I think that that’s fine.

Devon Fritz: So there are a lot of different ways. And the one you referenced, yeah, emailing people. I think people can also in their personal lives, if they’re inspired by these ideas, reach out on their network. So an example is a birthday fundraiser you can put on LinkedIn. Hey, it’s my birthday. And so in lieu of gifts this year, I want you to donate to this charity. That kind of gets money to the charity, but also puts a line in the sand and says, I care about this stuff, and I care about impact. I think much more than badgering somebody and saying, you should care about impact, because as we talked about, that doesn’t work. Just say, I care about this stuff. Make it sound exciting. Talk about it from your personal experience. And some other people will come on board. Not everybody will, but some people will. And that’s worth doing.

Basti Schwiecker: We didn’t talk about it before, but at Effektiv Spenden we just completely revamped our fundraiser feature. So if you want to do a birthday fundraiser, please go to Effektiv Spenden and create one. You also talk about the ITN framework in the book. So the ITN framework is kind of famous in the effective altruism community. It stands for Impact, Tractability, and Neglectedness, and it’s supposed to help you prioritize problems or interventions when you’re looking up to change your career or if you think where to donate it. Yeah, is it impactful? The intervention, is it tractable? And is it neglected? And you and your book especially focus on the neglectedness part and say neglectedness is neglected. Why is neglectedness neglected? And can you give some examples?

Devon Fritz: Yeah. So if you think about the three components, what you called impact, I’d say importance too. So like the size of the problem you’re dealing with. So like a problem all else equal or it’s more worth it to work on something if the problem is bigger like if it affects more people or animals that’s better on the margin, you know, sure, all else equal, than some smaller problem. If it’s tractable, if you can actually make progress on the problem. And if it’s neglected, if other people aren’t looking at it, right, as you said. And I think people have a pretty strong natural intuition on a couple of these, so on the other two. So if it’s important, I think people generally have the sense of if something’s important and are drawn to important problems, like climate change. Everybody knows it’s important and it’s on everybody’s tongue and they want to work on it or think about it or donate to it or lower their CO2 output. Why is that? Because it’s big. That’s kind of the natural inclination I think people have for a lot of problems. And so too with tractability, maybe a bit less. But you don’t work on a perpetual motion machine. We know that doesn’t work. It’s physically impossible. We’ll see. I think people have some intuition on, will I make progress in this problem, or is it just an impossible task? But I think people are really poorly calibrated to if something is neglected, and that’s important. And I’ll give you an example from a previous job that I won’t name. We made research reports for the organization that was actually talking about psychedelics and kind of the upsides of working with psychedelics. The research is kind of new. It looks like very promising in a lot of different ways. And we ultimately recommended the second best organization in the space, that donors should give their funding there. And then people were up in arms that we didn’t recommend the well-known best organization in the space. We made it very clear in the report, we didn’t recommend them because they don’t have a funding gap. They’re already well-known. They already get a lot of funding. So they can’t use your next donations. They just can’t use them. They’ll just throw their hands up and say, I guess we could hire somebody. But it’s not my plan. I don’t know what to do with it. And same too with when there’s a crisis or a flood somewhere, the money floods in, people recognize that they want to donate there, but they don’t consider, like, is this donation doing anything? They just see, like, oh, problem, I’ll go for it. But it’s very important to think about, in the case of donations, is my money making a difference? Is this organization neglected in the sense that not many people are looking at it, but it’s still quite good? And so I think that, and it’s quite counterintuitive. Like you think, ah, the best one in the space, that’s where I should give my money to. I find people much more commit this sort of error, if you will, by not considering this aspect in their giving or in their career or otherwise.

Basti Schwiecker: Yeah. You also gave an example that kind of relates to Effektiv Spenden. I will let you know why after you answer. It’s becoming a doctor. You say, I mean, if you want to do good, becoming a doctor seems like a good idea. But you say it might actually not be the best idea. Why not?

Devon Fritz: Yeah, so in the US, there are many, many people applying, trying to be a doctor and not all of them make it. So similar to my consultant argument, if you don’t become a doctor, that, okay, yeah, so ITN, right? Important, tractable and neglected. You might think the standard view would be, okay, this is very important. I’m helping people, I’m saving their lives. And of course, that’s true. That is very important. And I’m so happy there’s so many doctors around the world. But people don’t take the neglectedness aspect into account. So a doctor thinks, I’m saving all these lives. I see whatever. Let’s say it’s a surgeon. I serve all these patients. I give them this, like, let’s say I remove cancer, a very important role. And they do that over and over throughout their lives. They think they saved all these lives. Probably hundreds of lives. They have saved lives for sure. But I think it’s a lot fewer because they don’t ask themselves, if I didn’t do this, what would happen? It isn’t that the person would say, help, help, they’re lying on the table and nobody’s there. Maybe that would happen to somebody. Or there would certainly be a little bit fewer resources, perhaps. But more likely, I think, another doctor would step in. Somebody else would be certified. There’s also this cartel of the doctors‘ associations that limit the number of licenses that can be given out each year. So there is actually a fixed amount in this case that they can’t exceed. And then that usually means, unless nobody wants to be a doctor anymore, that that number is going to be full. So again, you could be better than the next marginal doctor by a little bit or something. You’re definitely helping, and I don’t mean to begrudge doctors here. But yeah, I think the impact is a lot less than people would think. Certainly still above zero, but much more. A much more impactful way to go would be the doctors who have discovered penicillin or something or really moved the needle on some problem that was much, yeah, or some solution that was much more impactful in the long run.

Basti Schwiecker: Yeah. Yeah. I also mentioned that because there’s a doctor working for Effektiv Spenden and not as a doctor. And I sometimes feel bad like she’s in the hospital now saving lives directly, but hopefully indirectly and maybe even more impactful through Effektiv Spenden. You mentioned donating is also a big part of the book, also something that’s accessible to most people, at least most people who are listening in right now. And you’re also talking about some of the… things, a lot of people get wrong when it comes to donating. So might be old news for some listeners who are already familiar with Effektiv Spenden, but maybe not for everyone. So I would like to go through examples. One thing is you call the principal-agent problem. The person who receives the benefit is not the same person who pays for it or gives the money or donates the money in this case. Can you elaborate on that?

Devon Fritz: Yeah. So in the private sector, if you’re providing a product that isn’t good and people don’t want to buy it, you have a very strong market signal. You will go out of business if people don’t buy your product because there’s no other way to stay in business. And so I think private sector, even though it has other faults, is really good at this kind of feedback mechanism, which I think is critical to successful organizations. And I think it’s no surprise that the, my go-to example is usually, I think it’s no surprise that the biggest foundations in the world are 100 years old, and the biggest for-profits in the world are in the past 20 years. And I usually would say Microsoft and things, but it’s not even true anymore. The big labs, the AI labs have surpassed them. But more to the point, the turnover and the new organizations in the private sector just keep coming, but the NGOs that we all know and heard of have been around hundreds of years, and they’re the biggest. Why is that? I think it’s mostly attributable to this feedback mechanism. People know about them, and they donate there, but there’s no loop going back to say, OK, I donated there, but did they do anything with that money? Whatever they did, was it actually helping the people and animals we care about? And I’ve found through my experience in the NGO sector that, yeah, all you really have to do is please the funder and show them that you’re doing a good job. And since a lot of people aren’t so impact focused, you don’t have to do that on impact grounds. You could do it on some other grounds. And since you as the funder are not the recipient, the beneficiary, you don’t have to even care as much about if you get what you paid for in a sense. So an example I like is if you were walking down the street and somebody was selling phones on the corner and they said like, phone, phone, buy my phone, you would never just buy some random phone that they saw there. And you have no idea if it’s a good phone, you’ve never heard of the brand before. You would never do that. But nonetheless, when you’re a donor, you walk down the street and somebody says like, oh, child charity organization, whatever name, you never heard of them before, but they ask you to sign up and do $10 a month. And maybe under pressure, or maybe because you want to do something good, you sign up. But you don’t do the same rigor as you would when you buy your phone, which is like, you’d Google it, you’d say, OK, does this fit my interest? Because you’re not the recipient.

Basti Schwiecker: Maybe even if I heard about the organization before, I still wouldn’t buy a phone. I heard the company called Motorola exists. Doesn’t mean I just buy the next Motorola on the street, because I heard the name, they must be good.

Devon Fritz: Yeah. And so the incentives are all, I’m a big incentives guy, and I think the incentives here in the NGO sector are all messed up and don’t lead to maximizing impact, and nothing even close. And to be fair, too, I think it’s also much harder in the NGO space to get that feedback loop. Even if you’re tracking stuff really well, it’s hard to know and test that you’ve actually made a difference, because you need randomized control trials and things. Otherwise, you don’t know what would have happened. In the private sector, if the money comes in, if people are buying it, you know that’s the end of the feedback loop. You don’t need to speculate about what would they have done otherwise. They’re buying your product.

Basti Schwiecker: So in a certain sense, yeah, it’s easier to have success in the private sector, at least to know if you’re successful. Yeah. It’s easier. Yeah. I couldn’t agree more. I mean, not surprising, probably. And I assume I will agree with the next point as well, since you’re saying in the book also the overhead ratio isn’t the best metric to choose the right charity.

Devon Fritz: Yeah, I think this doesn’t matter at all, basically. So what you really care about in any sort of endeavor you have is what the impact is, like what the outcome is of the organization, whether that’s the private sector or the NGO sector. So yeah, I guess taking an analogy to the private sector, you would never care about when you’re buying, go to the phone analogy again, you’re in the store and you see an iPhone. You never say, what is the overhead? How much do they spend on marketing when you buy that phone? It would be irrelevant. You want the best phone with the best features because that’s the impact. That is the outcome that you care about. And so too in the NGO space, if they spend 50% of their budget on overhead, but they have the best outcomes in the space. Sure. Maybe you could say like, ah, maybe they should spend a bit less, but you still want the best outcome. You always want the best outcome. The overhead is irrelevant. Yeah.

Basti Schwiecker: Yeah. OK. Obviously I agree. I can’t really add to that. So let’s go to my next question. Although you talk a lot about donating, say, people should donate more and more effectively. You’re also saying that probably for most people like direct work or probably a career change would be more impactful than just focusing on donating more and more and maybe try to find a job that pays more to donate more, even for larger salaries. So if I understand it correctly, you see a big talent gap and a lot of potential there. Is that so? Because sometimes I think it’s looking also in the effective altruism space, if job opportunities arise, a lot of applicants show up. Like you said, at HIP you get a 10 to 1 ratio, even for the Accelerator program. I think at Charity Entrepreneurship it’s even more competitive. So is there really a talent gap here?

Devon Fritz: Yeah, so at the end of the day, on the one side, if you look at it from the applicant’s perspective, there are all these people applying. But at the end of the day, on the recruiter side, you don’t get that many people that you think are a great fit for the organization. And that’s not because they’re bad or not qualified. But usually I find, I’ve been working 20 something years now, God, I’m getting old. But it felt like back in the day there were fewer things an organization wanted or needed. And now you kind of have to be a whole package. It’s almost like dating in my mind. You want a person who fits the organizational culture. Used to be more command and control. Like, okay, you can do the job. That’s enough. You’re going to listen to my orders, whatever. That’s fine. Now you want somebody who kind of fits the mission, and also has the same core values, and also has the skill set you want, and this parade of different skills. And you just don’t find that many people that kind of have that configuration. So while it is, it’s a weird paradox, while it is true that there are many people applying to jobs, the people that actually fit really well are quite few and far between, I find, for any given job. So there’s probably a job for somebody out there, it’s just not that particular one. So I do really see that there’s a strong talent gap. And I also think since kind of, the NGO space still has the vibe of less cool and less innovative than the private sector. And I’ve said it in many ways, it’s still true. There are many great organizations that need great people, but the great people just aren’t coming because they haven’t heard about these ideas yet. And you’d have to earn a lot of money, and you’d have to donate a lot of money, importantly, to overcome that effect in the hundreds of thousands. And I think for the vast, vast majority of people, that’s just not the path or trajectory they’re going to be on. So it makes much more sense to spend their 80,000 Hours, their 40 years of work working on important problems, because that’s just so much more time than the money they could donate otherwise.

Basti Schwiecker: Yeah, I also want to stress that there are a bunch of very cool, fast-moving entrepreneurial organizations in the nonprofit space, because I also heard from people in the private sector, the NGO space is old fashioned, more like a state agency, they are slow. And these organizations exist, so it’s not like a complete fabrication, but there are also a lot of cool organizations that move really fast. They have very ambitious founders who could rival pretty much anyone in the private sector. And besides, be the change you want to see in the world, just start your own thing. If you think they all suck, just show them how it can be done.

Devon Fritz: Yeah, and this is actually why I even joined this space. As I said, I saw some NGOs, I thought they were slow, I was disenchanted with the space, and then I found this effective altruism conference and I was like, wow, these people are doing amazing stuff. They’re like super bright people. They’re super conscientious. They’re super proactive in their work. They’re working on really cool problems and it really opened my mind to what was possible and yeah, and since it’s kind of seen as not so cool, and going back to my neglected point, there’s just so much low-hanging fruit in the space, and so many cool problems you could work on, and nobody’s doing it. A really small amount of people are really moving the field forward here, and there could be so many more working on these exciting ideas.

Basti Schwiecker: But that doesn’t mean it’s without its challenges. One thing you mentioned is that it can be overwhelming or you can feel inadequate. You give an example, even if you donate a lot, you have a high-paying job and you donate thousands of euros a year, still, like you will not solve world hunger on your own and it might still feel tiny if you hear that some billionaire donates hundreds of millions or billions. And so does your impact actually matter at all? I mean, thousands of euros might sound like a lot of money to most people, but compared to — we have the first trillionaire now, isn’t it pointless to even try doing any good?

Devon Fritz: Yeah. Yeah, this is drawn from a real example. Actually, I know somebody who is donating 200K a year doing the earning to give strategy where they try to earn as much as they can and then they donate a significant chunk of it. And they were expressing this issue.

Basti Schwiecker: I just want to appreciate donating 200K a year is a lot of money, much more than most people earn in a year.

Devon Fritz: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And explicitly following that strategy. So not just some rich person who has 200K to throw around per se, but like 50% of their salary or more. And they were expressing this sentiment of like, ah, yeah, but it’s a struggle I have, even though they recognize that as wrong. There’s a real human tendency to compare and say like, you get to some level and then you think about the next level, and you’re not satisfied because you’re not at the next level yet. So I think that’s very human and it’s something I experienced too. I think, ah, how can I get more leverage or this is, I’m not moving the needle enough. So it’s something that also personally I feel in my work. But I think it’s important to think about the absolute difference you’re making rather than the relative difference. And to, yeah, if you, like I said, if you donate $3,000, you’re saving a life, and that life wouldn’t have been saved otherwise. And that’s the absolute difference. It doesn’t matter if somebody’s saving five lives. Good for them. That’s great if they can get away with it, or they have those resources. But the absolute impact you have is the thing you want to focus on here.

Basti Schwiecker: Yeah, I definitely agree. And I’m kind of, luckily, immune to that kind of thinking. And one analogy for our German listeners, made up basically: I mean, I work at Effektiv Spenden, so I’m trying to do my part, hopefully doing some good. But obviously, there are others who are much more impactful because they have a big fortune or they just do more effective work or just more successful in helping the world. But I’m still, well, trying to do my part and I compared it and I’m very happy having kind of my dream job. So I consider myself very lucky in this regard. And compare it to someone who wants to become a soccer player, like a professional soccer player. It’s probably a dream of a lot of young kids. And imagine you reach that goal. You are playing soccer professionally, you’re getting paid for your dream, and you’re playing in stadiums and for a big crowd. One thing you can get out of it is just being happy that you’re incredibly lucky living the dream. Or you can beat yourself up that you’re not Lionel Messi or Cristiano Ronaldo, because obviously someone is even better. You didn’t even play at the World Cup yet. I mean, it’s easy to say, maybe for some people hard to do, but I would encourage everyone to be happy with what they are. I mean, push yourself, but within a limit and don’t… I mean, comparison is in a lot of cases like planning for disaster. So don’t do it. Or do it within reason, maybe, to get a little bit more ambitious. All right, before I bother anyone with more soccer analogies, I just want to highlight this book again. So if you ever thought about using your resources to do more good, be it time or be it your money, read The High-Impact Professional’s Playbook and you will get a lot of hands-on advice. And you’re also asked to write an email to Devon, if you have any questions or especially if this book inspired you to make a change in your life. So yeah, my final question in regards to the book, Devon, have you received any emails with people telling about their life changes or asking you questions?

Devon Fritz: Yeah, so first I want to say this book costs money, which you might expect, but all the programs that High Impact Professionals offers are free of charge because donors give them money. It’s a non-profit so that they can further these ideas. So I’d also encourage you, if you’re interested in these ideas, to go to highimpactprofessionals.org to apply for one of the programs.

Basti Schwiecker: I assume the proceeds of the book don’t go to your personal bank account.

Devon Fritz: Yes, all the proceeds of the book go to the organization as well. Yeah.

Devon Fritz: Yes, but to answer your question, some people have written, which I’ve been very excited to read. It’s very nice. Here too, I don’t have a great feedback loop of like, is this impactful or is it resonating? And some people have written, which I’m very happy about. And one person wrote and said that they switched their donations over from something that they thought was less impactful over to GiveWell, which is a charity evaluator that looks at the best global health and development charities in the space and makes recommendations. So I was really happy about that. And another person joined the board of an effective organization, and that wasn’t on his radar. So that was also really nice to see. So yeah, I’ve been really encouraged to see people take the time to write and also implement the ideas.

Basti Schwiecker: Yeah, so yeah, please go and buy and read the book or contact Devon or HIP if you want to do better. So I will finalize this episode with two more, a little bit more personal questions. One is, you mentioned you’re originally from the United States, but your name, Devon Fritz, kind of gives it away. You have German ancestors and you’ve now been living in Germany for a couple of years and have children here. So yeah, you know both worlds kind of. So what do you think when it comes to doing good or especially when it comes to donating, what are the differences between Americans and Germans?

Devon Fritz: Yeah, so it’s a good question. I mean, there are a lot of similarities, obviously, between Germans and Americans. They’re not as far apart as I guess I would have envisioned before coming over here. Actually, now 12 years ago, so more than a couple of years. But yeah, there are some differences, too. And on the donation side of things, it’s true that Americans donate more than, I think, most, if not all, countries, percentage-wise, based on their salaries. So quite high. And Germany’s got some catching up to do. And I also think Germans feel, when I’ve talked to them back in my Founders Pledge days, they also feel like the state should be more of the arbiter of doing good in the world, whereas Americans I think are more happy to consider it like any other purchase, kind of that they’re buying something and it’s their money so they’re happy to do that. So I see a cultural difference there as well. But I think, yeah, if you think of it through the lens of, I have this money left over and I want to buy stuff with it, well, you could buy a phone with it. Even if you believe the government’s going to do the very best stuff out there, you could either make extra contributions to the government, like pay higher taxes, if you believe that. Or you could consider it like you have this disposable income. You could go on holiday with your family. You could buy a coffee at the coffee shop. Or you could donate to a charity you find is impactful. I don’t see that logic as necessarily in contradiction with one another. So yeah, I’d encourage Germans to donate more and to have fun with it. You can look and find organizations that are great. You can invest in startups that are just getting their foot in the door and trying a real new intervention. So it doesn’t have to be just the thing of like, ah, it’s a thing I should do. But there’s really cool opportunities out there.

Basti Schwiecker: Yeah. And if you want to know more about it, just contact us at Effektiv Spenden and we are very happy to talk and help you with deciding where to donate. Unfortunately, I have to agree with regards to the numbers. Germans think of themselves as very generous donors. I remember reading some news articles where we call ourselves Spendenweltmeister, like World Cup winner of donations. And that’s unfortunately not true, not even if you compare it to the US, but also to other European countries. So, yeah, I encourage all Germans to actually become the Spendenweltmeister. I mean, first, let’s become the soccer World Cup champion, but also afterwards become the world champion in donations. And my last question is about your new Substack. You start writing a blog. You’re a father also of two young children, and you start writing about being a dad, being a parent. still having impact and juggling these two. So how’s that going? How has being a dad affected your impact? Did you run the numbers?

Devon Fritz: Yeah, so I decided to write this because it comes up so often. So I meet a lot of different people interested in these ideas. And then when they find out I have kids, a lot of them don’t. They tend to be younger. They say, oh, what is that like? How did that affect you? They’re really struggling with the thought of wanting to do really good with their careers, but also having and raising a family. And they don’t know the answer. not that there’s an answer, and they don’t know many people that have children. So I’ve fielded this question so many times that I just have to write about my personal experience. I don’t know the statistics on it. I don’t intend to learn them. Probably there’s nothing out there even like this. But I’m just writing down my sort of n-of-one experience of what it’s like raising kids and how that’s affected me. And I think for me personally it’s been Yeah, I guess there are pros and cons. I feel like it’s definitely true that I have less time to work on ideas than I did previously. I used to be able to burn the midnight oil. Now I have to pick my kids up at the Kita at the daycare at 4 p.m. on most days. So that just puts a natural cut on my day. But on the other hand, I feel like I’ve skilled up in a lot of ways that make each minute that I am working more productive, because I need to be productive to make all of my ends meet in my life. And also kind of on the leadership skill side of things, I think I’ve gotten a big boost. So raising kids, you have to constantly lead them and teach them and show them. And if they get upset, control yourself emotionally and do the thing anyway. And this has been a real challenge, but a growth for me. And I feel like I’ve been able to bring that to bear in my work with managing direct reports or just dealing with other people more generally, because you just skill up in that way. So there’s been exciting different angles of what it’s meant to be a parent and how it’s affected my impact that I’m interested to explore in my Substack.

Basti Schwiecker: Yeah, and one thing I want to add, not to sound too negative, but dealing with toddlers, I mean, I have two children myself, dealing with toddlers can make work seem very relaxing. So there’s also that. All right, Devon, it was a pleasure to talk to you. As I mentioned, please, everyone, buy the book, read the book, contact High Impact Professionals, contact Devon, and do better. So thanks a lot, Devon.

Devon Fritz: Thanks so much. It’s been wonderful.