It seemed suboptimal ([x] marks things I’ve done, [ ] marks things I should have done but have not gotten around to).
[x] Saving donations for years of increased need seems like a better strategy than donating a fixed amount each year
[ ] Investing donations and then donating with interest seems plausibly a better option
[x] Having a large amount of personal savings allows me to direct my efforts more effectively by choosing not to take suboptimal opportunities for money. Having “slack”, freedom of action, seems very useful.
[x] My time funges with money, and I will not always want to donate one instead of the other.
[x] Generally, constraining my future self seems kind of iffy, since my future self will have more information and better models, including information about my own values. I see the appeal of argument in the other direction about screening off becoming more altruistic, though.
We do have members who don’t donate strictly on a yearly basis, and choose to donate every couple of years when there’s something quite promising to donate to. Also donating every second (or more depending on how much you donate) year can make sense for some Americans given the tax benefits.
I think that deciding when to donate (i.e. investing or donating now) is a difficult one, and depends a lot on your worldviews etc. My take is that if you’re interested in improving the lives of people now, it’s generally good to donate sooner rather than later (although maybe there’s a case for waiting for a specific breakthrough where you have some special knowledge about the case for impact) but outside of global health and wellbeing, I find it much harder to know.
You are right, the page does contain the phrase “Give 10% of your income each year”.(Somehow google has not picked it up so I did not find it). I think GWWC has made a mistake here. The text of the actual pledge does not have this constraint.
Maybe @graceadams or someone else from GWWC can clarify things and fix the formulation on their website?
We’ll update this! We do encourage people to give annually to keep in the habit but you’re also right that it’s not actually in the pledge text. I think this is a major point for a lot of people so we’ll update the page! Thanks for pointing that out!
It seemed suboptimal ([x] marks things I’ve done, [ ] marks things I should have done but have not gotten around to).
[x] Saving donations for years of increased need seems like a better strategy than donating a fixed amount each year
[ ] Investing donations and then donating with interest seems plausibly a better option
[x] Having a large amount of personal savings allows me to direct my efforts more effectively by choosing not to take suboptimal opportunities for money. Having “slack”, freedom of action, seems very useful.
[x] My time funges with money, and I will not always want to donate one instead of the other.
[x] Generally, constraining my future self seems kind of iffy, since my future self will have more information and better models, including information about my own values. I see the appeal of argument in the other direction about screening off becoming more altruistic, though.
Thanks for sharing, Nuno!
We do have members who don’t donate strictly on a yearly basis, and choose to donate every couple of years when there’s something quite promising to donate to. Also donating every second (or more depending on how much you donate) year can make sense for some Americans given the tax benefits.
I think that deciding when to donate (i.e. investing or donating now) is a difficult one, and depends a lot on your worldviews etc. My take is that if you’re interested in improving the lives of people now, it’s generally good to donate sooner rather than later (although maybe there’s a case for waiting for a specific breakthrough where you have some special knowledge about the case for impact) but outside of global health and wellbeing, I find it much harder to know.
This seems against the wording of “Give 10% of your income each year”
Why are you under the impression that you have to give each year? I tried to google your quoted string but could not find an exact match.
As I interpret the GWWC pledge formulation, there is no condition when you have to donate, just how much.
https://www.givingwhatwecan.org/pledge
You are right, the page does contain the phrase “Give 10% of your income each year”.(Somehow google has not picked it up so I did not find it). I think GWWC has made a mistake here. The text of the actual pledge does not have this constraint.
Maybe @graceadams or someone else from GWWC can clarify things and fix the formulation on their website?
We’ll update this! We do encourage people to give annually to keep in the habit but you’re also right that it’s not actually in the pledge text. I think this is a major point for a lot of people so we’ll update the page! Thanks for pointing that out!