Where did you donate this year?
We’ve read about donation opportunities, we’ve held the Donation Election, we’ve discussed why we donate. There’s only one thing left… actually donating.
When you’ve completed your donations for the year, leave a heart on the banner and a comment below!
Just shy of $120k, roughly double 2024; something like 40-45% of income. GWWC since 2018.
55% GiveWell, almost all to All Grants, in the shadow of USAID cuts.
25% to basic science (Science Foundation—nonprofit I helped start; ARCS; specific labs)
18% towards climate orgs (Fresh Energy, Silverlining, Clean Air Task Force, Carbon Mapper)
Remainder to Center for Arms Control & Nonproliferation and rounding errors.
Inspiring
Wow this is crazy cool, thanks so much for your generosity!
Very cool!
50% of my income for the 11th year to ALLFED.
Now that’s putting your money where your mouth is—Love it!
Thanks!
I donated to Charity Entrepreneurship! I think they have an incredibly high hit rate on a tight budget
Strongly agree, and I think early org funding can be far more valuable than later on, making sure that org exists and grows at all where it might not have otherwise.
Donated to The Life You Can Save’s Women and Girls Fund
In percentages of pretax salary:
* 15% GiveWell
* 3% AI Safety orgs
* 1% Lightcone
I mostly donated to democracy preservation work and did some political giving. And a little to the shrimp.
I allocated my 10% pledge as follows:
50% to Founders Pledge (Global Catastrophic Risks Fund)
20% to Animal Charity Evaluators (Movement Grants Program)
20% to GiveWell (All Grants Fund)
5% to GiveWell (Unrestricted Fund)
5% to Giving What We Can (Effective Giving Research & Advocacy)
I donated to AMF because it beat the Humane League in our club donation election :(
I’m curious, did you decide on the entire year’s worth of donations through an election? To me, donation elections can be a fun way to generate discussions around giving (I donated to the election fund here after all) but I would never let it decide on a significant part of my donations (let’s say 1% at most). If you want to outsource the day-to-day decision making on what charities to give to, then I believe funds are a much more effective tool for that than elections or lotteries.
:) sounds right to me. A couple factors here that might clear things up.
1) I probably want to donate to both GH and AW charities across my life, so I don’t think the results of this donation election counterfactually affected my lifetime donations much.
2) I’m a student and this donation was relatively small compared to future ones I expect to make.
Keen to hear more about how you guys ran the election and who won! (If you’ve got time to share).
I’m also a co-president at EA Purdue.
We had very brief intros for each charity and then a non-binding vote at the start, a short discussion on the vote, followed by an introduction to effective giving with a discussion in the middle. We then gave more info on each charity. Voting was done as: discussion, first round vote to eliminate one charity, discussion, final round of voting to choose winner.
Charities were AMF, GiveDirectly, and the Humane League. The slides were a modified version of GWWC’s donation election presentation so the initial vote also included the Play Pumps fake out.
So cool!
What an awesome exercise!
Shrimp Welfare Project, charities working on insect farming for feed, among others. Currently quite uncertain about the impact of this and may give the remainder of my donation budget to research.
In descending order of amount I have donated to @CEEALAR , the Givewell All Grants Fund (my preferred “default” place to put donations), and the Humane League (something I feel obligated to do as a condition of being vegetarian rather than vegan). The largest donation was basically bankrolling the effective giving organiser retreat I am running at CEEALAR: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/events/HfeSKe7Ekmm9uddLh/effective-giving-organiser-retreat (which still has sign up space, by the way!)
I have also made a few non-effective donations to friends, to organisations I used the services of, or local places I volunteered for and want to see succeed, which are not in my pledge.
I donated to (i) ARMoR (https://www.armoramr.org/), because I am convinced about the quality of their cost estimates and believe targeted policy interventions can be fairly tractable; (ii) and also to the Global Health Fund from Ayuda Efectiva (https://ayudaefectiva.org/fondo-salud-global), in part to encourage others to donate.
Happier Lives Institute, since I have volunteered for them since 2019 and that their work is great. Cool Earth, who I collaborated with last year, and I think basic income for nature and climate is an awesome idea. Giving What We Can, because of their multiplier effect. GiveDirectly, since they won the donation election I had with my public health students and I promised to donate from my own money to the charity of their choice (and I think GiveDirectly is a great organization).
Clusterbusters, because torturous pain belongs to the past (especially if it can be easily prevented).
Lightcone and Alex Bores (so far)
Edit: to say a tiny bit more, LessWrong seems instrumentally good and important and rationality is a positive influence on EA. Lightcone doesn’t have the vibes of “best charity” to me, but when I imagine my ideal funding distribution it is the immediate example of “most underfunded org” that comes to mind. Obviously related to Coefficient not supporting rationality community building anymore. Remember, we are donating on the margin, and approximately the margin created by Coefficient Giving!
AMF (1:1 matched through EANZ on top of usual tax advantages), ALLFED and a couple curries to a CB
FarmKind, Anima International, THL UK, SWP, FWI, ACE, RP, The Centre for Feed Innovation, Scale Welfare, Arthropoda, Indonesian Cage-Free Association, Across Species Project Indonesia
UK political animal welfare work
MIRI, CAIS policy fund, shrimp welfare, FarmKind
Mostly to various projects on AI risk policy and communications, and a smaller portion to GiveWell’s recommended charities
EA Animal Welfare Fund
Helen Keller Europe, Mieux Donner, Against Malaria
EA animal welfare fund
Long term future fund
Community building
EA animal welfare fund
www.bureauburgerberaad.nl
Bloggers for Shrimp!
GivingDirectly & StrongMinds <3
EA animal welfare funds, GiveWell all grants fund, and some small, time-sensitive AI safety opportunities, in roughly that order. I’m grateful I get to donate!
Giving What We Can across their Global Health and Wellbeing fund, Effective Animal Advocacy fund and Effective Giving Research & Advocacy fund, and to Rainforest Trust UK.
GiveWell
GiveWell (all grants), GiveDirectly, Malaria Consortium. Pretty small amount in total because I’m a student, but feels good to be getting started a bit!
Centre for Wild Animal Welfare (and the EA Animal Welfare Fund earlier this year)
Forethought
To the 3 main GWWC funds, GiveDirectly, Lightcone, EA, Wikipedia.
Mostly to Ellis Impact and a little bit to EA Estonia to run their donation plattform Anneta Targalt
politics, Give Directly, and GiveWell
Center on Long-Term Risk, Rethink Priorities, Fish Welfare Initiative, EA Infrastructure Fund