Updates on the effective giving ecosystem (MCF 2025 memo)
Written by Lucas Moore (Partnerships Manager) and Sjir Hoeijmakers (CEO), Giving What We Can for the Meta Coordination Forum 2025.
This memo provides updates on and a high-level overview of the effective giving landscape as of mid-2025, adapted from an earlier memo for Effective Giving Summit in June 2025. It is based largely on information gathered through our 2025 EG ecosystem pulse survey and builds on the memos we wrote for the MCF last year: 1, 2, 3, 4. Please leave a comment if you’d like us to clarify anything further. All figures are in USD.
Background
The effective giving ecosystem features an interdependent network of over 60 organisations trying to direct philanthropic resources to where they can do the most good, inspired by effective altruism principles and concepts such as cost-effectiveness, cause prioritisation and counterfactuality.
Within this ecosystem, there are organisations identifying high-impact philanthropic opportunities (evaluators) and organisations fundraising for them (fundraisers). Many organisations are both evaluators and fundraisers.
Key updates
The entire EG ecosystem grew by ~10% between 2023 and 2024, from ~1.1B to ~1.2B money moved
Mainly driven by the growth of Founders Pledge and Navigation Fund getting up and running
Significant growth for Founders Pledge: 25M money moved in 2022 → 80M in 2023 → 140M in 2024
Navigation Fund emerging as a major funder (moving 10-100M per year)
Overall money moved is still largely dependent on Open Philanthropy (~650M) and GiveWell (~240M), but getting less so every year
Excluding Open Philanthropy the EG ecosystem grew by ~20% from ~400M to ~500M
Excluding Open Philanthropy and GiveWell the EG ecosystem grew by ~50% from ~200M to ~300M
There is now an example of all four main fundraising strategies surpassing the 10M threshold
Broad direct e.g. The Life You Can Save (17M money moved in 2024)
Broad pledge e.g. Giving What We Can (40M)
(U)HNW direct e.g. Longview Philanthropy (>50M)
(U)HNW pledge e.g. Founders Pledge (140M)
The national fundraising model was further validated by significant growth in examples below but it is unclear if this model can continue achieving high growth rates beyond a certain level of market penetration[1] (which Effektiv Spenden (DACH) may have hit a few years ago at ~20-25M money moved)
Doneer Effectief (Netherlands): 2.7M in 2023 → 6.3M in 2024
Ge Effektivt (Sweden): 650k in 2023 → 1.3M in 2024
Ayuda Efectiva (Spain): 1M in 2023 → 1.3M in 2024
Various organisations launched pledge partnerships with GWWC, with a few showing significant early traction:
Effektiv Spenden (DACH): 34 🔸10% Pledges and 14 🔹Trial Pledges
Animal Advocacy Careers: 23 🔸10% Pledges and 43 🔹Trial Pledges
High-Impact Professionals: 21 🔸10% Pledges and 53 🔹Trial Pledges
There are still many small organisations <1M which could (hopefully) break through to >1M in the next few years
Ambitious Impact’s incubated EG orgs not yet reaching the >1M mark; 2025 will show if they can scale like Effektiv Spenden (DACH) and Doneer Effectief (Netherlands)
For context, Effektiv Spenden (DACH), Doneer Effectief (Netherlands), and Effective Altruism Australia each took two giving seasons to get to 1M annually (others usually took longer)
Many other organisations remained stable or showed slow, steady growth in 2024.
GWWC published a new round of evaluations of evaluators and based on the results currently relies on:
the following (re-)evaluations are planned for 2025:
Following the 2024 Meta Coordination Forum, we (GWWC) began to explore whether there’s some value in (someone) building a community for those in the “earning to give” space (see this memo on “earning to give”). However, we subsequently discontinued this investigation in order to focus our attention on our new strategy.
Our initial announcement that we were scoping an EtG project was positively received by the EA community
~35 people indicated interest in being involved in this by joining an EtG Pledge Club we set up. However, we did not end up doing any work to understand whether any of these individuals are aspiring, current, or past EtGers or what they hoped would come from the initiative
We came across some work being done to spin up EtG meetups in key locations, and learned that the hardest part of doing this is finding the people who might be interested
CEA have indicated to us that they might be interested in filling this gap directly or indirectly (see their recent strategy post on diversifying EA funding)
USAID funding cuts
In January 2025, the US government froze large swathes of its ~75B annual foreign‑assistance budget, including the ~15B dedicated to global health, issuing stop‑work orders, halting payments, terminating projects and laying off staff. While the long-term effects remain unclear and exact numbers remain hard to find, Givewell researchers recently forecast a potential 50% cut in US global health funding and a 35% reduction in overall global health funding. (See this overview of the current situation from GiveWell)
Ultra Philanthropy published this overview of cost-effective funding opportunities following the USAID freeze and keeps it regularly updated
Founders Pledge and The Life You Can Save partnered to set up a Rapid Response Fund to fill time-sensitive funding gaps created by the suspension of US foreign aid. Now closed and replaced by the Catalytic Impact Fund (CIF) at Founders Pledge
Overview of the ecosystem
Database of organisations (evaluators and fundraisers)
>60 effective giving orgs/projects, many of which were launched in the past few years
Most organisations and projects are small (<5 FTE); the largest ones in terms of headcount are Open Philanthropy, GiveWell and Founders Pledge (all >50 FTE)
Database of publicly accessible evaluators
The public-facing impact-focused charity evaluation and grantmaking field is still (very) small: there are only 9 organisations with at least 3 FTE staff dedicated to evaluation and/or grantmaking: Open Philanthropy, GiveWell, Founders Pledge, Effective Altruism Funds, Animal Charity Evaluators, Longview Philanthropy, Navigation Fund, Giving Green, and Happier Lives Institute
There is no impact-focused charity evaluator for meta charities (i.e. charitable projects working one level removed from direct impact), pandemics, or AI risks apart from Founders Pledge currently; there are a few grantmakers in those spaces though (Open Philanthropy, Navigation Fund, Macrosopic Ventures, Longview Philanthropy, Effective Altruism Funds, Sentinel Bio, etc.)
Effective Giving Global Coordination and Incubation
In May 2023 Giving What We Can hired Luke Moore to focus on supporting coordination and collaboration in the global EG ecosystem, including by organising the annual Effective Giving Summit (an MCF-like gathering for effective giving organisations)
Following Giving What We Can’s 2025 org-wide strategy, we’ve decided to continue supporting the effective giving ecosystem at 0.5 FTE and focus on the highest-value projects we’ve identified so far (incl. the EG Summit)
How much money is moved to high-impact destinations[2]
~3 organisations moved >100M (up from 2 in 2023)
>500M: Open Philanthropy
>100M: GiveWell, Founders Pledge
~10 organisations moved >10M in 2024 (up from ~7 in 2023)
>100M: ^ see above ^
>30M: Longview Philanthropy, Survival and Flourishing Fund, Giving What We Can, Macrosopic Ventures
>10M: Navigation Fund, Effektiv Spenden (DACH), The Life You Can Save, Giving Green (through Giving What We Can’s donation infrastructure)
~22 organisations moved >1M in 2024 (up from ~17 in 2023)
8 grantmakers
3 public impact-focused evaluators
Giving Green (through Giving What We Can’s donation infrastructure) (>10M as of 2024)
7 national fundraising organisations
Effektiv Spenden (DACH)
Doneer Effectief (Netherlands)
Gi Effektivt (Norway)
RC Forward (Canada)
Ge Effektivt (Sweden) (>1M as of 2024)
Ayuda Efectiva (Spain) (>1M as of 2024)
3 (U)HNW-focused organisations
Farmed Animal Funders (>1M as of 2024)
3 global/broad focused organisations
For 2 organisations (Astralis Foundation and Generation Pledge) we don’t currently have a good sense of how much money they are (approximately) moving.
Where money goes
Our current best guess estimate is that the money moved by the entire EG ecosystem went to the following cause areas:
~50% to global health
~20% to global catastrophic risk reduction
~10% to meta charities
~7% to animal welfare
~6% to climate change mitigation
(the rest is unknown or a bit harder to categorise: ~7%)
Open Philanthropy and GiveWell dominate the effective giving space (~80% of money moved), and their cause area distribution may not reflect the (future) distribution of donors in the broad EG community as it grows
In 2024 Open Philanthropy moved ~40% to global health, ~20% to global catastrophic risk reduction, ~20% to meta charities, ~10% to animal welfare (the rest is a bit harder to categorise)
In 2024 GiveWell moved 100% to global health
Our current best guess estimate (excluding Open Philanthropy):
~60% to global health
~20% to global catastrophic risk reduction
~10% to climate change mitigation
~2% to animal welfare
(the rest is unknown or a bit harder to categorise: ~8%)
Our current best guess estimate (excluding Open Philanthropy and GiveWell):
~40% to global health
~30% to global catastrophic risk reduction
~15% to climate change mitigation
~4% to animal welfare
(the rest is unknown or a bit harder to categorise: ~11%)
Where operational funding comes from
Open Philanthropy is the largest single funder of meta charities with a budget of ~7M for effective giving organisations (e.g. fundraisers and charity evaluators), but has a strong preference for funding no more than 50% of an organisation’s budget and looks for a minimum counterfactual and grant quality adjusted ROI of >2x (but often more like >5x)
Meta Charity Funding Circle is a key funding entity for smaller / early-stage meta charities. These funders are most interested in applications not already substantially supported by the Effective Altruism Infrastructure Fund or Open Philanthropy. See this overview of what they look for in applications
Effective Altruism Infrastructure Fund is primarily focused on funding projects which spread the idea of giving effectively and encouraging impartial consideration of where donations can do the most good and thus have a preference for projects raising money for multiple core effective altruism causes rather than those raising for only one cause area
Founders Pledge are open to requests from EG organisations with a counterfactual and grant quality adjusted multiplier of 2-3x. They typically make grants of 50–300k
Beyond these grantmaking institutions many meta charities in the effective giving ecosystem are supported by various (U)HNW donors in their networks, as well as smaller donors. Many platform-based organisations that raise money on behalf of high-impact nonprofits cover some portion of their operational expenses through some sort of tipping mechanism at donor check-out, as well as by collecting interest on donations they hold temporarily before disbursement
- ^
This might also be about finding new markets. Some of the existing orgs seem to have saturated the niche they’ve focused on, but could perhaps still appeal to other audiences in their country.
- ^
For the purposes of this overview, “money moved to high-impact destinations” refers to funds donated directly to an organisation’s accounts by a donor, with a high-impact destination (i.e. one recommended or granted to by an impact-focused evaluator). Some organisations also move money to destinations not considered high-impact, but these funds are not included for our purposes e.g. in 2024 Founders Pledge moved a total of 222M, but only 140M is considered high-impact.
Was there any reason for omitting Macroscopic Ventures? They give on the order of 30M/per year
None at all, I have tried to contact them previously for this information, but would appreciate an introduction if you (or anyone else) can put me in touch with someone from their team?
Hi Luke,
Sorry, it seems that we haven’t received your email (where did you send it, btw?). As stated on our website, we planned to give around $30m this year (though by now it seems that we may end up closer to $40m). We’re currently considering our strategy and the available opportunities and may give substantially more (possibly >$100m/year) in the coming years.
I don’t know anyone there but the 30M figure came from their website https://macroscopic.org/grants
To what extent would it make sense to consider the work by the Gates Foundation part of the effective giving ecosystem? I would argue that they are very effective, too, even if they have no association with effective altruism.
Agree that they are focused on effectiveness and ss an ecosystem, we are increasingly building connections with the Gates Foundation. However, currently do not have enough information to be able to make a good conclusion regarding how much of their grantmaking is high-impact.
Hopefully at some point we can include info from the Gates Foundation’s high-impact grants in this overview.
Thanks for the great overview of the effective giving ecosytem, Luke and Sjir. Strongly upvoted.
Nitpick. I guess you have used >X to mean roughly X, but slightly above it. If so, I would simply say X or ~X to avoid ambiguity.
Fair point, however, for OP the figure I have is somewhere between 600-700M (depending how you measure it ). Likely close to 650M. In this case I think that >600M is more acurate than ~600M. Similarly for GW its 200-230M.
Curious if you disagree?
Thanks, Luke. I see. You are using > 600 M to mean 600 M to 700 M. > 600 M could also mean a value closer to 600 M. So I would use the best guess with more digits to provide more information (for example, 650 M$ for OP, and 220 M$ for GW).
Executive summary: The effective giving ecosystem grew to ~$1.2B in 2024, with Founders Pledge and the Navigation Fund driving diversification beyond Open Philanthropy and GiveWell, while new risks like USAID’s funding cuts and questions about national fundraising models shape the landscape.
Key points:
Overall money moved grew from ~$1.1B to ~$1.2B; excluding Open Philanthropy the ecosystem grew ~20% (to ~$500M), and excluding both Open Phil and GiveWell it grew ~50% (to ~$300M).
Founders Pledge and Navigation Fund emerged as major players: Founders Pledge scaled from $25M (2022) to $140M (2024), while Navigation Fund began moving $10–100M annually.
All four main fundraising strategies (broad direct, broad pledge, ultra-high-net-worth (U)HNW direct, and (U)HNW pledge) now exceed $10M each, with GWWC, The Life You Can Save, Longview, and Founders Pledge as exemplars.
National fundraising groups (e.g. Doneer Effectief, Ge Effektivt, Ayuda Efectiva) continue to grow, though saturation limits are emerging (Effektiv Spenden plateauing at ~$20–25M).
Cause-area allocations (excluding Open Phil/GiveWell) lean more toward catastrophic risk reduction and climate mitigation, suggesting future donor diversification.
USAID’s 2025 foreign-assistance freeze may reduce global health funding by ~35–50%, triggering rapid-response efforts (e.g. Founders Pledge’s Catalytic Impact Fund).
Operational funding remains heavily reliant on Open Phil, Meta Charity Funding Circle, EA Infrastructure Fund, and Founders Pledge, with counterfactual ROI thresholds shaping grantmaking.
GWWC deprioritized building an “earning to give” community to focus on its core strategy, though some grassroots EtG activity continues.
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