---
client: 80000_hours
project_id: articles
narrator: pw
qa: mds
narrator_time: 3h00m
qa_time: 0h45m
---
Lots of people say they want to “make a difference,” “do good,” “have a social impact,” or “make the world a better place” — but they rarely say what they mean by those terms.
By clarifying your definition, you can better target your efforts, and make a difference more effectively.
But how should you define social impact?
Thousands of years of philosophy have gone into that question. We’re going to try to sum up that thinking; introduce a practical, rough-and-ready definition of social impact; and explain why we think it’s a good definition to focus on.
This is a bit ambitious for one article, so to the philosophers in the audience, please forgive the enormous simplifications. We hope the usefulness of the definition will make up for it.

Original article:
https://80000hours.org/articles/what-is-social-impact-definition/

Narrated for 80,000 Hours by TYPE III AUDIO.

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