I’m pleased to see the update on GWWC recommendations; it was perturbing to have such different messages being communicated in different channels.
However I’m really disappointed to hear the Giving What We Can trust will disappear—not least because it means I no longer have a means to leave a legacy to effective charities in my will (which I’ll now need to change). Previously the GWWC trust meant I had a means of leaving money, hedging against changes in the landscape of what’s effective, run by an org whose philosophy I agree with and whose decisions I had a good track record of trusting. EA funds requires I either specify organisations (which I can do myself in a will, but might not be the best picks at a relevant time), or trust a single individual in whom I don’t have the same confidence. Also if a legacy is likely to be a substantial amount of money I am more risk averse about where it goes.
We’re sorry that our communication on this has not been clear enough. We were waiting on some technical details so that we could infor Trust users of the exact changes and what they needed to do in advance but now I’ll communicate what we can today while Larissa Hesketh-Rowe is also going to email Giving What We Can members to make sure everyone is included.
In terms of the Trust we are moving all of the functionality the Trust had over to EA Funds which we believe will ultimately be a much better platform both for users and for us in terms of managing the administration.
You can leave a legacy in a similar way via EA Funds; as you mentioned you can allocate it to the Funds or to specific charities. However, you can also allocate it to GiveWell’s recommended charities as they stand at the time of granting your bequest. In practice this should be similar to how bequests were made to the Trust—keeping the Giving What We Can Trust running would still mean using GiveWell’s recommendation as Giving What We Can no longer conduct our own research. In our update to members at the end of July we explained that the restructure with CEA meant that while we would continue to run the core aspects of Giving What We Can like the pledge we felt that our research was not offering sufficient value over and above GiveWell’s and that we would therefore move to making our list of recommended charities follow GiveWell’s recommendations. We are still establishing what the Trust’s options are for handling and transferring bequests, to see whether it is necessary to ask donors to change their wills, or whether we can transfer them, along with their instructions and allocations, to CEA. We’ll look to communicate this as soon as we have more information.
It seems we’ve not communicated these changes clearly enough to members and so we’ll be seeking to address this over the next couple of weeks. Do please post any other questions you have or clarifications you’d like as we can use that to help inform what else we email to members.
I’m pleased to see the update on GWWC recommendations; it was perturbing to have such different messages being communicated in different channels.
However I’m really disappointed to hear the Giving What We Can trust will disappear—not least because it means I no longer have a means to leave a legacy to effective charities in my will (which I’ll now need to change). Previously the GWWC trust meant I had a means of leaving money, hedging against changes in the landscape of what’s effective, run by an org whose philosophy I agree with and whose decisions I had a good track record of trusting. EA funds requires I either specify organisations (which I can do myself in a will, but might not be the best picks at a relevant time), or trust a single individual in whom I don’t have the same confidence. Also if a legacy is likely to be a substantial amount of money I am more risk averse about where it goes.
Hi Bernadette,
We’re sorry that our communication on this has not been clear enough. We were waiting on some technical details so that we could infor Trust users of the exact changes and what they needed to do in advance but now I’ll communicate what we can today while Larissa Hesketh-Rowe is also going to email Giving What We Can members to make sure everyone is included.
In terms of the Trust we are moving all of the functionality the Trust had over to EA Funds which we believe will ultimately be a much better platform both for users and for us in terms of managing the administration.
You can leave a legacy in a similar way via EA Funds; as you mentioned you can allocate it to the Funds or to specific charities. However, you can also allocate it to GiveWell’s recommended charities as they stand at the time of granting your bequest. In practice this should be similar to how bequests were made to the Trust—keeping the Giving What We Can Trust running would still mean using GiveWell’s recommendation as Giving What We Can no longer conduct our own research. In our update to members at the end of July we explained that the restructure with CEA meant that while we would continue to run the core aspects of Giving What We Can like the pledge we felt that our research was not offering sufficient value over and above GiveWell’s and that we would therefore move to making our list of recommended charities follow GiveWell’s recommendations. We are still establishing what the Trust’s options are for handling and transferring bequests, to see whether it is necessary to ask donors to change their wills, or whether we can transfer them, along with their instructions and allocations, to CEA. We’ll look to communicate this as soon as we have more information.
It seems we’ve not communicated these changes clearly enough to members and so we’ll be seeking to address this over the next couple of weeks. Do please post any other questions you have or clarifications you’d like as we can use that to help inform what else we email to members.
Best wishes, Alison