Hi everyone, happy birthday to me?

I've seen a few birthday fundraisers pop up this year and it seems a lovely idea to use the occasion to squeeze some money out of friends and family to try to do a little good, so I'm copying it. This is delightfully lazy compared to running a marathon or all that other stuff those try-hard fundraisers do, but I hope I've made up in part by putting in the research time, which I know for me at least, is usually the biggest blocker to making any charity donation.

Anyway it would be great if you can chip in whatever you can to this, whether £5 or £20, anything you do will put a smile on my face. £200k will have me laughing as I stand outside your house watching it be repossessed.

Blurb about the charity to follow, but in brief, I picked this charity from a dozen or so strong contenders based on several factors. They conduct research and make policy recommendations to help tackle global poverty, providing evidence-backed guidance on implementing the most important improvements and scaling them up. They take on a wide scope, but I feel that is necessary, after all, higher incomes come from education, which relies on health, and so on.

They also, unlike most of my other preferred options, have an option for fundraisers which allows Gift Aid in the UK - so get your tax thrown in too!

For their work so far, they have attracted approval/grants from www.thelifeyoucansave.org, www.effectivealtruism.org and www.givewell.org (they aren't listed as one of GiveWell's current top charities, but their research has spawned other charities which are).

With hundreds of billions of pounds going to charities every year (well, dollars - the US public dominates in donations), a donation to the research that informs approaches to tackling the biggest current issue feels to me like something of a multiplier effect on the rest.

tldr: I like optimisation problems. They take my mind off all the human suffering.

Here's their blurb. With grammar corrections.

Innovations for Poverty Action is a research and policy non-profit that discovers and promotes effective solutions to global poverty problems. IPA brings together researchers and decision-makers to design, rigorously test, and refine these solutions and their applications, ensuring that the evidence created is used to improve the lives of the worlds poor. For recurring donations please donate via 'The Life You Can Save' putting 'IPA' as a reference in the message: https://www.justgiving.com/thelifeyoucansave

You can support IPA's work by donating to The Life You Can Save UK, part of the Prism Gift Fund. Prism performs the due diligence to ensure that IPA is eligible to receive grants from TLYCS UK and charges a modest fee (more than offset by Gift Aid benefits) for this purpose. Learn more here: https://www.thelifeyoucansave.org/about-us/tlycs-uk