Episode Details

TL;DR: I'm releasing a website that ranks philanthropists according to EA principles and research, and allows users to re-rank the list using their own assumptions. I'd like feedback and help making it better. I'd especially like ideas for how to make the results more trustworthy. Funding may be available.

I recently built Impact List (impactlist.xyz), a site which ranks people by their positive impact via donations.

The goal is to make the list popular enough that people care about their ranking on it, so that it influences their decisions about where and how much to donate. A secondary goal is influencing people (whether or not they appear on the list) by making them more aware of the large differences in the cost to save a life depending on where money is donated.

The site uses QALYs as the common currency of value, but this doesn't mean it's limited to considering only effects on health/lifespan. The goal is to consider effects of any type and convert them to human-QALY-equivalents.

I wrote more about the motivation and theory of this project four years ago in this post.

What Impact List is

The core of the site is a ranking [...]

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Outline:

(01:20) What Impact List is

(03:52) What I'd like help with

(04:02) Improving the process of effectiveness estimation

(05:40) Improving the individual effectiveness estimates

(06:27) Making the site more usable and beautiful

(06:42) Getting notable people and organizations to publish their own worldviews

(07:15) Go-to-market advice

(07:42) Suggestions for high-impact people currently not on the list

(08:00) Improvements to the underlying data model and estimation framework

(08:19) Funding may be available

(08:34) Getting involved

(09:06) Appendix A: How effectiveness is modeled

(12:10) Appendix B: Current limitations and uncertainties

The original text contained 1 footnote which was omitted from this narration.

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First published:
July 22nd, 2026

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/TKjc6J3qajfqb34NW/introducing-impact-list-a-ranking-of-philanthropists-by

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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