As part of Giving Season, we’re sharing where our team is giving this year, and a little bit about how they currently think about their donations.
Currently, all staff at Giving What We Can have taken the 10% Pledge to give at least 10% of their income to effective charities until they retire.
In December, I’ll be doing donations as gifts for my close friends and family via Effective Altruism Australia who are producing digital cards. Those donations will go to a mix of GiveWell’s Top Charities and GiveDirectly.
I’m also planning to make a donation to GiveWell’s All Grants Fund. I think the approach of looking for excellent opportunities outside of the Top Charities really makes sense - and I’m impressed with the grants given so far!
I’ll also be donating over and above my 10% Pledge to Effective Altruism Australia Environment’s Fund of effective climate change charities to offset my CO2 from travel.
This year, I’m giving 20% of my income—double my 🔸10% Pledge.
I believe that growing the total amount of money directed toward high-impact charities is a crucial bottleneck. As part of this, I’m giving 20% of my donation budget to Giving What We Can. In my view, our multiplier at GWWC is exceptionally high, and I’ve written more about why I think effective giving organizations could do with more support here. While I’d 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 AIM’s Incubated Charities Fund. I’ve had the privilege of working closely with AIM, and I’ve 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, I’ve leaned on recommendations from Giving What We Can’s evaluator reports, filtered through my own values and priorities:
Outside of my 10% pledge, I’ll give to Giving Green’s Grantmaking Fund to offset my annual carbon footprint and to a variety of animal welfare charities, inspired by FarmKind’s Compassion Calculator, to offset the harm caused by my (minimal) animal product consumption as a vegetarian.
I’ve been on a real journey with my giving this year. I previously donated exclusively to the GiveWell All Grants fund. This had five key benefits:
This year I’ve changed my donations a couple of times, but now the split looks like this.
Why this split?
Effective Animal Advocacy Fund: Having been exposed to the ideas behind animal welfare as an important cause area which is big, tractable and unpopular, I felt duty bound to support this cause.
Risk and Resilience Fund: Whilst I think the likelihood of things like rogue AI, Nuclear Weapons and species threatening pandemics are probably quite low, I am convinced by the argument that the impact should they happen would be unimaginably bad. So I have apportioned some of my donation here.
AIM Incubated Charities: I had the pleasure of meeting many of the AIM Incubated Charity teams this year, including Suvita. I was so impressed and whilst I think they’re much higher risk than the likes of GiveWell Top Charities, their potential for impact exceeds those recommendations. I view this as diversifying my risk profile in my giving.
GiveDirectly: I have long admired GiveDirectly, ever since I was involved in setting up cash transfer programming and coordination back in 2018 whilst working at Save the Children. I think they do brilliant work. I stopped donating to them because they were judged not to be as impactful as GiveWell’s top charities, but I have started again because 1) they have recently been re-evaluated more positively and 2) I am convinced that saving lives is important, but that the quality of those lives matters too. I am sold on the importance of human dignity.
Giving What We Can: At the moment we have a pretty impressive multiplier effect. For every $ donated to us, we’re able to generate over $10 more for effective charities. This is pretty amazing and made me want to sacrifice my salary back to the organisation which I’m so proud to work for.
Like last year, I’ve capped my salary at GWWC to €25k/y, so my largest donation is ~€50k to GWWC. I believe we currently have a good multiplier on marginal funding, and it’s very tax-efficient to reduce my salary instead of donating.
Other than that, this year I gave €6.5k to FarmKind as part of their seed funding from the AIM/CE Seed Network, with the hope that one day their multiplier effect could be even greater than ours.
First of all, how is it December already? The holidays are almost here, and while I'm dreaming of cozy evenings with loved ones and non-alcoholic mulled cider, there's one December task I refuse to procrastinate on (unlike my Christmas shopping): my 2024 donations.
I have a selfish reason to write this section of the post: The 10% Pledge and public accountability help ensure I don’t rack up donation debt.
Working at GWWC has also shifted how I think about personal giving. My biggest impact comes from my work at GWWC, which gives me the privilege to let both effectiveness and personal meaning guide my personal donation choices. Here’s where my donations are headed in 2024:
Not to toot our own horns - I genuinely believe in GWWC's recommendations (check out our fresh 2024 recommendations if you haven’t already!). This is actually lower than my previous years as I feel more freedom to be more experimental with my personal giving as I work at GWWC.
This one’s also close to my heart. The Charity Box Fund currently features six programs across health, education, and gender in China. I've been following their newsletter and am consistently impressed by their work. Being Chinese, supporting impactful work in my home country feels personally meaningful and motivating.
I set aside this portion for responding to immediate needs throughout the year - like disaster relief or helping someone in crisis. While these donations may not be the most cost-effective, these responsive donations are important for my giving.
A conservation charity in Southwest China doing cool work. I particularly appreciate their approach of combining rigorous research with public engagement and sustainable development through community-based initiatives.
I haven’t yet made my full donation allocation decisions for this year, and expect to do this during an in-person “pledge party” event we’ll be having with a group of friends and acquaintances who’ve also pledged in the Netherlands next week. During this event we’ll collectively discuss, decide/act on and celebrate our donation allocations and whether we’ll renew/increase our pledges.
Two things I have already decided on:
After seeing how well Giving What We Can performed in recent evaluations (both internal and from external reviews), I've changed my approach to donations this year. The impressive giving multiplier effect convinced me to commit 5% of my income to the organisation as salary sacrifice. But I still want to stay actively involved in choosing where some of my donations go, so I'm keeping another 5% to donate directly to causes I care about. Like last year, part of this is going to the Humane League - animal welfare remains super important to me.
For the rest I wanted to try something different and get my family involved in choosing where to give. Convinced by conversations at an EA Switzerland Giving Celebration, I picked up eight 500 CHF donation vouchers from Effektiv Spenden during the event. My plan is to hand these out during the holidays and have my family and friends help choose where the money should go by redeeming them through Effektiv Spenden's platform. I'm hoping this will spark some interesting conversations about giving or pledging and maybe even get them thinking about their donations - topics that don't usually come up naturally around the dinner table.
Once I wrap up my taxes early next year and have my final income figures, I'll check if I've hit my pledged amount. If I'm still a bit short, I'll probably donate the remainder to support Effektiv Spenden's operations. They're doing fantastic work, and their impact evaluation backs that up. I also think there is much potential to grow effective giving in the German speaking region.