Our discussion of the inherent symbolic power of doing good and being seen and widely acknowledged as a good person because you do things for charity demonstrates intangible power relations that shape the world around us and require sustained theoretical analysis. We have seen how the act of fundraising can manipulate the symbolic power of charity to bounce people into giving donations to certain causes; we have seen how young people struggle to negotiate the symbolic power of charity online, witnessing both their friends take advantage of their good deeds to present themselves one way, and how individuals themselves are wary about how their own charity may look to others and be misinterpreted, suffering context collapse. We have seen how the position of charities in society as bodies we once automatically saw as right and just, giving them sway in terms of lobbying, are seeing their position as experts come under threat, and their opportunity to take advantage of symbolic power diminishing because of both sector scandals and a general social malaise, alongside growing distrust of mega-philanthropy. We have seen how the symbolic power of charity leaders was instrumental in the collapse of the Kids Company, as the right motivations became impossible to say no to, and passion becomes a cover for bad practice. And we have seen how a yearly outrage over an otherwise respectful fundraising symbol in the poppy demonstrates how the power of charity becomes weaponised, erupting with a quasinationalistic demand for enforced participation.

What this shorter penultimate chapter wants to do is introduce an alternative way of thinking about charity – the effective altruism movement – and explore how its proponents deal with the concept of the symbolic power of doing good, when that movement's central desire is for us to see past the symbolic power of charity, to be able to ignore it, so we can throw off the shackles of clumsy emotion, and really focus on putting charity to work, for as much good as it can muster.

Effective altruism has at its core a simple idea, which is that when doing good we have a duty to do ‘the most good we can’ (Singer, 2015: vii).