Effective Altruists: look, we tried to invite nice people as well as the huge racists we knew were huge racists when we invited them. What? Exclude the racists? But they're so interesting!
Ok I've been giving $25 a month to Effectivealtruism.com for about 5 years now, and my understanding was they predominantly buy mosquito nets and give cash directly. Should I swap to a different charity?
it's literally these guys. MacAskill, who is splashed on the front page, goes on in his book about how much more important it is to think about 10^54 future computer emulations than mere tawdry actual existing people suffering now.
So you will probably want to look inside the box and look precisely where your donations go, if the organisation you're sending your money to has a public list up.
If you support mosquito nets, you can give to the mosquito net charity directly, cut out the overhead. Doctors Without Borders / Médecins Sans Frontières does good global development work if you don't mind giving to a huge organization that by necessity has higher overhead. Avoid the Red Cross and you should be fine.