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Grace Adams

August Newsletter 2022

Hello and welcome to our August Newsletter!

August has been a big month for effective giving and Giving What We Can! We launched our new 

 in partnership with Longview Philanthropy, 

 to its top charities and a new fund, and our co-founder William MacAskill released his new book, 

; we’d love you to apply if you’d like to grow your advocacy for effective giving. A 

new tool to make volunteering with Giving What We Can easier

 has also been launched. Check out the tool to see what volunteering opportunities are available. They range from short tasks to longer engagements.

We also had our new Director of Research, Sjir Hoeijmakers, join our team this month. Sjir previously worked at Founders Pledge as a Senior Researcher. We’re excited for him to get started!

The Longtermism Fund directs funding to highly effective organisations working to safeguard the long-term future of humanity. These organisations generally work to reduce the global catastrophic and existential risks that face humanity, though the fund also supports work that improves, promotes, and implements 

Changes over at GiveWell and what this means for us

 that it is changing the criteria for its top charities. As part of this change, it is raising its cost-effectiveness bar and lowering its risk tolerance.

The higher cost-effectiveness bar means that GiveDirectly is no longer listed as a GiveWell top charity,  and the change in confidence interval means that the deworming programs previously listed as GiveWell Top Charities are no longer listed. This does not, however, represent a change in GiveWell’s opinion of the cost effectiveness of these charities.

At Giving What We Can, we are updating our recommended charities in line with the changes from GiveWell, but still support GiveDirectly and the deworming programs from Evidence Action, The END Fund, Sightsavers and SCI Foundation on 

 for further information about our response and to see responses from partner charities.

William MacAskill’s new book was released in the US on the 16th of August and is being released in the UK on the 1st of September.

, William makes the case for longtermism, the view that positively influencing the long-term future is a key moral priority of our time. See Giving What We Can researcher Michael Townsend’s 

review and summary of What We Owe The Future

The Giving What We Can team is excited to see that the importance of safeguarding the long-term future is being shared with a wider audience. William has been interviewed on many prominent podcasts and media outlets including 

. These articles and podcasts are very accessible introductions to these ideas and super easy to share with friends, family, colleagues and anyone else you have in mind!

If you’d like to buy the book, you can do so on 

-Grace Adams & the rest of the Giving What We Can team



August Newsletter Summary

Member Toby Stavely shared a great way to involve the whole family in giving decisions!

For both September meetups, we will be joined by 

, a freelance philanthropic advisor, who will talk a bit about what this entails, and is happy to answer any specific questions that people might have.

 (New York: 6:00 pm; San Francisco: 3:00 pm, Sydney: Sun, Sep 4, 8:00 am, Auckland: Sun, Sep 4 10:00 am)

 (London: 10:30 am, Munich: 11:30 am, Mumbai: 3:00 pm, Singapore: 5:30 pm)

Our open forum is an event where you can come along with questions about effective giving and/or to meet others interested in effective giving. This event alternates between different timezones each month.

 (Sydney 10:30 am, Singapore 8:30 am, Auckland 12:30 pm)

Update to our recommended Global Health and Development charities

Using expected value when donating to charity — and day-to-day

What We Owe the Future: A review and summary of what I learned

, Michael Townsend, Researcher at Giving What We Can

The journey to founding one of the world’s most effective charities

: The story of Rob Mather and the founding of the Against Malaria Foundation - 

Making it easier for great charities to exist

: Interview with Joey Savoie, CEO and co-founder of Charity Entrepreneurship - 

Funding projects to save future generations at Longview Philanthropy

: Interview with Simran Dhaliwal, ​​co-CEO of Longview Philanthropy - 

Find audio-only versions of our new YouTube content on the 

The story of Rob Mather and the Against Malaria Foundation: 

the journey to founding one of the world’s most effective charities

Inside the Growing Movement to Do the Most Good Possible

” - the cover story of Time magazine! This article about the effective altruism community features William MacAskill and was written by Naina Bajekal, an Executive Editor at Time who is a Giving What We Can pledger.

 how giving a personal TEDx talk at your university could engage and introduce more people to the principles behind effective altruism.

direct work doesn’t substitute for – but rather complements – effective giving

Centre for Effective Altruism has hired Shakeel Hashim as Head of Communications. This and other communications updates are 

 about effectively responding to an uptick in effective altruism coverage/interest and coordinating long-term effective altruism communications strategies.

 the launch of his book and invites forum readers to ask him anything!

 to its top charity criteria and the creation of a new 

, a Charitable Incorporated Organisation in the United Kingdom and the official UK partner of GiveWell. Donors in the UK now have a tax-deductible option for giving directly to GiveWell, and GiveWell UK may claim Gift Aid on eligible donations.

, highlighting a record $595 million in funds raised.

Giving What We Can and Longview Philanthropy 

Animal Charity Evaluators’ top and standout charities 

 on what they’ve been able to accomplish with ACE’s grant money.

 to lead its in-house recruiting team. It also 

 for bilingual people interested in translating EA-related web content to languages other than English.

 on an initiative to ban factory farming in Switzerland. Sentience Politics, an 

, is one of the organisations responsible for launching the initiative.

Faunalytics is hosting a remote symposium on September 8th that will feature 10-minute presentations of original animal advocacy research related to farmed animals, companion animals, wild animals, and animals used in science. 

GiveDirectly and Evidence Action responded to GiveWell’s top charity updates:

Why giving directly still means giving well

A Change in Designation, Not Evaluation: Deworm the World and GiveWell’s Top Charity Updates

Malaria Consortium reported that The Nigeria End Malaria Council, which aims to help the National Malaria Elimination Program end malaria in Nigeria by 2030, 

 the receipt of $35 million in grants from Open Philanthropy and GiveWell, which will allow it to expand its routine childhood vaccination cash incentive program in Nigeria.

Two great articles on longtermism by Will MacAskill:

What is longtermism and why does it matter?

Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security 

Identifying Operational Challenges and Solutions During the COVID-19 Response Among US Public Health Laboratories

 by setting up a recurring donation to a highly-effective charity today! 

 to help grow our community and multiply your impact.

 with Giving What We Can and effective altruism.

Discuss effective giving and effective altruism on the 

 for more news and articles.

Do you have questions about the pledge, Giving What We Can, or effective altruism in general? Check out our 

Giving What We Can

has announced a change to their list of top charities

 to list charities that they believe have highly cost-effective marginal funding opportunities, and also have high confidence that funding will result in significant impact.

They are also introducing a new fund, the 

, that will support exciting opportunities outside of their 

. We intend to support this new fund and make it available through Giving What We Can in the coming weeks.


GiveWell is currently our primary evaluation partner for our 

Giving What We Can’s charity inclusion criteria

 the charities that no longer meet GiveWell’s Top Charity criteria will now become 

, which means you can still donate to them via the 

We are excited to have a new Director of Research, Sjir Hoeijmakers, joining our team in August and we plan to review our evaluation and inclusion criteria in the coming months.

As we review and make any changes to our evaluation process or inclusion criteria, we will communicate to our members and donors.

At Giving What We Can, we are excited to see new options to support organisations that aim to most effectively improve the lives of others, like GiveWell’s All Grants Fund.

We also recognise the enormous opportunity there is to improve the lives of others through giving effectively, and we hope our community is excited to continue with us on this path.

GiveDirectly have shared an update in response to GiveWell's annoucement - 

Luke Freeman

Joey Savoie: Making it easier for great charities to exist

In this interview, we chat to Joey Savoie, CEO and co-founder of Charity Entrepreneurship, an incubator that helps launch high-impact nonprofits by connecting entrepreneurs with effective ideas, training, and funding. Joey provides an overview of Charity Entrepreneurship and the problems they're working to solve; he also shares his thoughts on the charity sector, the concept of efficacy, and the role altruism plays in his life.

 has helped launch 18 impactful nonprofits, which have reached over 5 million humans and improved the lives of 1.2 million animals.

You can donate to Charity Entrepreneurship via Giving What We Can.

00:00 - Introduction to Joey and Charity Entrepreneurship

01:04 - The story behind Charity Entrepreneurship's founding

04:21 - Projects Charity Entrepreneurship has helped launch

07:05 - Cause areas Charity Entrepreneurship focuses on

08:48 - Charity Entrepreneurship's core propositions, benefits, and why donors might be interested in supporting the org

12:52 - What value can smaller donors bring to philanthropy?

15:29 - Joey's pitch that "efficacy" in charity can be evaluated, measured, and aimed for

17:39 - Some surprising realizations about the charitable sector

24:50 - What mistakes do people make when thinking about the concept of effectiveness, especially at first?

26:38 - Joey's relationship with altruism

28:07 - How would Joey spend a billion dollars?

Videographer and video editor: Andy Brice

Adam Steinberg 

If only we never had to make any choices. How easy, stress-free, and wonderfully 

 life would be. What’s for dinner? Whatever’s closest at hand. Where to invest my savings? Leave the money wherever it is and hope for the best.

But part of the condition of being a human adult is the need to make countless decisions, large and small, hoping always to choose the option with the most satisfying or beneficial outcome — or on occasion, the one that’s the “least worst.”

We make few of these decisions with complete knowledge about how our choice will turn out. We may be missing crucial information, or the decision may rely on elements that are unpredictable — like the weather or others’ behaviour.

When even the most momentary of choices, like what clothes to put on in the morning, can involve juggling a host of considerations (the aforementioned weather, your plans, your mood, what matches what…), the complexity and uncertainty of truly impactful decisions, like choosing a career or how to navigate a difficult personal relationship, can seem monumental.

In the face of so much uncertainty, how do we avoid simply curling up under the bed and never coming out? Here’s the marvel: Even with all the noise, we are nearly always able to make a choice, and often, it works out okay. This is because — likely, without even knowing it — we are applying the concept of 

Expected value is a method of deciding among options that considers what positive and negative outcomes are possible, and weighs these so that more likely outcomes have a stronger influence on the decision. In simplest mathematical terms, this is “the probability multiplied by the value of each outcome.”

Whether choosing a house or choosing a sandwich, we ask, in short, 

Am I satisfied that the potential benefits, especially the most likely ones, outweigh the potential downsides, ditto?

In everyday life, we might base our conclusion on vague speculations of what success or failure might look like. However, if you can quantify potential outcomes in some way, you can actually estimate what the best decision might be, using mathematics.

Let’s look at an example, albeit not one you should necessarily try at home.

 of regular commuters in the New York subway save a lot of money by jumping the turnstile. It’s not that they never get caught; it’s that they know they’ll be caught rarely enough that, in the long run, they’ll save more by paying fines than if they bought tickets. In fact, in 2011 a 

 showed regular jumpers were only caught about once every 6 to 13 weeks. Let’s do the (rough) math:

Blog

August Newsletter 2022

Update to our recommended Global Health and Development charities

Joey Savoie: Making it easier for great charities to exist

Using expected value when donating to charity — and day-to-day

What We Owe The Future: A review and summary of what I learned

Simran Dhaliwal: Funding projects to save future generations at Longview Philanthropy

Member Profile: Peter Jensen

Member Profile: Rupal Ismin

July Newsletter 2022

Do many charities fail to help people?