You’ve probably heard the expression “money can’t buy happiness.” But take a look at the evidence, and you’ll discover an encouraging fact: Your money can buy happiness — for other people.

Not all efforts to improve people’s well-being are equally effective, though. The best charities out there create hundreds of times more happiness per dollar than others, according to new findings published this month by research center Happier Lives Institute in the 2025 World Happiness Report, which ranks countries by happiness each year.

That means that if you donate your money to the right charities, it can buy a lot of happiness for the world’s neediest people at a stunningly low cost. For example, just $25 can meaningfully boost somebody’s happiness for a year, if you give it to an effective organization like StrongMinds, which treats depression in African countries.

The Happier Lives Institute figured this out by comparing the impact of different charities using a single standardized metric: the well-being year, or Wellby. It’s pretty straightforward: Imagine that someone asked you, “Overall, how satisfied are you with your life nowadays, on a scale from 0 to 10?” Producing one Wellby for you would mean increasing your life satisfaction by one point for one year.

The Happier Lives Institute is UK-based, so, for comparison’s sake, it showed how some of the world’s most cost-effective charities stack up against a few charities in the UK (the last six in the chart). As you can see, money donated to the top charities in poorer countries can improve lives much........

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