I think it’s valuable to have a variety of entry points into effective giving, and agree that a more modest ask is going to be more effective for a large number of donors. I think it is helpful to have a variety of options when pointing people toward effective giving. There’s a lot of room between TLYCS’[1] approach (which recommended 1% at $80K USD and may be more non-specific now that the pledge has been removed from navigation) and GWWC at 10%, and I think there’s merit to the view that TLYCS’ approach is suboptimally ambitious for some donor candidates. But: that merely suggests more space for more good orgs in this area rather than a criticism of either TLYCS or GWWC!
Also, there are two points of potential disagreement here. One could disagree with a strategy of asking for “roughly 5% of annual income for those who are financially comfortable, with less for those below that level, and significantly more for the very rich.” I personally think there is great value in a good org that does that, although I’d like to see other orgs that target higher and lower commitment points as well.
The other point of disagreement, which I have somewhat more sympathy with, is that the calculator didn’t do a great job operationalizing that sentence. Some of these problems reflect inherent limitations to a one-question calculator that spits out a single number rather than a range. The implied threshold for “financially comfortable” in USD is roughly three times the median US full-time salary. While everyone’s financial circumstances are different, I’d submit that this is a rather conservative way to operationalize financially comfortable. Likewise, one might think the steep downslope below $81K is a whole lot of “less” given that $81K is still above the median.
Thanks, Jessica. I generally agree with this.
I think it’s valuable to have a variety of entry points into effective giving, and agree that a more modest ask is going to be more effective for a large number of donors. I think it is helpful to have a variety of options when pointing people toward effective giving. There’s a lot of room between TLYCS’[1] approach (which recommended 1% at $80K USD and may be more non-specific now that the pledge has been removed from navigation) and GWWC at 10%, and I think there’s merit to the view that TLYCS’ approach is suboptimally ambitious for some donor candidates. But: that merely suggests more space for more good orgs in this area rather than a criticism of either TLYCS or GWWC!
Also, there are two points of potential disagreement here. One could disagree with a strategy of asking for “roughly 5% of annual income for those who are financially comfortable, with less for those below that level, and significantly more for the very rich.” I personally think there is great value in a good org that does that, although I’d like to see other orgs that target higher and lower commitment points as well.
The other point of disagreement, which I have somewhat more sympathy with, is that the calculator didn’t do a great job operationalizing that sentence. Some of these problems reflect inherent limitations to a one-question calculator that spits out a single number rather than a range. The implied threshold for “financially comfortable” in USD is roughly three times the median US full-time salary. While everyone’s financial circumstances are different, I’d submit that this is a rather conservative way to operationalize financially comfortable. Likewise, one might think the steep downslope below $81K is a whole lot of “less” given that $81K is still above the median.
In this comment, “TLYCS” means the organization, not the book.