Head of Marketing at Giving What We Can
grace.adams @ givingwhatwecan.org
GraceAdamsđ¸
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Hi satelliteprocess! Iâm Grace, the Head of Marketing at GWWC.
While you can take a pledge as a couple, and choose to give 10% of combined income, we have many people who are married or in long term relationships who have taken a 10% Pledge, and give 10% of their own income, and do not factor in their partnerâs income.
So two answer your two questions in short:
no, you donât need to both take the 10% Pledge or give 10% of combined income
yes, you can just pledge as an individual, and give 10% of your individual income
If you have any further questions, you can get in touch with us at community@givingwhatwecan.org
I do really think that donating thoughtfully in ways that mean that someone is statistically living because of the interventions youâve funded is just something to be really proud of.
I also wanted to say that I think itâs truly okay to also value making your own life more enjoyable, alongside improving the lives of others. I choose to donate at least 10% of my income, but I also spend money on many things I donât needâbut I value a rich life full of diverse experiences as well as helping others, and I donât feel bad about it! Iâm fulfilling my goal of being a net positive addition to the world, and enjoying my life :) I wanted to add this because I think people in the EA Community often hold themselves to extremely high moral standards!
One quick GWWC tooling note: If you take a Trial Pledge (starting a 1% of income for at least 6 months) or 10% Pledge, we have really nice dashboards and graphs that help track your donations over time!
Hi satelliteprocess!
Iâm Grace, the Head of Marketing at GWWC.
Giving What We Can offers a number of giving pledges, the most popular being the âTrial Pledgeâ and the â10% Pledgeâ
A Trial Pledge allows you to pledge between 1%-10% of your income for a fixed amount of time between 6 months to 10 years.
A 10% Pledge is a pledge to give 10% of your income until you retire.
Thereâs no progressive âtaxâ scheme for GWWCâs Pledges, unlike The Life You Can Save (TLYCS)âs recommendations. GWWC also has the option for people to pledge a percentage of wealth, and we encourage those with significant wealth to give a higher proportion of their assets.
We encourage people to âgive what they canâ and find a level of giving that best suits them. We find that people have very different expectations about how much they can or should give and think itâs for each person to decide what works for them. For example, some people on low incomes still take the 10% Pledge while others who earn significantly more might take a Trial Pledge for 1% or 5%.
If youâre new to giving, Iâd recommend taking a Trial Pledge for a percentage that feels comfortable to you, and plan on increasing it if you decide youâd like to give more.
Re: pre or post income tax, you can find the answer in this FAQ.
I donât know what country youâre in, but to calculate your annual pre-tax and post-tax income but if you google, thereâs usually calculators or tools that do this for your country!
Peter Singer has taken the 10% Pledge (although heâs mentioned he gives much more) but he is the founder of TLYCS. They are two different charities, which is why we have different pledges.
Giving What We Can offers a more active community around pledging, including a global slack community and dashboards to track your progress over timeâpromoting giving pledges is one of the main things we do and weâre planning on improving the experience for our pledgers over time! So Iâm biased in saying that taking a pledge with GWWC is a good idea, starting with a level of giving that youâre comfortable with.
If you have any further questions, you can reach out to us at community@givingwhatwecan.org
Currently at GWWC in our materials for EA Groups, we suggest that a Trial Pledge is a good starting point for people who are interested in effective giving, but are just learning about it.
My personal POV: I think itâs generally a good idea for people to try out giving 10% or take a Trial Pledge before committing to the 10% Pledge. I think itâs important that people feel comfortable with giving that amount and think seriously about what tradeoffs they might need to make if they take a 10% Pledge. But I think introducing people to the idea of the 10% Pledge at university is a good idea. We see people end up taking pledges even 10+ years after learning about it at university!
Thanks Davidâreally helpful to be able to read about this succinctly!
Thank you for this beautiful post, Julia. Your writing always really resonates with me.
Just echoing Lukeâs response here: When I moved from my corporate job to GWWC, I gave up ~30% of salary I would have had if I stayed. I still give at least 10% of my current salary.
I think I was lucky to be in a high paying role to begin with, and that I get paid a fair salary at GWWC but there definitely was a large financial cost to moving to a non-profit, especially on top of donating min. 10%.
Hi Simon,
Thanks for the question!
The EA Hub used to facilitate donation swapsâbut the project was retired so now thereâs no one owning this.
I think it can be hard to formally organise this, and have some reservations as to whether there could be legal implications for an organisation to run a project like this.
That being said, I know some people who are informally organising donation swaps at the moment.
It could be a good idea to gauge feasibility and interest in this across the EA community. I donât know if itâs something GWWC would want to own but I do think itâs worth someone exploring!
Another thing to mention is that in the absence of a donation swap, if you expect a non-tax-deductible donation opportunity to be âĽ2x times more impactful than one that you could claim a tax deduction on, you should probably choose the higher-impact option and forego the tax deduction. Hereâs a nice page to explain why: https://ââwww.givingwhatwecan.org/ââdonating-effectively-tax-deductibly
Thanks for your kind words about our work and team, too!!
Hi Vasco,
This isnât something that GWWC is currently planning to look into, but I think itâs a good question and Iâd like to see us develop our thinking about it further. Weâve made an internal note on this to discuss within the team!
We may also review this page mentioned next year to include sources.
Thanks as always for your feedback :)
Hi Vasco,
Thanks for your questionâI think itâs a good one!
I was going to write up a response but then I remembered we had this nice explanation on our research and approach page:
Some other organisations in the effective giving space advocate a particular âworldviewâ; for example, they might believe it is most impactful to focus on safeguarding the long-term future and as such, recommend giving to organisations working to reduce existential risk, rather than other high-impact causes like global health. Others may believe it is best to focus on non-human animal wellbeing, because the scale of the problem (if you value all sentient beings equally) is so enormous compared to human wellbeing and the solutions are much more tractable than attempting to safeguard the long-term future.
At Giving What We Can, we believe there are compelling arguments and reasons for focusing on any of the high-impact cause areas we recommend, and that no matter which one you choose, youâll have the capacity to help solve some of the worldâs most pressing problems and prevent the suffering of many. Weâve outlined why the cause areas we recommend are particularly impactful (and why we encourage supporting these over others) but we donât currently take a view on which of our high-impact cause areas we deem most impactful as we think this is quite value-specific. Instead, we wish to provide the public with a variety of highly effective giving options, and then empower them to determine which ones best align with their own worldviews/âvalues. Some of our donors feel strongly that theyâll have more impact by prioritising one of these cause areas; others prefer to diversify their giving portfolio across several cause areas.
So I think the TL;DR of this answer is that we provide recommendations across a number of worldviews but donât currently want to weigh in on what we think is the âcorrectâ worldview. This means that weâll be unlikely to create a ranked link of recommendations across our cause areas unless we change our view on how we think about worldview diversity.
Hi Vasco, I think youâre probably right in rational terms! For me personally, I find itâs actually helpful with donors sometimes to be able to talk about the different charities I donate to and meet them on their level. But Iâm also probably not as rational as I could be!
Iâve done something similar with Effective Altruism Australia this yearâwe had christmas cards where you can make a donation in someoneâs name! I ordered 11 of them and will be keen to see if they encourage people to donate: https://ââeffectivealtruism.org.au/ââChristmasCards/ââ
Thanks Nick! You inspire a lot of the GWWC team through your work and your thoughtfulness on the Forum!
Absolutely love this take! Iâd love to see our community advocating for effective giving to their networks in ways that make sense for them!
I also see this as a reason to take a pledge with GWWC, even if youâre already givingâby adding your name to the list of pledgers, and helping that list grow longerâyouâre showing that this is a real movement of people who are taking giving effectively and significantly seriously.(Honestly, just scrolling through a really long list of names helped give me confidence to pledge despite not knowing anyone)
Help us reach 10,000 pledgers, so that the next 10,000 are easier for us to convince!
To me, the 10% Pledge was a commitment to being the kind of person I really wanted to be. Someone who took the inequality and suffering in the world seriously, and did not turn away from it.
Since pledging, I only feel more motivated to help others and do good.
Working at GWWC gives me a unique window into all the motivations people share when pledging, as well as interacting with the community every dayâand that in itself continues to inspire me.
I truly hope that GWWC continues to grow strongly for many more years and is successful in our mission of making giving effectively and significantly a cultural norm.
Thanks for your work on this! In general I would love to see headache disorders like cluster headaches and migraine receive more funding for research because of their burden.
As someone who has chronic migraine, I can only imagine what experiencing cluster headaches would be like.
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-fundraisersThere have also been initiatives in the EA community like:
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!
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.
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 Habeeb,
I work at GWWC as the Head of Marketing :)
Thank you for your generosity and for sharing your perspective! We are actively interested in how we can help cultivate people giving effectively from all over the world, so this is really helpful feedback for us!
Iâve asked someone on the team who knows why we have the $5 minimum to follow up in the comments here, so stay tuned for their response. My guess is that with the processing fees associated, it might not make sense for us to support donations less than $5 - but this post will help us challenge those assumptions!
On why we donât have a bigger range of charities to donate to: We have a pretty strict process in terms of the charities we allow on our platform, which you can read more about in our inclusion criteria if youâre interested. Basically, we want to make sure that donors have options that are sufficiently high-impact, and that the charities get sufficient value from being on our platform.
Some suggestions on donating smaller amounts:
If there is a trusted person in the group, you could pool all your money together to be able to reach the threshold of $5, and maybe you could make a collaborative decision on where to donateâthis could even be a nice way to help talk about giving and your thought process with friends.
Wait until you are able to donate the minimum $5, and set aside this money in the meantime.
Against Malaria Foundation allows donations as low as $2 USD: https://ââwww.againstmalaria.com/ââDonation.aspx
I also liked the suggestions from others in the comments. I think thereâs lots of ways to donate and they donât all necessarily go through GWWC!
I appreciate your perspective on wanting to cultivate the habit of donating small amounts but also generally caution that especially for students, that youâre making sure you have enough for your own expenses and emergencies first. Making sure that the habit is sustainable is an important factor for long term giving!
Thanks again for sharing this, Habeeb and Iâll make sure someone else follows up about the $5 limit!