Head of Marketing at Giving What We Can
grace.adams @ givingwhatwecan.org
GraceAdams
Karma: 1,981
I think that there is a lot of value in using powerful imagery to get important ideas across, I think your pitch captures the ideas well! I could imagine many short stories or videos that talk about longtermism like this, that might be inspiring and convincing.
It was an absolute pleasure getting to meet you Olivia! And had I not been speaking and had people reaching out to me for 1:1s, I would have really appreciated a ‘lonely and new’ meetup too, as I can get quite nervous about meeting people for the first time!
Also so happy you liked my talk :)
This is something we are actively considering and planning to do more of at Giving What We Can! Finding the right people who may be well aligned with our messaging and goals, and have an audience that would resonate too is key. If anyone has appropriate suggestions, please feel free to email me!
Thanks for sharing these results! There are many things in there that are insightful for my work and more generally for reaching new groups of people with the ideas of EA.
Thanks for this post, Luke!
This touches on many of my personal fears about the community in the moment.I sincerely hope that anyone who comes across our community with the desire and intent to participate in the project of effective altruism feels that they are welcome and celebrated, whether that looks like volunteering an hour each month, donating whatever they feel they can afford, or doing direct work.
To lose people who have diverse worldviews, abilities and backgrounds would be a shame, and could potentially limit the impact of the community. I’d like to see an increasingly diverse effective altruism community, all bound by seeking to do as much good as we can.
Just wanted to call out that working with User Friendly is great, and they’ve produced some excellent for Giving What We Can and we intend to keep using them!
I’m super excited by the launch of the Longtermism Fund which was driven by Michael Townsend and made possible by the excellent team at Longview!
I think it fills a gap in longtermist giving and I’m excited to see giving grow in this space!
Hi LB,
Appreciate your time in giving us some feedback!
For this years Giving Season campaign we’re planning to test a donate CTA vs a newsletter sub CTA and track which causes more donations, pledges down the line. I agree that a donate CTA may fare better.
Also agree that perhaps a more cause focused campaigns could be effective, but this has to be balanced with the nature of GWWC as an org, our place in the effective giving ecosystem and what our vision is. This is something we are thinking about how best to do for our brand. I also think leaning into the community of GWWC and the vision we have is an interesting angle and am excited to see how this might compare to cause focused messaging.
The results we’ve shared here are just based on the advertising we did, but rest assured we are tracking donations and pledges off the back of this campaign—just not included in these results.
GWWC will be organising lots of things for Giving Season including taking the lead on Effective Giving Day—we plan to share event guides for hosting events with your groups and workplaces in October to help people prepare and run successful Giving Season events!
“Giving What We Can’s mission is to make giving effectively and significantly a cultural norm. We mean this quite literally: our goal isn’t just to marginally increase the amount of money going to effective charities — we’re aiming to make meaningful cultural change.”
At Giving What We Can we are trying to bring effective giving and the ideas of effective altruism to a much broader audience through the lens of engaging those who are generally in the top 10% of earners worldwide.
There are many other organisations and new projects that aim to share the ideas to a wider audience—One example I’m personally excited about is Asterisk, a new magazine shaped by the philosophy of EA. https://asteriskmag.com/
I’m extremely grateful to have found a community of people who care deeply about doing good. I have felt very welcomed and accepted by the people I’ve met. Seeing the excitement and warmth that comes from people discussing and acting on how we can help others is a wonderful thing.
Living in Australia, I’ve always given to orgs that have tax deductibility here in Australia—even though I know there might be better donation opportunities out there it’s been a bit of a mental blocker for me. But now I’ve managed to internalise the benefit of donating to the charities I think have the highest impact regardless of the tax benefit so I’ll be donating to StrongMinds and GFI this Giving Season as well as some of the other global health charities I normally support.
I thought we could do a thread for Giving What We Can pledgers and lessons learnt or insights since pledging!
I’ll go first: I was actually really worried about how donating 10% would feel, as well as it’s impact on my finances—but actually it’s made me much less stressed about money—to know I can still have a great standard of living with 10% less. It’s actually changed the way I see money and finances and has helped me think about how I can increase my giving in future years.
I’d be interested to see what you think of Giving What We Can’s social media presence!
(I am Head of Marketing and produce most of the social media posts and content promoted via our social media. This is not a large focus of my role but something I am happy to receive feedback on.)
This is exciting! Thanks for writing this up. I’ll share the post and calls to action with my networks :)
Thanks Stan for including GWWC in your analysis!
I definitely think GWWC could be doing a better job on twitter, which you’ve mentioned above—I’m still considering whether the additional effort is worth it for us at the moment. Regardless I am updating the mix of content to include more about our top-rated charities (this will happen slowly over time).
As an interesting aside—I think people are much less interested in engaging with orgs/brands than they are with individuals. Over the past few months I’ve experimented with my own twitter account and have found that my personal account with ~1,000 followers gets a lot more engagement on effective giving related content (and even retweets of GWWC content) than our GWWC account with ~12,000 followers.
Another interesting question for you to investigate is whether it’s worth it for orgs to ask their staff to be active on social media rather than investing resources in branded accounts.
Valentine’s Day fundraiser for FEM
Hi Ariel,
I agree with Ben below that there are a variety of plausible worldviews from which you could make decisions about giving to highly effective charities, and that being open to the variety of worldviews within the community is important.
I think both of the charities you’ve suggested are also great—but that doesn’t diminish my excitement for what FEM does. I selected FEM specifically for Valentine’s Day because it’s focused on family planning—but I very well may pick some other organisations that empower and support women in other ways in the future.
[this comment, post and fundraiser are all done in my personal capacity]
Thanks Nathan!! The success of your fundraiser with Émile has got me super excited about trying to do more fundraisers!
Hi Tim,
I think your note is well written already but if you wanted to take the effectiveness angle, you could write something like the below (and included a shameless plug for GWWC below but OFTW, TLYCS or GiveWell would be equally good). Not sure if it’s better than what you have now, but another option at least.
“I want to remind you that each of us have the power to make the world a better place by helping those who need it most.
Did you know that a donation of $4500 to the Against Malaria Foundation, who provide insecticide treated bednets for malaria prevention, is enough to save a child’s life?
And although you may not be able to donate that amount right now, over your lifetime, it’s likely you could donate this much or even much more, and save someone’s life. There will be one more person out there, able to live a full life because of you.
I have received many heartwarming emails from my readers who tell me they are also choosing to be part of making this world a better, safer and healthier place for everyone.
So join me in giving whatever amount you are comfortable with, and together we can create a brighter future for the world.
To donate to and learn more about highly effective charities like Against Malaria Foundation, visit GivingWhatWeCan.org