''LARGE OF HEART, SMALL OF POCKET''

Conventional wisdom holds that you should focus your charitable giving on one or two causes. Allison Schrager's wisdom holds that you should give as widely as you like, subject to the usual due diligence ....

A couple of weeks ago when I was writing about giving to schools, I explained why I thought it better to give $100 to each of three schools that I attended, rather than $300 to only one. My thanks to "Josh" for a well-reasoned comment citing arguments that it was "better to give to
one cause vs. multiple ones". Yes indeed, you are usually advised to concentrate your charitable giving, just as you are usually advised to diversify your investment portfolio. But accepted wisdom is there to be overturned, in altruism as in anything else.

A few years ago Steven Landsburg wrote a mathematical
proof showing that to maximise your giving utility (to get the most for your money, we might say), the optimal strategy was to give to one or very few charities.......