I didn't say anything about trying to maximise your investment. I strongly suspect that the people behind Endaga, for example, could get more money by operating in a more conventional business environment. Entrepreneurship in the third world is emphatically not thoroughly picked over, but it is just not as profitable as selling to rich Americans. If you are willing to pay that opportunity cost, you can have a big effect.
Secondly, effective altruism is a result, not a process. If the most effective way of helping the world is to give nothing to charity and set up businesses instead, then effective altruism would say set up the businesses. I am precisely questioning the assumption that effective altruism == charitable giving.
You might try reading up on microfinance, it seems like it's in the same reference class as your idea. Givewell writes about it here (and other places).
If I want to invest in companies being started in Africa, I'm going to have to do one of two things: make investments myself or give my money to someone else to invest it for me. If I make investments myself, I'll either do it remotely (which seems like a bad way to get to know investment opportunities, do due diligence, etc.) or travel to Africa and effectively work as an angel investor myself. Giving t...
I'd like to hear from people about a process they use to decide how much to give to charity. Personally, I have very high income, and while we donate significant money in absolute terms, in relative terms the amount is <1% of our post-tax income. It seems to me that it's too little, but I have no moral intuition as to what the right amount is.
I have a good intuition on how to allocate the money, so that's not a problem.
Background: I have a wife and two kids, one with significant health issues (i.e. medical bills - possibly for life), most money we spend goes to private school tuition x 2, the above mentioned medical bills, mortgage, and miscellaneous life expenses. And we max out retirement savings.
If you have some sort of quantitative system where you figure out how much to spend on charity, please share. If you just use vague feelings, and you think there can be no reasonable quantitative system, please tell me that as well.
Update: as suggested in the comments, I'll make it more explicit: please also share how you determine how much to give.