There is a lot of Fund Raising campaigns that work on the basis of helping with recent catastrophes, such as Cyclone Freddie ( npr news article ).
This feels like an inneficient way of making the most of our donations, given that
- Each individual is making the same decision of where best to donate their money.
- We get impacted by emotional appeals more than the impact of the donation.
- There is a huge coordination problem where strong campaigns such as the ones lead by the June 2017 Portugal wildfires lead to more money being donated than needed.
Better alternative
Donate a percentage of our monthly income to a group that maximises the impact of our donations. I believe this work is being done by Effective Altruism ( their homepage ).