My method for "earning to give" was to push my career and learning as quickly as possible so that I always have a way to fallback if things go south. It worked pretty well, and I got to take the past six months off to work on some really fun and potentially impactful civics-oriented projects.

Well, things kinda went south, and if things go well I'll be back in the job fold in the next month. The break wasn't as as long I was hoping, but it was a great chance to learn some amazing things around civics, data and security. Hopefully the six months will make any future 'good' work take a LOT less energy.

I highly recommend others do it. You don't need huge amounts of income or massive amounts of stored cash to do it.