I’d be curious to hear your opinion on One for the World’s 1% pledge, key features of which are:
Aimed at people likely to be high-income in future (students and young professionals in Business, Finance, Law) rather than people who want to donate a significant amount of their income.
Relatively low percentage requirement (1%, options like 3% or 5% are possible with button click).
Sign up now, start paying at defined point in future (e.g. when you graduate and start work).
Pledge money automatically collected each month rather than requiring further actions to fulfill pledge.
Pledge money sent to GiveWell’s Top Charities rather than encouragement to choose your own giving.
You receive a few (not too many) motivational emails with how many people you’ve helped so far.
Generally, they’re taking the idea of a 1% pledge, and optimising it for retention in the context of personal inertia. This is explicitly the other direction from what the Trial Pledge is doing, and what you propose. And it seems to be working quite well, insofar as they have a fast-growing high-retention cohort of people giving 1% (or more) of incomes that are substantial.
Long-term commitments can fade over time, so periodic recommitment could help by creating moments of reflection and renewed motivation. In that sense, successive time-bound pledges might be more effective than an open-ended pledge that is very similar to a recurring donation membership at a charity.
OFTW directs donations to a curated set of charities focused on global poverty. That reduces decision complexity, but it also means pledgers have less agency and cannot support other cause areas.
The 1% framing lowers the barrier substantially but, as you note, may not resonate as strongly with people who want to give very ambitiously, which I think is closer to the audience GWWC wants to reach.
Overall though, for the goals they are pursuing and the people they are trying to reach, their framing seems very sensible to me.
I’d be curious to hear your opinion on One for the World’s 1% pledge, key features of which are:
Aimed at people likely to be high-income in future (students and young professionals in Business, Finance, Law) rather than people who want to donate a significant amount of their income.
Relatively low percentage requirement (1%, options like 3% or 5% are possible with button click).
Sign up now, start paying at defined point in future (e.g. when you graduate and start work).
Pledge money automatically collected each month rather than requiring further actions to fulfill pledge.
Pledge money sent to GiveWell’s Top Charities rather than encouragement to choose your own giving.
You receive a few (not too many) motivational emails with how many people you’ve helped so far.
Generally, they’re taking the idea of a 1% pledge, and optimising it for retention in the context of personal inertia. This is explicitly the other direction from what the Trial Pledge is doing, and what you propose. And it seems to be working quite well, insofar as they have a fast-growing high-retention cohort of people giving 1% (or more) of incomes that are substantial.
Good question, thanks for bringing this up!
A few thoughts come to mind:
Long-term commitments can fade over time, so periodic recommitment could help by creating moments of reflection and renewed motivation. In that sense, successive time-bound pledges might be more effective than an open-ended pledge that is very similar to a recurring donation membership at a charity.
OFTW directs donations to a curated set of charities focused on global poverty. That reduces decision complexity, but it also means pledgers have less agency and cannot support other cause areas.
The 1% framing lowers the barrier substantially but, as you note, may not resonate as strongly with people who want to give very ambitiously, which I think is closer to the audience GWWC wants to reach.
Overall though, for the goals they are pursuing and the people they are trying to reach, their framing seems very sensible to me.