Head of Marketing at Giving What We Can
grace.adams @ givingwhatwecan.org
GraceAdamsđ¸
Karma: 2,634
Thank you Luke for your leadership of GWWC, and your mentorship of me as an employee at GWWC.
It was seeing a talk from you and Peter Singer that got me involved with effective giving, and GWWC. So without you, I would never have been involved with something that has become one of the most meaningful parts of my life.
It has been an immense honour to work with someone as passionate, intelligent and caring as you.
So much of how GWWC has grown in the past few years since you joined is because of your hard work, and all of us who have worked with you personally know how much effort and love you have put into GWWC.
Iâm personally very sorry to see you leave GWWC, and your legacy will be felt strongly for years to come.
VolÂunÂteer for GWWC: GuidÂedTrack upÂdates to GivÂing Games
Would Jimmy personally (or the business) ever consider taking a public pledge to give to effective charities, like the đ¸ 10% Pledgeâa pledge to donate at least 10% of income until you retire to the organisations that can most improve the lives of others?
Prominent pledgers like podcaster Sam Harris, youtuber Ali Abdaal, author and historian Rutger Bregman amongst others have raised awareness of the pledges we offer, as well as the principles of effective charitiesâand influenced more than 1500 people to take a pledge to give, which we estimate will generate over $100m USD of effective donations over time.
Hi Ben,
All pledges taken through partners will appear on GWWCâs website and will be treat as âdirectâ pledges! Partners could also decide to display the people who pledged through their âclubââbut weâre mindful that impact isnât double counted!
Most people will be added to our english comms about the pledge, but in some cases, where the audience does not speak english, they may not receive the same comms from GWWC, with the expectation that our partner will communicate in their language. Weâre handling this on a case by case basis.
At the moment, people will be directed to our website to report their donations and update their profileâbut as we develop our partnerships further, we may include ability to report in our API or place the reporting of donations on a more neutral 10percentpledge.org website. We decided to see how the partnerships go before investing more technical time but weâre excited for what the future could hold in this direction!
Thanks OscarâI updated the reference on LinkedIn!
I donât think thereâs a good way to tag GWWC on LinkedIn in the bio or headline, sadly.
Yeah this is a good pointâwe tried to keep the communications short but this missed the nuance of how to actually update it! Weâre seeing if we can create some guidance but itâs on our list of lower priority tasks.
This is a bummerâwe didnât realise! But it can still be added to the bio if you likeâhopefully thatâs a reasonable alternative!
Ah, I was hoping it would be clear from the image that we includedâbut perhaps that wasnât quite enough to get the point across!
Totally fine if you want to remove the number! Thanks for updating your profile :)
Hi Andrewâwe did notice the similarity many months ago when we started planning the launchâbut with the election being called a few weeks ago, the comparison has definitely gotten more noticeable.
At the time, we thought it wasnât a big issue, and once the election is over, I suspect it will go back to being much less of an issue as well. Keeping in mind that less than a quarter of our community is in the UKâand the symbol doesnât have any clear association outside the UK.
Partly we are using the little orange diamond because it fits nicely with our GWWC logo having a small diamond, and the only two diamond emoji colours are orange and blueâand blue didnât fit as well with our colour palette.
My hope is that by the next election cycle, the Lib Dems feel like they need to adopt a new symbol because the đ¸10% Pledge is so prominent!
Hi Rebecca! As always, grateful for your support of people in the community and helping them get their finances sorted!
We do encourage people to give regularly as part of the pledge, and would generally encourage people who are using DAFs as part of their giving strategy to disburse funds from it regularly so that they are actively contributing to doing good in the world now, rather than later. I do think that itâs possible for people to strongly believe that waiting for a particular moment in time might be the best use of their funds, i.e. development or approval of a particular technology like a vaccine which could be consistent with The Pledge. People with different worldviews and reasoning might feel very differently about this so we generally leave some room for interpretation (In fact, thereâs a whole forum topic on donation timing with many years of discussion on this). My personal view is that people should give regularly, and allowing âdonation debtâ to build up for more than a couple of years is not ideal.Might also be relevant for people to read our FAQ on why give now rather than later? as well!
We do occasionally promote the Company Pledge in our newsletter and on our social media, especially on LinkedIn where businesses are most likely to see it! Mostlyâwe are just constrained in our efforts to promote our work more generally!
We are getting new Company Pledges every so often, and are really excited to have new Companies join! Weâve had Bullet Journal (a popular journaling system and product) join recentlyâand another great business in the works!
We may decide to step up on promoting the Company Pledge but seeing there are other great pledges for companies like Founders Pledge we put most of our emphasis on individual pledges where we think we have a competitive advantage.
Always helpful for us to know that you havenât seen any promotion of the Company Pledge, so we can calibrate on what is getting through and whatâs not!
Thanks BradâI think all of those are reasonable considerations! As mentioned in my response to Owenâweâll review this messaging based on this feedback! Thanks for sharing your reasoning!
Thanks OwenâI think those things are all reasonableâwe might look to update this paragraph on the blog and update our messaging around this! Itâs always a challenge to write in a way thatâs engaging and legible to those outside the community, and also reflects all of the nuance expected in the community. We of course, always try to do our best, but sometimes we might miss the mark and weâre always open to changing our minds!
Hi Elizabethâit would be great if you could explain why?
If you encourage a friend who wasnât otherwise giving effectively or significantly to pledgeâand they doâthis seems like a potential doubling of donations going to high impact charities. Maybe more or less if their salary is higher or lower but as a rule of thumb I think it seems like generally a fine thing to say.
Maybe you were thinking that donations might be less counterfactual if these people are already in the effective altruism community(?), but many people GWWC reaches are outside the community who might be less likely to be giving effectively or significantly and we try to tailor our content for the broadest audience we reach, especially our blog content. Iâll get Alana to update that this is a link post of our blog post: https://ââwww.givingwhatwecan.org/ââen/ââblog/ââ5-things-you-ve-got-wrong-about-the-giving-what-we-can-pledge
Thanks for the kind feedback about our hiring process! Iâll encourage the team to write up how we have approached the hiring for some roles where we think we ran a good process!
[Edit: Actually Michael Townsend wrote this in the past about our hiring process, which is worth reading]
This is a lovely reflection, thank you for writing it!
I very much agree that those who are wealthiest have much more of a responsibility to give! - but GWWC is not explicitly aimed at trying to get billionaires to donate more, because weâre not really set up to do that! And there are other organisations who are trying to do this much better than we could.
This video is definitely not asking all people to give large amounts to charity, but I also wanted to talk to all kinds of people about charity. People across all spectrums of income give to charity, even people with very low incomes, so I think itâs worthwhile giving people the knowledge that some charities can do a lot more than others. I think Imma is right below that even a small amount can go a long way when donated effectively.
We always encourage people to do what feels right to them, and would agree that people who are just trying to get their own needs met, may be better off not donating!
This video is really for people who have their needs meet (whatever this means to them) and who might be interested in giving. But itâs very hard when you put a video up online to provide all these caveats or messages about who the video is for when youâre trying to make a relatively interesting 15 min video thatâs already covering a bunch of topics. How hard it is to get the balance right is something Iâve been reflecting on lately. I hope weâve struck an okay balance here.
Oh I thought I responded to this already!
Iâd like to say that people often have very good reasons for not pledging, that are sometimes visible to us, and other times notâand no one should feel bad for making the right choice for themselves!
I do of course think many more people in our community could take the GWWC Pledge, but I wouldnât want people to do that at the expense of them feeling comfortable with making that commitment.
We should respect other peopleâs journeys, lifestyles and values in our pursuits to do good.
And thanks Lizka for sharing your previous post in this thread too! Appreciate you sharing your perspective!
I was lucky enough to see Marcus play this year at the Australian Open, and have pledged alongside him! Marcus is so hardworkingâin tennis alongside his work at High Impact Athletes! Go Marcus!!!
Thanks for sharing your perspective, Karthik!
I think itâs a great idea to do a fundraising campaign as part of your university groups! Fundraisers can be a great way to raise awareness as well as money!
At Giving What We Can (I work there in Marketing), we have a some resources on running successful fundraisers which could be useful:
https://ââwww.givingwhatwecan.org/ââget-involved/âârun-fundraisers
There have also been initiatives in the EA community like:
https://ââcampagnes.doneereffectief.nl/ââlooop-2024
https://ââwww.givingwhatwecan.org/ââfundraisers/ââfrom-england-to-istanbul
I think that fundraising for a cause tied to a run/âwalk or some type of other event thatâs happening near you could be a great way to gather momentum!
I would generally favour charities that 1) you think are highly effective 2) have a clear story that you can explain to potential donors about how it works and why theyâre worth supporting. I think GiveWellâs top charities are great examples. Climate change charities or animal welfare charities could also resonate with people at universities!