This is so hard to comprehend why this post was made, when it is in strict disagreement with the history/current mission statement for GivingWhatWeCan. Here are are the best descriptions about GivingWhatWeCan’s mission that I could find.
“What do you do, and hope to achieve?
Our goal is to play our part in eliminating poverty in the developing world.”
“OUR HISTORY
Giving What We Can is the brainchild of Toby Ord, a philosopher at Balliol College, Oxford. Inspired by the ideas of ethicists Peter Singer and Thomas Pogge, Toby decided in 2009 to commit a large proportion of his income to charities that effectively alleviate poverty in the developing world.”
I started a GivingWhatWeCan chapter in my home town and have been very active in the community reading books/blogs/courses/ etc. and it’s still incredibly difficult to figure out the various organisations and what their stated goals are and how they differ. A recent problem I’ve encountered is why are there GivingWhatWeCan chapters and LEAN/Local EA chapters. Our current meetup.com group is called GivingWhatWeCan, but our website is eacalgary.org.
This makes things extremely difficult for new members who are learning about the movement to navigate the EA landscape, and when the communications coming directly from the organisation are conflicting with it’s stated mission, it becomes even more difficult to piece everything together. Perhaps this is a start of a rebranding effort that I wasn’t aware of.
Looking forward to hearing back from you, appreciate all the good work the organisation does!
Hi Richard,
I’m sorry it’s rather confusing at the moment, and thank you so much for all the work you do with the GWWC/EA Calgary chapter. I’m hoping my more recent post on the Forum might help bring some clarity. I think part of the reason it’s particularly confusing at the moment is that our website has been undergoing some changes, so the page with our mission/vision/values is currently not up. We’ve also, as Jon mentioned, been clarifying what GWWC is fundamentally about, including whether we are necessarily an organisation which focuses primarily on poverty or only contingently so (it’s the latter).
These are our vision/mission/values:
Our Vision
A world in which giving 10% of our income to the most effective organisations is the norm
Our Mission
Inspire donations to the world’s most effective charities
Our Values
We are a welcoming community, sharing our passion and energy to improve the lives of others.
We care.
We have a deep commitment to helping others, and
We are dedicated to helping other members of our community give more and give better.
We take action based on evidence.
We apply rigorous academic processes to develop trustworthy research to guide our actions.
We are open-minded towards new approaches to altruism that may show greater effectiveness.
We are honest when it comes to what we don’t know or mistakes we have made.
We are optimistic.
We are ambitious in terms of the change we believe we can create.
We apply energy and enthusiasm to support and build our community.
Great to hear Michelle. I agree that being cause neutral allows us to make more of a difference, and agree 100% with the change in tone, it’s going to be extremely confusing for new members that are checking out the website, or reading wikipedia, etc.
Have you talked with Tom Ash Re: givingwhatwecan chapters vs. EA chapters? I think the branding continues to be confusing for a lot of people.
Thanks for the comment- I might just field my best reply to these points and let Michelle chime in if I get any of it wrong!
I can totally understand your confusion- Giving What We Can does, in a great deal of its research, and its promotional material, focus on the project of eliminating extreme poverty. This is because we believe that projects that focus on the elimination of extreme poverty (the provision of bednets, or drugs for Schistosomiasis, ect) are one of the ways we can do the most good with our time and money. As you can imagine, it is hard to clearly communicate both the point that we are promoting the most effective charities alleviating poverty in the developing world and that we are choosing these charities because we think that giving money to them is plausibly the highest impact action people can take amongst all actions. Due in part to the difficulty of communicating both of these points simultaneously, we have generally focused our promotional material on the former, while always having the later as the core motivation. As Michelle mentioned, this is reflected in the Pledge which is explicitly cause neutral, and this reflects our belief that what defines us as an organisation is not merely a desire for people to give more to the most effective charities in the development space, but to all charities which reason and evidence suggests are likely to improve the world. We are currently undergoing the process of clarifying this point in our vision- roughly (and provisionally!) our new vision is: a world where giving 10% of your income to the most effective causes is the norm. This vision clearly ties into our previous vision of eliminating extreme poverty, as we believe that donations to the most effective charities that tackle extreme poverty represent -from a cause neutral point of view- some of the most effective ways for us to improve the world. After all, if we still have extreme poverty in a world where everyone is giving 10%, then we are probably doing it wrong!
In terms of confusion around branding for local groups, that the the product of two factors: 1) Giving What We Can for the last year and a half has been supporting the growth of both EA and GWWC groups, and 2) There are a number of different organisations in the local-group support space- including Giving What We Can, EAO and LEAN. The reason why there are both EA and Giving What We Can chapters is that different individuals choose to brand their groups differently- some individuals are most exited by the ideas and branding of Giving What We Can, with it’s focus on the pledge and extreme poverty, while others are most drawn to a general EA brand. In the case of Calgary, I know Reza was most exited by the Giving What We Can brand, and so went with that. We at Giving What We Can support both types of groups. All that being said, I agree this could definitely be clearer from the outside, and we will work on making it so!
I really enjoyed visiting all of you in Calgary last December, and hope to have the chance to visit again in the not too distant future! If you have any suggestions for how we can make the above considerations clearer, I would be super keen to get your input. Thanks for your questions, and thanks for helping to grow the movement!
Hi Jonathan,
I agree that if you’re goal is to “do the most good” that majority of EAs (myself included) believe that reducing extreme poverty is the most tractable/efficient way to do that at the current moment.
I think the main issue is that when people are learning about EA, if they find major discrepancies between GWWC currently stated mission (helping reduce poverty) and some materials like the blog post above (mission being do most good) it becomes difficult to figure out what’s going on.
One recommendation I have is that if a major rebranding effort is happening within GWWC, an email out to Pledge members/chapter leads etc., and blog post on GWWC’s blog and updating the various mission statements would be a good start. I was extremely surprised reading the post, when I follow many effective altruism forums/websites/materials and have never once seen GWWC even hinting at being cause neutral with the exception of the Pledge.
I find a good analogy for this situation is climate scientists, they are “cause neutral” when it comes to global warming, it just happens that all the science/facts point towards global warming being a real man made thing that should be addressed.
I’m very happy for the new direction, with GWWC being primarily focused on making the world a better place via donations to effective charities.
Hi Richard,
Thanks for your comments.
Sorry to have been unclear—there isn’t a major rebranding planned. The changed vision should be thought of more as clarifying what lies at the heart of gwwc and what makes it unique. In large part, the reason for doing it is to further focus the team, rather than to change anything for others. It doesn’t mean that we plan to move away from working most on extreme poverty (for the reasons outlined in my more recent blog post). Ending extreme poverty is still a major focus for us (as it is for many EAs), but we wanted a vision that articulated why we work on that, and encapsulated the other things we care about.
I am planning to write a blog post about our vision on the GWWC blog in May, I’m glad that seems like a helpful thing to do.
Michelle
Hi Michelle,
This is so hard to comprehend why this post was made, when it is in strict disagreement with the history/current mission statement for GivingWhatWeCan. Here are are the best descriptions about GivingWhatWeCan’s mission that I could find.
“What do you do, and hope to achieve? Our goal is to play our part in eliminating poverty in the developing world.”
“OUR HISTORY Giving What We Can is the brainchild of Toby Ord, a philosopher at Balliol College, Oxford. Inspired by the ideas of ethicists Peter Singer and Thomas Pogge, Toby decided in 2009 to commit a large proportion of his income to charities that effectively alleviate poverty in the developing world.”
I started a GivingWhatWeCan chapter in my home town and have been very active in the community reading books/blogs/courses/ etc. and it’s still incredibly difficult to figure out the various organisations and what their stated goals are and how they differ. A recent problem I’ve encountered is why are there GivingWhatWeCan chapters and LEAN/Local EA chapters. Our current meetup.com group is called GivingWhatWeCan, but our website is eacalgary.org.
This makes things extremely difficult for new members who are learning about the movement to navigate the EA landscape, and when the communications coming directly from the organisation are conflicting with it’s stated mission, it becomes even more difficult to piece everything together. Perhaps this is a start of a rebranding effort that I wasn’t aware of.
Looking forward to hearing back from you, appreciate all the good work the organisation does!
Richard
Hi Richard, I’m sorry it’s rather confusing at the moment, and thank you so much for all the work you do with the GWWC/EA Calgary chapter. I’m hoping my more recent post on the Forum might help bring some clarity. I think part of the reason it’s particularly confusing at the moment is that our website has been undergoing some changes, so the page with our mission/vision/values is currently not up. We’ve also, as Jon mentioned, been clarifying what GWWC is fundamentally about, including whether we are necessarily an organisation which focuses primarily on poverty or only contingently so (it’s the latter).
These are our vision/mission/values:
Our Vision
A world in which giving 10% of our income to the most effective organisations is the norm
Our Mission
Inspire donations to the world’s most effective charities
Our Values
We are a welcoming community, sharing our passion and energy to improve the lives of others.
We care. We have a deep commitment to helping others, and We are dedicated to helping other members of our community give more and give better.
We take action based on evidence. We apply rigorous academic processes to develop trustworthy research to guide our actions. We are open-minded towards new approaches to altruism that may show greater effectiveness. We are honest when it comes to what we don’t know or mistakes we have made.
We are optimistic. We are ambitious in terms of the change we believe we can create. We apply energy and enthusiasm to support and build our community.
All the best, Michelle
Great to hear Michelle. I agree that being cause neutral allows us to make more of a difference, and agree 100% with the change in tone, it’s going to be extremely confusing for new members that are checking out the website, or reading wikipedia, etc.
Have you talked with Tom Ash Re: givingwhatwecan chapters vs. EA chapters? I think the branding continues to be confusing for a lot of people.
Nevermind, Jonathan has responded below.
Hey Richard,
Thanks for the comment- I might just field my best reply to these points and let Michelle chime in if I get any of it wrong!
I can totally understand your confusion- Giving What We Can does, in a great deal of its research, and its promotional material, focus on the project of eliminating extreme poverty. This is because we believe that projects that focus on the elimination of extreme poverty (the provision of bednets, or drugs for Schistosomiasis, ect) are one of the ways we can do the most good with our time and money. As you can imagine, it is hard to clearly communicate both the point that we are promoting the most effective charities alleviating poverty in the developing world and that we are choosing these charities because we think that giving money to them is plausibly the highest impact action people can take amongst all actions. Due in part to the difficulty of communicating both of these points simultaneously, we have generally focused our promotional material on the former, while always having the later as the core motivation. As Michelle mentioned, this is reflected in the Pledge which is explicitly cause neutral, and this reflects our belief that what defines us as an organisation is not merely a desire for people to give more to the most effective charities in the development space, but to all charities which reason and evidence suggests are likely to improve the world. We are currently undergoing the process of clarifying this point in our vision- roughly (and provisionally!) our new vision is: a world where giving 10% of your income to the most effective causes is the norm. This vision clearly ties into our previous vision of eliminating extreme poverty, as we believe that donations to the most effective charities that tackle extreme poverty represent -from a cause neutral point of view- some of the most effective ways for us to improve the world. After all, if we still have extreme poverty in a world where everyone is giving 10%, then we are probably doing it wrong!
In terms of confusion around branding for local groups, that the the product of two factors: 1) Giving What We Can for the last year and a half has been supporting the growth of both EA and GWWC groups, and 2) There are a number of different organisations in the local-group support space- including Giving What We Can, EAO and LEAN. The reason why there are both EA and Giving What We Can chapters is that different individuals choose to brand their groups differently- some individuals are most exited by the ideas and branding of Giving What We Can, with it’s focus on the pledge and extreme poverty, while others are most drawn to a general EA brand. In the case of Calgary, I know Reza was most exited by the Giving What We Can brand, and so went with that. We at Giving What We Can support both types of groups. All that being said, I agree this could definitely be clearer from the outside, and we will work on making it so!
I really enjoyed visiting all of you in Calgary last December, and hope to have the chance to visit again in the not too distant future! If you have any suggestions for how we can make the above considerations clearer, I would be super keen to get your input. Thanks for your questions, and thanks for helping to grow the movement!
Hi Jonathan, I agree that if you’re goal is to “do the most good” that majority of EAs (myself included) believe that reducing extreme poverty is the most tractable/efficient way to do that at the current moment.
I think the main issue is that when people are learning about EA, if they find major discrepancies between GWWC currently stated mission (helping reduce poverty) and some materials like the blog post above (mission being do most good) it becomes difficult to figure out what’s going on.
One recommendation I have is that if a major rebranding effort is happening within GWWC, an email out to Pledge members/chapter leads etc., and blog post on GWWC’s blog and updating the various mission statements would be a good start. I was extremely surprised reading the post, when I follow many effective altruism forums/websites/materials and have never once seen GWWC even hinting at being cause neutral with the exception of the Pledge.
I find a good analogy for this situation is climate scientists, they are “cause neutral” when it comes to global warming, it just happens that all the science/facts point towards global warming being a real man made thing that should be addressed.
I’m very happy for the new direction, with GWWC being primarily focused on making the world a better place via donations to effective charities.
Richard
Hi Richard, Thanks for your comments. Sorry to have been unclear—there isn’t a major rebranding planned. The changed vision should be thought of more as clarifying what lies at the heart of gwwc and what makes it unique. In large part, the reason for doing it is to further focus the team, rather than to change anything for others. It doesn’t mean that we plan to move away from working most on extreme poverty (for the reasons outlined in my more recent blog post). Ending extreme poverty is still a major focus for us (as it is for many EAs), but we wanted a vision that articulated why we work on that, and encapsulated the other things we care about. I am planning to write a blog post about our vision on the GWWC blog in May, I’m glad that seems like a helpful thing to do. Michelle
Also if this is the case, we should probably update the Wikipedia article as well:
“Giving What We Can is an international society for the promotion of the most cost-effective poverty relief, in particular in the developing world.”
Oh and the Centre for Effective Altruism website: “Giving What We Can is an international society dedicated to eliminating extreme poverty.”
That’s not really inconsistent with cause-neutrality, given Michelle’s definition (which I admit seems pretty common in EA).
(As long as GWWC is open to the possibility of working on something else instead, if something else seemed like a better way to help the world.)