At Giving What We Can I work to support the global effective giving community and help with the development of new effective giving initiatives.
I also am the Executive Director of Impact Books.
Luke Moore šø
Karma: 952
Thank you for sharing this insightful post! As the Effective Giving Global Coordinator and Incubator at Giving What We Can, my role involves incubating new effective giving initiatives and Iām particularly keen to connect with anyone interested in exploring the idea of launching a Christian giving initiative. The intersection of Christian generosity and effective giving is incredibly compelling, especially given the substantial opportunity to engage Christians in the U.S., where the largest market exists for such an initiative.
If youāre interested in discussing this further, or if you have ideas or projects youād like to share, Iād love to hear from you. Feel free to reach out or connect with me directly via email at lucas.moore@givingwhatwecan.org.
This year, Iām giving 20% of my incomeādouble my šø10% Pledge.
I believe that growing the total amount of money directed toward high-impact charities is a crucial bottleneck. As part of this, Iām giving 20% of my donation budget to Giving What We Can. In my view, our multiplier at GWWC is exceptionally high, and Iāve written more about why I think effective giving organizations could do with more support here. While Iād love to give to other effective giving organizations, my role as Effective Giving Global Coordinator and Incubator means that I see value in avoiding any appearance of bias that could complicate my work.
Another clear decision for me this year is giving 20% to AIMās Incubated Charities Fund. Iāve had the privilege of working closely with AIM, and Iāve been consistently impressed by the rigor and ambition of their work. Their track record is very strong and I think that they are likely to continue incubating exceptionally high impact charities.
For the rest of my giving, Iāve leaned on recommendations from Giving What We Canās evaluator reports, filtered through my own values and priorities:
20% to GiveWellās All Grants Fund
10% to the EA Animal Welfare Fund and 10% to ACEās Movement Grants Program
Outside of my 10% pledge, Iāll give to Giving Greenās Grantmaking Fund to offset my annual carbon footprint and to a variety of animal welfare charities, inspired by FarmKindās Compassion Calculator, to offset the harm caused by my (minimal) animal product consumption as a vegetarian.
Thanks for this follow-up! In my view the key distinction is between:
Taking a lower-paying job for impact (opportunity cost)
Explicitly sacrificing part of your available salary (active sacrifice)
While both involve financial sacrifice for impact, only the second case counts towards the pledge. This is because pledge is specifically about donating a portion of the income you actually receive or could immediately receive in your current role. Itās not about the opportunity cost of career choices or hypothetical alternative salaries you could earn elsewhere.
So in your exampleāif someone has offers for $2X but takes a $X job for impact, this opportunity cost doesnāt count towards their pledge amount. The pledge would be calculated based on the $X they actually earn.
There are a few reasons for this approach:
Clarity and consistency in pledge calculations across different situations
Avoiding complex counterfactuals about alternative career paths
Maintaining the pledge as an active commitment to give from current income
Preserving the behavioural and advocacy benefits of regular giving
What are your thoughts on this distinction? Iām curious to hear your perspective on how we might better support people making career changes for impact while maintaining the integrity and clarity of the pledge.
I think that you raise a good point that in a partnership with fully shared finances and joint decision-making, thereās a reasonable argument that each partner could view their effective āpersonal incomeā as 50% of the household income. This could align with the spirit of the pledge, which is about committing a meaningful portion of oneās resources to helping others.
Another approach could be to sign the pledge together as a couple. Many GWWC members have found this to be a meaningful way to approach their giving as a couple. You can track your joint donations through a single pledge dashboard, making it easier to manage your giving together.
Ultimately, the goal of this advice is to help members stick to their plan of taking significant action to benefit others. All guidelines about how to calculate income should be thought of as serving that goal. In other words, our overall advice is to follow the spirit of the pledge, which is using a significant portion of oneās income to benefit others. We recognise that a simple rule wonāt work perfectly for all possible situations, and encourage pledgers to define 10% of income in the way that makes sense to them.
Hey @PabloAMC šø! Thanks for the question. We think direct work at a charity or nonprofit can be extremely impactful! However, your pledged amount does not change depending on your workplace or occupation. Those of us who work for nonprofits, even if we left higher-paying jobs to do so, still donate our pledged amounts.
If your giving pledge is preventing you from doing more impactful work then it might be appropriate to resign from your pledge. Read more about this in āHow permanent is a giving pledge?ā.
Great post! At GWWC weāre currently looking for pledgers excited to help us shape our new Pledge Advocacy Programme.
Weāve found that word of mouth is one of the best ways for people to learn about the pledge! But, weāve also heard from many pledgers that it can be difficult to bring up the pledge in conversation so weāre launching a new Pledge Advocacy Programme to support our community members to have thoughtful conversations about pledging with their friends, family, and colleagues.
Weāre still in the pilot phase, but if youāre keen to help shape this exciting new initiative then please sign up here!
Hey @huw! Thanks for the question. My answer below should be read as guidance from a GWWC team member on how to interpret the 10% Pledge, but not as a formal or final position on what it means to stick to it.
We often hear from high-impact non-profit founders or employees (particularly those connected to AIM) that they are excited about effective giving and would love to take the šø10% Pledge, but havenāt done this (yet) mainly because they are already taking a lower salary at their organisation, and arenāt currently in a position to donate 10% of their remaining income.
In many cases, the above conclusion is based on misunderstandings about the 10% Pledge which are resulting in opportunities for impact being missed by people like yourself not pledging. For example, pledging would allow you to more effectively and authentically advocate for effective giving and the 10% Pledge among your peers. People founding /ā working at high-impact non-profits are often in a particularly valuable position to advocate, as their personal stories make them examples for others trying to live up to effective altruism principles and āpractising what they preachā.
To help clarify some of these misunderstandings, letās walk through a few options that could be worth considering for people like yourself founding or working at high-impact organisations:
Salary sacrificing: We think salary sacrificing can be perfectly in line with the spirit of the 10% Pledge if the following two conditions are both met:
You think your sacrificed money is best spent on the non-profit you are working for
I.e. you think you have at least as much impact by salary sacrificing as by taking the salary and then donating to any other non-profit (taking into account tax benefits and any other logistical considerations).
Some considerations here:This is a different question than asking whether your organisation is the highest-impact place to work for you.
E.g. most people would agree GiveDirectly is a high-impact organisation and for many employees it may be the highest-impact place to work, but they may still think that their marginal dollar is better spent donated to Malaria Consortium.
If your organisation is not currently as funding constrained as some others, your money may have a larger impact elsewhere (itās worth thinking about funging in this case).
From a communications/āadvocacy perspective (for instance, āputting your money where your mouth isā) it may sometimes be higher-impact donating (at least some money) to another organisation than your own (or vice versa).
You would have received the sacrificed money for the job you are currently doing, if you hadnāt explicitly decided to sacrifice it, and are able to receive it at any point in the future if you wish.
For example, this condition is met when:
As an employee, you have it listed in your contract or in your organisationās internal accounts that your salary is X, but then instruct your employer to only pay out 90% of X to you. At any point in the future, you could instruct your employer to start paying you X instead and they would do so.
As a founder, you have the explicit ability to pay yourself X (e.g. your co-founder, board and funders approve of you doing this), but then decide to only pay yourself 90% of X. At any point in the future, you are able to pay yourself X if you wish.
For example, this condition is not met when:
Youāve founded or taken a job at a high-impact non-profit, knowing that you could have instead taken a higher-paying job elsewhere.
Youāre confident you could have negotiated a higher salary with your employer, or paid yourself more as a founder, but havenāt formally checked or arranged this in any way.
Donating less now but still taking the 10% Pledge: A common misconception about the 10% Pledge is that it would oblige you to give 10% every year. Instead, it is a lifetime pledge, so itās fine if you donate a bit less in some years and more in others to make up for that.
We obviously only recommend doing this if youāre confident you can and want to make the 10% lifetime commitment, and where feasible we still generally recommend people to give at least 10% yearly as a useful rule of thumb. This holds you accountable, embeds a pattern of giving in your life and avoids you getting so far behind on your pledge that it becomes daunting or unachievable. But we think there are cases, e.g. for some very early stage non-profit founders and/āor when youāre having a particularly challenging year financially, where it may be worth diverging from this rule of thumb.
Taking a š¹Trial Pledge: If youāre not ready to take a 10% Pledge but are excited to start giving effectively, consider taking a š¹Trial Pledge (1-10% pledge for 6 months to 5 years), which still allows you to lead by example and additionally can serve as a helpful reminder to reconsider taking the 10% Pledge (or another Trial Pledge) at a later date.
Interesting view, but I have a different perspective based on my experience in the effective giving and AIM startup space. I havenāt observed organisations being pushed toward premature scaling or unnecessary short-term funding growth. In fact, Iāve seen quite different dynamics at play often pushing in the opposite direction. Would be curious to hear specific examples from others where theyāve seen this pattern occur?
One concern Iāve got about this model for funding EA groups is about the incentive structure this creates. While member donations could provide useful feedback, this might lead community builders to optimise for member satisfaction rather than impact. A group running popular social events might receive more donations than one doing the harder work of developing peopleās capabilities to tackle pressing challenges.
The ultimate measure of an EA groupās success should be its ability to develop capable individuals who can contribute meaningfully to improving the world. This might require not running popular programs that increase immediate member satisfaction.
FWIW I completely agree that EA uni groups should be able to fund themselves a fair bit like most other uni groups and societies do. Definitely worth having āscholarshipā options for those who request it, but the default should be that these EA uni groups do whatever is ānormalā for socialites at their university. I also think that this would go some way to make EA seems less weird.
Thank you for raising this important point about double-counting, Ian! This is something we go to great pains to avoid when evaluating the counterfactual impact of fundraising efforts in the effective giving space. For example, weāre careful not to count donations that would have happened anyway or were primarily inspired by other organisations when accounting for our own organisationās counterfactual multiplier.
Where I see it a bit differently is around the question of individual impact credit. Rather than worrying about dividing up credit between meta-donors and direct donors, I think what matters most is maximising our collective impact as a community. When you donate to an EG organisation, you might indeed be counterfactually responsible for 2x or more money going to effective charitiesāand so too are the people who choose to donate after learning about effective charities through your meta-donation. Since weāre all working toward the same goal of maximising good done, this isnāt a zero-sum game where we need to divide up credit.
This accounting question really only becomes crucial when we need to make decisions about where to direct scarce fundingāwe want to fund the organisations that will be most effective at growing the total pool of donations to effective charities.
That said, I think your approach of allocating 15% to evaluators makes a lot of practical sense as a way to sustainably support the ecosystem. It aligns nicely with the thrust of Ollie Baseās argument in his post āConsider donating to whoever helped youā while avoiding getting too caught up in precise impact attribution. And as you note, GiveWellās excess funds regranting policy makes this particularly straightforward in their case and this policiy is something we are working to put in place at GWWC too.
Hey @Henri Thunberg šø really exciting that youāll be making a donation in this space. Happy to talk this through with you if youād like :) Iāve DMād you :)
In some ways this level of advising was what @Spencer R. Ericson šø was trying to do with SoGive. Although, theyāve now pivoted as I think there was not sufficient interest or willingness to pay from this size of donor. See this post on SoGiveās expanded advising and custom research service (I think now outdated).
Iāve already seen all the GWWC stuff (and think itās awesome!), but seeing your more recent work on GCR visualisations reminded me how much we lost with you moving on from GWWCā¦ and how much youāre now bringing to the rest of the EA space! Absolutely fantastic work :)
I completely agree that focusing on pledges for students over direct fundraising is a good idea! In our latest internal impact evaluation (2022) at GWWC we found that each new 10% Pledge results in roughly $100,000 USD donated to high impact funding opportunities over the lifetime of the pledge (and we conservatively estimate that ~1/ā5 of that is counterfactual). Because of this, in my view focusing on promoting pledges is the more impactful path as one single 10% Pledge would raise more in the longrun as the most successful student fundraising campaign imaginable. It also has the added benefit of making a clear case for effective and significant giving which I think helps to promote positive values in the world and demonstrates the kind of principles that we care about in the EA community.
OTOH I think that often people feel like students might not feel able to make such a big commitment. However, I think that this is a little overcautious. I took the 10% Pledge as a student and found giving incredibly manageable. The 10% Pledge encouraged students to aim for about 1% of their spending money, which for me amounted to roughly Ā£100 a yearāless than the cost of a couple of pints each month. It was easy and, honestly, it felt really rewarding. Getting into the habit of giving early on has been very helpful as well. It became a core part of my identity, something I felt really proud of. Once I started working full-time, giving 10% of my income was easy. I simply was able to set it aside each month and hardly noticed it was gone. Since I had never been accustomed to that extra 10%, Iāve never felt like I was sacrificing anything.
Hey! Glad you want to bring more effective giving into your uni group. I myself took the 10% Pledge as student and still think it was amongst the best decisions Iāve ever made :)
I now work at Giving What We Can and weāve developed a guide for how we can support /ā collaborate with EA groups to further our shared mission of spreading the ideas of effective giving, and effective altruism more broadly. Iāve DMād you a link
Yield & Spread from Rebecca Herbst is the closet thing to this I know of. Not sure if sheās tried anything else with the FIRE community.
Hey Squeezy! Iām really sorry, but weāre not going to be able to do this right now as we donāt have the data from these organisations or it would take too long to categorise it at this point. Here you can find out more information about Open Philanthropy and Manifundās allocations. Unfortunately we donāt have the data on other organisations.
You likely wonāt be applying to the Meta Charity Funders for this project, but I think that they have pretty good general tips on how to approach writing grant applications. This forum post has some of the key points.
Hey Joe, this is a really interesting idea! Iād love to dig in more and explore how Iāand the broader effective giving sectorāmight support it. I work as the Effective Giving Global Coordinator and Incubator at Giving What We Can, helping connect and support effective giving initiatives.
I think the best audience for this could be self-improvement enthusiastsāpeople who follow pop psychology and are drawn to giving as a way to boost wellbeing (e.g., Laurie Santosā Happiness Lab listeners, Atomic Habits readers, etc.). Framing it as a daily micro-donationāāthe cost of a cup of coffeeā to a pre-vetted high-impact charityācould really work.
Would love to chat more. Feel free to book a time here: Calendly link or email me at lucas.moore@givingwhatwecan.org!