What are GWWCâs plans for funding itself over the next five years ? E.g. How much do you aim to diversify from OP (how much comes from them currently), and what challenges have you found in trying to fundraise for internal ops (if any)?
Open Philanthropyâs Effective Altruism Community Growth (Global Health and Wellbeing) program is currently our largest source of funding. Their policy is to fund no more than 50% of the budget for an organisation of our profile (and we also do not want a single funder to be such a large portion of our funding). That leaves us with roughly ~ÂŁ2.4m to raise between now and December to reach our target runway through to March 2025 (with our current budget which includes various international programs also).
We have a small number of other donors who have generously provided us operational funding in donation greater than $10k USD. We also have about $1.2k of monthly recurring donations to our operations from smaller donors.
Ultimately weâd like to be funded directly by enough small and large donors that we do not need to seek as much institutional funding but can still pursue our plans and reach our impact goals.
However, there is a tension here. We want to be very careful about how we fundraise for our operations from most donors as we donât want to undermine our relationship with donors and be seen as too self-recommending. Not only could this be bad for us but we think this could be bad for the wider community if itâs done in a way that undermines trust.
Weâre currently exploring the option of including an opt-in for donors to support our operations when making a donation which (if done well) would likely increase the amount of baseline support from regular donors and also signal to larger donors that we do in fact need the funding.
Weâd like to do a better job with working with larger donors on fundraising for high-impact projects and hope that in doing so they may also see the value of our work and offer to support it.
Weâd be excited to see more worldview diverse meta funders as it is harder for worldview diverse meta organisations that are as closely tied to EA to find other institutional funders than it is for cause or worldview specific organisations.
Some of the other difficulties we face when finding operational funding include:
We are explicitly worldview diverse, so while we have a high donation multiplier many funders might discount a lot of the impact that doesnât match their worldview.
We are focused on fundraising for our supported charities and funds (and also just encouraging people to give effectively even if itâs not something weâve vetted).
We work hard to avoid conflicts of interest (and have turned down funding and being recommended for this reason).
GWWC is often seen as a large and established EA organisation given its history at the start of the movement so âsurely itâs well-funded and has good relationships with donors?â. However, GWWC was essentially on ice from 2017-2020 and most relationships with donors ended up drying up or moving elsewhere during that time. Since 2020 weâve grown a lot (including taking on a lot of costs to support the donation platform formerly run by EA Funds) and are working to grow effective giving internationally and increase our research capacity both of which requires upfront funding that takes years to pay off.
There has been general anxiety around EA and EV (our parent charity) following the FTX collapse which has been a barrier for some funders that we know about (and probably others who havenât told us).
If anyone would like to support our work, you can do so here and Iâd be more than happy to chat on a call or respond to questions here on by email (luke at givingwhatwecan.org).
What are GWWCâs plans for funding itself over the next five years ? E.g. How much do you aim to diversify from OP (how much comes from them currently), and what challenges have you found in trying to fundraise for internal ops (if any)?
Thanks Vaidehi!
Open Philanthropyâs Effective Altruism Community Growth (Global Health and Wellbeing) program is currently our largest source of funding. Their policy is to fund no more than 50% of the budget for an organisation of our profile (and we also do not want a single funder to be such a large portion of our funding). That leaves us with roughly ~ÂŁ2.4m to raise between now and December to reach our target runway through to March 2025 (with our current budget which includes various international programs also).
We have a small number of other donors who have generously provided us operational funding in donation greater than $10k USD. We also have about $1.2k of monthly recurring donations to our operations from smaller donors.
Ultimately weâd like to be funded directly by enough small and large donors that we do not need to seek as much institutional funding but can still pursue our plans and reach our impact goals.
However, there is a tension here. We want to be very careful about how we fundraise for our operations from most donors as we donât want to undermine our relationship with donors and be seen as too self-recommending. Not only could this be bad for us but we think this could be bad for the wider community if itâs done in a way that undermines trust.
Weâre currently exploring the option of including an opt-in for donors to support our operations when making a donation which (if done well) would likely increase the amount of baseline support from regular donors and also signal to larger donors that we do in fact need the funding.
Weâd like to do a better job with working with larger donors on fundraising for high-impact projects and hope that in doing so they may also see the value of our work and offer to support it.
Weâd be excited to see more worldview diverse meta funders as it is harder for worldview diverse meta organisations that are as closely tied to EA to find other institutional funders than it is for cause or worldview specific organisations.
Some of the other difficulties we face when finding operational funding include:
We are explicitly worldview diverse, so while we have a high donation multiplier many funders might discount a lot of the impact that doesnât match their worldview.
We are focused on fundraising for our supported charities and funds (and also just encouraging people to give effectively even if itâs not something weâve vetted).
We work hard to avoid conflicts of interest (and have turned down funding and being recommended for this reason).
GWWC is often seen as a large and established EA organisation given its history at the start of the movement so âsurely itâs well-funded and has good relationships with donors?â. However, GWWC was essentially on ice from 2017-2020 and most relationships with donors ended up drying up or moving elsewhere during that time. Since 2020 weâve grown a lot (including taking on a lot of costs to support the donation platform formerly run by EA Funds) and are working to grow effective giving internationally and increase our research capacity both of which requires upfront funding that takes years to pay off.
There has been general anxiety around EA and EV (our parent charity) following the FTX collapse which has been a barrier for some funders that we know about (and probably others who havenât told us).
If anyone would like to support our work, you can do so here and Iâd be more than happy to chat on a call or respond to questions here on by email (luke at givingwhatwecan.org).