The distinction is important because (a) it’s good to encourage people to make high-impact career trade offs, but (a) GWWC isn’t/shouldn’t be about starting to track all of people’s impact decisions in one place and converting all volunteering and lower (or hypothetically lower based on glancing at Glassdor) paying jobs into $ so you can then donate less actual dollars. It’s about recognising if you’re in a relatively well off financial position and voluntarily using your available financial resources to help others as effectively as you can.
Allowing some flexibility for means of donation (eg stock transfer, salary sacrifice, payroll giving) where it’s simpler or more tax efficient is better than saying it always has to be cash, but getting into the game of hard to measure non currency counterfactuals is a slippery slope that would undermine the advantages of a simple common norm.
Similarly if someone were to donate $10k of stock that they had good reasons to believe was about to lose half its value (i.e. knowing it’d only be worth half as much to themselves or the charity) and then it subsequently did lose half its value before the charity could liquidate it, then it would be in the spirit of the pledge to think about that as a $5k donation (regardless of what the taxman thinks). (Although the kind of donor that’s donating large amounts of stock and is very bought into the spirit of the pledge is likely well above the 10% anyway and wouldn’t be faulted for not finessing their pledge calculation to account for this if they’re so far above their 10% that it’s immaterial to whether they’re on track to meet their pledge or not).
The distinction is important because (a) it’s good to encourage people to make high-impact career trade offs, but (a) GWWC isn’t/shouldn’t be about starting to track all of people’s impact decisions in one place and converting all volunteering and lower (or hypothetically lower based on glancing at Glassdor) paying jobs into $ so you can then donate less actual dollars. It’s about recognising if you’re in a relatively well off financial position and voluntarily using your available financial resources to help others as effectively as you can.
Allowing some flexibility for means of donation (eg stock transfer, salary sacrifice, payroll giving) where it’s simpler or more tax efficient is better than saying it always has to be cash, but getting into the game of hard to measure non currency counterfactuals is a slippery slope that would undermine the advantages of a simple common norm.
Similarly if someone were to donate $10k of stock that they had good reasons to believe was about to lose half its value (i.e. knowing it’d only be worth half as much to themselves or the charity) and then it subsequently did lose half its value before the charity could liquidate it, then it would be in the spirit of the pledge to think about that as a $5k donation (regardless of what the taxman thinks). (Although the kind of donor that’s donating large amounts of stock and is very bought into the spirit of the pledge is likely well above the 10% anyway and wouldn’t be faulted for not finessing their pledge calculation to account for this if they’re so far above their 10% that it’s immaterial to whether they’re on track to meet their pledge or not).
Thanks for clarifying, I think the arguments makes sense! The FAQ is clear on this and it’s good to see some of it’s background.
I can accept that it’s a tricky situation and the overall best way to handle it is to consider a resign.