Wondering what it's like to pledge to give more, and give more effectively?
Read our member stories and quotes.
| Member Name | Date of Story | Location | Pledge | Short Bio |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Christoph Hartmann | May 2024 | Amsterdam | The Pledge 2015 | CTO of CarePay |
| Michael Scott | March 2023 | Amberg, Germany | The Pledge 2022 | U.S. Army Infantry Platoon Leader |
| Luke Furness | February 2023 | Brisbane, Australia | The Pledge 2022 | Lawyer |
| Sam Voigt | January 2023 | Cape Town, South Africa | The Pledge 2022 | Software engineer |
| Forrest Wells | January 2023 | Colorado, USA | The Pledge 2022 | Doctor |
| Meera Bradley | December 2022 | Madison, WI, USA | The Pledge 2022 | Computer Science undergrad |
| Timeo Williams | October 2022 | Mexico City, Mexico | The Pledge 2022 | Software developer |
| Fernando Martin-Gullans | September 2022 | Houston, Texas, USA | The Pledge 2020 | Professional dancer |
| Peter Jensen | August 2022 | Richmond, Virginia, USA | The Pledge 2022 | Veteran |
| Rupal Ismin | August 2022 | Sydney, Australia | The Pledge 2022 | Director of Research Commercialisation |
| Vasco Grilo | June 2022 | Portugal | The Pledge 2021 | GWWC volunteer |
| Sonia Albrecht | May 2022 | Davis, California, USA | The Pledge 2020 | Disability advocate, student |
| Martin Skadal | April 2022 | Norway | The Pledge 2021 | Social Entrepreneur |
| Henry Howard | February 2022 | Victoria, Australia | The Pledge 2021 | Medical Doctor |
| Adriana Saso-Graves | February 2022 | Saint Paul, Minnesota, USA | The Pledge 2022 | Data Science and Machine Learning |
| Chris Carpenter | February 2022 | Toronto, Ontario, Canada | Company Pledge 2021 | Carpenter |
| Andrew Leeke | October 2021 | London, England, UK | The Pledge 2016 | Operations associate |
| Rick Holland | October 2021 | London, England, UK | The Pledge 2021 | Director of Confident Philanthropy |
| Oliver Base | September 2021 | London, England, UK | The Pledge 2017 | Research analyst at Longview Philanthropy |
| Rickey Fukazawa | July 2021 | London, England, UK | The Pledge 2019 | Physical education teacher |
| Achim Fischbach | April 2021 | Munich, Germany | The Pledge 2020 | MBA student |
| Sonya and Carl Christensen | April 2021 | New York, NY, USA | The Pledge 2017 | Retired librarian and social worker |
| Felix Werdermann | April 2021 | Berlin, Germany | The Pledge 2016 | Consultant |
| Carlos Tkacz | March 2021 | Las Vegas, NV, USA | The Pledge 2020 | Teacher |
| Nick Dudley | February 2021 | San Luis Obispo, CA, USA | The Pledge 2021 | |
| John Yan | January 2021 | Mountain View, CA, USA | The Pledge 2020 | Software engineer at Facebook |
| Nathan Golden | January 2021 | Mars, PA, USA | The Pledge 2020 | Middle School Math Teacher and Research Associate at The UBI Center |
| Marcus Daniell | January 2021 | Wellington, New Zealand | The Pledge 2021 | Olympian tennis player with 5 ATP titles |
| Jesper Cockx | December 2020 | Delft, Netherlands | The Pledge 2017 | Assistant professor at the programming languages group |
| Alexandra Berlina | December 2020 | Düsseldor, Germany | The Pledge 2017 | Freelance translator & interpreter |
| Pippa Gilbert | December 2020 | The Hague, Netherlands | The Pledge 2020 | Analyst for an international organisation |
| Michael Aird | November 2020 | Perth, WA, Australia | The Pledge 2019 | Summer Research Fellow at Center on Long-Term Risk |
| Catherine Thomas | October 2020 | Palo Alto, CA, USA | The Pledge 2015 | PhD student in social and cultural psychology from California who has worked in global health and international development for 11 years. |
| Pablo Ollier | September 2020 | Billom, France | The Pledge 2020 | Philosophy teacher and competitive chess player |
| Heather McLaughlin | July 2020 | Taree, NSW, Australia | The Pledge 2012 | Retired teacher who continues to give 10-14% of her retirement income to effective charities |
| Sophia Cheng | July 2020 | London, England, UK | The Pledge 2020 | |
| Andy Trattner | May 2020 | San Francisco, CA, USA | The Pledge 2020 | Engineer and writer |
| Arvind Raghavan | January 2020 | London, England, UK | The Pledge 2016 | Product manager at Citi |
| Allan Saldanha | November 2019 | London, England, UK | The Pledge 2014 | Audit manager |
| Insa Männel | October 2019 | Osnabrück, Germany | The Pledge 2017 | Referendarin at the Landgericht Kleve |
| Jo Duyvestyn | August 2019 | Leiden, Netherlands | The Pledge 2014 | Researcher and PhD candidate at Leiden University Medical Center |
| Mathias Kirk Bonde | May 2019 | Frederiksberg, Denmark | The Pledge 2018 | Mathias Kirk Bonde is a software developer at IBM Denmark |
| Catherine Low | April 2019 | Christchurch, New Zealand | The Pledge 2015 | Former physics teacher who now works in groups support at the Centre for Effective Altruism |
| Max Ghenis | January 2019 | Oxnard, CA, USA | The Pledge 2019 | Founder and President of the UBI Center |
| Matthew Allcock | July 2017 | Sheffield, England, UK | The Pledge 2017 | Natural hazards researcher at EDF Energy |
| Erwan Atcheson | January 2017 | Belfast, Northern Ireland, UK | The Pledge 2013 | Research Scientist at Queen's University Belfast |
| d'Arcy Lunn | January 2016 | Blewitt Springs, SA, Australia | The Pledge 2015 | Group head of sustainability and global citizenship at Dulwich College International |
| Ali Ladak | December 2015 | Brighton and Hove, England, UK | The Pledge 2015 | |
| Julia Wise | December 2015 | Somerville, MA, USA | The Pledge 2012 | Community health liaison and former social worker |
| Mark Barnes | August 2015 | London, England, UK | The Pledge 2015 | Mark Barnes is a travel blogger at Anywhere We Roam |
| Elizabeth Barnes | July 2015 | Devon, England, UK | The Pledge 2014 | Researcher at OpenAI |
| Toby Ord | July 2015 | Oxford, England, UK | Further Pledge 2009 | Co-founder of Giving What We Can, philosopher, author of The Precipice, and a researcher at Future of Humanity Institute |
| Coralie Oddy | June 2015 | London, England, UK | The Pledge 2015 | Speech and language therapist at ReminiSense |
| Katherine Steiner | February 2015 | Oxford, England, UK | The Pledge 2014 | Assistant librarian at the Bodleian Education Library |
| Sashika Coxhead | July 2014 | London, England, UK | The Pledge 2013 | Doctor at Homerton University Hospital |
| Parmeet Shah | June 2014 | Mumbai, Maharashtra, India | The Pledge 2014 | Director of marketing at Marathon Realty Ltd. and the Chief Executive Officer of NEXT School Mumbai |
| Lee Bishop | April 2013 | Edinburgh, Scotland, UK | The Pledge 2010 | Senior program manager at Amazon |
| Boris Yakubchik | February 2013 | Morganville, NJ, USA | The Pledge 2013 | Developer at Forbes in Jersey City, NJ. |
| Richard Chappell | November 2010 | Miami, FL, USA | The Pledge 2010 | Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University of Miami |
Have you shared your story? Let us know!
| Quote | Member | Location | Bio | Pledge |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| It’s felt extraordinary to be part of a growing movement to try to structurally address those problems with the resources we have available… Now at 10 years on, with Giving What We Can having now having 5,000 taking that pledge, and being part of a larger and flourishing effective altruism movement, it seems like we’re really succeeding… To pause in reflecting on this particular moment in 2020, it feels in some ways a stranger and darker time than the period in which we were setting up to create this movement. But I really think that we’re positioned as effective altruists to be a constructive force for change in the years ahead. | Peter Eckersley | Expert in law and computer science, who has worked with the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Partnership on AI | The Pledge 2009 | |
| I had just been paid more money per hour than my friends and colleagues in Kyrgyzstan earned in a month, but here’s the thing - I didn’t work harder than my friends, I wasn’t smarter, I didn’t work longer hours. The only difference between us was where we were born. | d'Arcy Lunn | Blewitt Springs, SA, Australia | Group head of sustainability and global citizenship at Dulwich College International | The Pledge 2015 |
| I date the start of the Effective Altruism movement from the founding of Giving What We Can. I'm delighted that it has now reached the significant milestone of 5000 members, because that means a very significant sum going to help the most effective charities. But let's not forget that GWWC has done so much more than that - it has been the spark for a movement that has inspired many more people to think about their charitable giving, and about the overall direction of their lives. | Peter Singer | Melbourne, VIC, Australia | Moral philosopher and author of books including Animal Liberation and The Life You Can Save | The Pledge 2009 |
| It’s a simple idea, but it is inspiring large numbers of people, in dozens of countries, to live their lives differently, and it has already led to hundreds of millions of pounds being donated to more effective charities than would otherwise have been the case. The result is that those donations do much more good, saving the lives of many more people and reducing far more suffering than they otherwise would have done. | Peter Singer | Melbourne, VIC, Australia | Moral philosopher and author of books including Animal Liberation and The Life You Can Save | The Pledge 2009 |
| I'm motivated to give because there really are some cost-effective ways to improve the lives of those people and animals, now and into the future... This ability to improve lives makes giving feel to me both like a responsibility (with great power comes great responsibility) and like an exciting opportunity (which helps me perk myself up). | Michael Aird | Perth, WA, Australia | Summer Research Fellow at Center on Long-Term Risk | The Pledge 2019 |
| I took The Pledge because I want to increase the chance that I actually follow-through on my beliefs. Making a public pledge seems like a good way to do that. I hope it might cause some other people to also consider giving effectively. | Michael Aird | Perth, WA, Australia | Summer Research Fellow at Center on Long-Term Risk | The Pledge 2019 |
| In September 2012, I took the Giving When We Can pledge and have been supporting some of GiveWell’s top recommended charities, such as Against Malaria Foundation, Evidence Action, and GiveDirectly. | Heather McLaughlin | Taree, NSW, Australia | Retired teacher who continues to give 10-14% of her retirement income to effective charities | The Pledge 2012 |
| I'm motivated to give because of the simple fact that purely by luck, I have had health, modest wealth, and opportunity, while many others don't. | Heather McLaughlin | Taree, NSW, Australia | Retired teacher who continues to give 10-14% of her retirement income to effective charities | The Pledge 2012 |
| I look forward to the 10,000th member! I've always thought that effective giving is one of the most valuable ideas in EA and something that's worth putting more focus on, which was part of my thinking behind the annual EA survey. This growth in pledgers is heartening, and I hope it encourages EAs to spread that core, practical concept. | Tom Ash | Vancouver, BC, Canada | Founder of Rethink Charity | The Pledge 2010 |
| To my surprise I discovered there was an entire community of people who were keen on doing it seriously. I immediately felt at home. | Mathias Kirk Bonde | Frederiksberg, Denmark | Mathias Kirk Bonde is a software developer at IBM Denmark | The Pledge 2018 |
| No TV or other purchase could make up for the peace I gained through giving. | Mathias Kirk Bonde | Frederiksberg, Denmark | Mathias Kirk Bonde is a software developer at IBM Denmark | The Pledge 2018 |
| I think that people unfamiliar with giving not only miss out on the positive impact that we can have on the lives of others, but also the positive impact on ourselves. There is a strong satisfaction in doing what you think is good! | Pablo Ollier | Billom, France | Philosophy teacher and competitive chess player | The Pledge 2020 |
| The Giving What We Can Pledge helps me in giving efficiently and regularly. Together with Effective Altruism Funds, it is easy to make donations and track the progress of my pledge. | Pablo Ollier | Billom, France | Philosophy teacher and competitive chess player | The Pledge 2020 |
| Being born in Germany, I am in a very privileged situation and even if I donate one tenth of my income now, I am still part of the richest one percent in the world. | Felix Werdermann | Berlin, Germany | Consultant | The Pledge 2016 |
| If spending... can improve my life only marginally, and someone else's life considerably... then it makes more sense to spend it on someone else. I couldn't live with myself if I did nothing. | Alexandra Berlina | Düsseldor, Germany | Freelance translator & interpreter | The Pledge 2017 |
| ...it's crucial to give effectively, so that the money does the most good it can... | Alexandra Berlina | Düsseldor, Germany | Freelance translator & interpreter | The Pledge 2017 |
| I know that I am very lucky and well-situated […]. Because I am thankful, and because I know I did not earn my good fortune, I want to help others, too. | Achim Fischbach | Munich, Germany | MBA student | The Pledge 2020 |
| Of course, I could have donated by myself, but I liked the idea of genuinely committing to it and doing it together with others who share the same ideals. | Insa Männel | Osnabrück, Germany | Referendarin at the Landgericht Kleve | The Pledge 2017 |
| I’d always wanted to work out what the point of life was, and how I could help the world, so these ideas naturally resonated with me. | Parmeet Shah | Mumbai, Maharashtra, India | Director of marketing at Marathon Realty Ltd. and the Chief Executive Officer of NEXT School Mumbai | The Pledge 2014 |
| For me, when I first learned that I could save lives with just a small portion of my income, I felt really motivated, and I still do. | Jesper Cockx | Delft, Netherlands | Assistant professor at the programming languages group | The Pledge 2017 |
| Now my parents and my grandfather donate instead of giving me money for gifts and are really accepting, and I think they see the happiness I get from this community. | Jo Duyvestyn | Leiden, Netherlands | Researcher and PhD candidate at Leiden University Medical Center | The Pledge 2014 |
| I’ve found the community has helped me shape some of my thoughts that weren’t fully articulated: when you talk to people, you can understand more about your own values. | Jo Duyvestyn | Leiden, Netherlands | Researcher and PhD candidate at Leiden University Medical Center | The Pledge 2014 |
| I'm fortunate by accident of birth that I'm born European and I've got a decent income, and all the rest of it that we get through living in Europe. Huge numbers of people haven't had this luck and it's just very unfair. There's huge inequality across the world between those people who suffer terrible conditions and those who don't. As long as there's that huge inequality, then I am motivated to keep donating a part of my income. | Pippa Gilbert | The Hague, Netherlands | Analyst for an international organisation | The Pledge 2020 |
| At first it seemed a little weird: who just gives away thousands of dollars? But then it became normal. | Catherine Low | Christchurch, New Zealand | Former physics teacher who now works in groups support at the Centre for Effective Altruism | The Pledge 2015 |
| I feel emotionally attached to donating now, I get ‘warm fuzzies.’ | Catherine Low | Christchurch, New Zealand | Former physics teacher who now works in groups support at the Centre for Effective Altruism | The Pledge 2015 |
| The more I look into the charity world the more I realise that I won the birth lottery just by being born in a first world country. Compared to the global standard I have been extremely privileged my whole life. It makes sense that I should give a small portion of my own earnings to those who need it so much more than I do. | Marcus Daniell | Wellington, New Zealand | Olympian tennis player with 5 ATP titles | The Pledge 2021 |
| I want to set a positive example. I have a fervent hope that many others, both athletes and the general public, will join me in whichever way feels right for them. | Marcus Daniell | Wellington, New Zealand | Olympian tennis player with 5 ATP titles | The Pledge 2021 |
| Making a commitment public like this is a powerful way to hold oneself accountable. Now that I have told the world what I intend to do I expect to be called out if I don't do it. | Marcus Daniell | Wellington, New Zealand | Olympian tennis player with 5 ATP titles | The Pledge 2021 |
| Donating 10% of your income sounds scary, but it's really not scary at all. I don't need a fancy car or an expensive watch or even an extra barista-made coffee each day to be happy. Donating that 10% is not going to decrease my happiness, but it is going to make thousands of lives a whole lot better. | Marcus Daniell | Wellington, New Zealand | Olympian tennis player with 5 ATP titles | The Pledge 2021 |
| ...it is the only New Year’s pledge I have ever kept… It is a beautiful thing, that all that quick-fix chasing of chocolate, whiskey and cigarettes can be transformed, caterpillar-to-butterfly-like, into freedom from disease and escape from extreme poverty for someone you will never even meet. | Erwan Atcheson | Belfast, Northern Ireland, UK | Research Scientist at Queen's University Belfast | The Pledge 2013 |
| If I am normal — let’s assume I am — that means I drink one fewer pint per week, I buy rice that costs 90p instead of £1, I live in a house with 7.6 sq. m less space, my laptop is 2.5 months older than it might otherwise be, and I spend 84 pence less on my mobile phone bill per week. That’s not a comprehensive list, but it’s probably enough to give a sense of what the change in my lifestyle amounts to. | Erwan Atcheson | Belfast, Northern Ireland, UK | Research Scientist at Queen's University Belfast | The Pledge 2013 |
| Donating a part of my income to effective charities prevents the needless suffering of many individuals. | Ali Ladak | Brighton and Hove, England, UK | The Pledge 2015 | |
| For a long time I've felt that I wanted to do as much as I could to help others. I am incredibly lucky to have everything I need to have a fulfilling life, while so much of the world has so little. The ethos of effective altruism appealed to me immediately, but many of the things I learnt about how to actually do the most good surprised me. | Elizabeth Barnes | Devon, England, UK | Researcher at OpenAI | The Pledge 2014 |
| I’ve met a whole load of wonderful people who inspired me to do more of the things I knew I should do, including starting an effective altruism society at my college. | Elizabeth Barnes | Devon, England, UK | Researcher at OpenAI | The Pledge 2014 |
| There is nothing I could spend my pledge money on that would give me the satisfaction I experience through giving. | Lee Bishop | Edinburgh, Scotland, UK | Senior program manager at Amazon | The Pledge 2010 |
| It is astonishing that in such a generous country, where so many people give so much money, that so few people feel they understand which charities are the most cost-effective or best to give their money to. People will always be driven to give to causes that are close to their hearts or have touched them personally, but there can be huge differences between even similar charities in terms of the good that you can achieve by donating. | Lee Bishop | Edinburgh, Scotland, UK | Senior program manager at Amazon | The Pledge 2010 |
| By donating 10% of my income I can save lives with money that I don't need. There is nothing I could spend my pledge money on that would give me the sense of satisfaction or well being that I experience through giving. Supporting the most cost-effective charities has got me into work on Monday mornings when the prospect of stacking shelves, painting railings or calling customers didn't ignite me with passion. | Lee Bishop | Edinburgh, Scotland, UK | Senior program manager at Amazon | The Pledge 2010 |
| By donating 10% of my income to the most cost-effective charities I’m able to do good on a daily basis, even on an uneventful midweek day when I might otherwise not necessarily have ‘achieved’ anything worthwhile that day. | Lee Bishop | Edinburgh, Scotland, UK | Senior program manager at Amazon | The Pledge 2010 |
| The pledge comes out of my wages as soon as they are paid. Even when I first started working and I had a lower income than I do today, I was able to do everything my friends were doing (travel, buying a home, going out for dinner). Taking the pledge doesn't mean a monk-like life of sacrifice and it doesn't mean feeling guilty about every bit of indulgent spending. By having my pledge donation in place, I feel relaxed about indulging the rest of the time. | Lee Bishop | Edinburgh, Scotland, UK | Senior program manager at Amazon | The Pledge 2010 |
| I first read about Giving What We Can in a newspaper article almost 10 years ago. At the time, I strongly felt that I needed to do more to help others, but I wasn’t sure what to do. Giving What We Can provided guidance and inspiration that I needed — an easy-to-follow recipe for doing some good. I can honestly say that it has changed my life. Congratulations on 5000 members! | Derek Ball | Fife, Scotland, UK | Lecturer in the philosophy departments at the University of St Andrews | The Pledge 2010 |
| I started off by donating 10% of my income but soon increased the amount after realising that I could easily give away more. The following year I gave away 20%, the next I increased it to a third, then to 50%. This year I intend to give away 75%. | Allan Saldanha | London, England, UK | Audit manager | The Pledge 2014 |
| I realise I’m in a fortunate and privileged position financially to be able to do this. I earned good money for 15 years before taking the pledge and I have financial security including a significant sum in investments. I’m full of admiration for the many GWWC members who give away 10% when their incomes are at the national average or lower. Their dedication has motivated me to increase my own donations. | Allan Saldanha | London, England, UK | Audit manager | The Pledge 2014 |
| In the last tax year, I donated £63,000 including Gift Aid to charities and non-profits such as Malaria Consortium and the SCI Foundation through an organisation called Effective Altruism Funds. Givewell, a leading independent charity evaluator, estimates the cost of saving a child’s life is just $2,000 by donating to the Malaria Consortium, a charity which distributes preventive anti-malarial drugs to children in Asia and Africa. | Allan Saldanha | London, England, UK | Audit manager | The Pledge 2014 |
| As a father, I think the worst thing any parent can experience is to have to watch their child suffering or god forbid, dying. My children’s lives are priceless to me and so I find the opportunity to save someone else’s child’s life for less than £2,000 a compelling proposition. | Allan Saldanha | London, England, UK | Audit manager | The Pledge 2014 |
| I think it's a very fulfilling, meaningful thing to do for oneself. Let alone for the consequences it has for others. Thousands of people have done it without regret, and you could be one of them. | Andrew Leeke | London, England, UK | Operations associate | The Pledge 2016 |
| I had to put my money where my mouth was. | Andrew Leeke | London, England, UK | Operations associate | The Pledge 2016 |
| You won't regret it, and you'll have something that you can always fall back on as some way that you are making a difference to others in the world. It's a lifelong commitment, so it's definitely not something you should do without consideration, but yeah, if anyone's on the fence, I would just advise them to get off the fence and take The Giving What We Can Pledge. | Andrew Leeke | London, England, UK | Operations associate | The Pledge 2016 |
| Ten percent of my income goes to the Against Malaria Foundation and The Humane League. It is immensely compelling that for just a couple of thousand dollars, we can save a life, Raghavan says. I give an additional 1.5% to mindfulness communities. I think Zen is very relevant today, when a lot of things can keep us busy but don’t necessarily translate to meaning or connection. | Arvind Raghavan | London, England, UK | Product manager at Citi | The Pledge 2016 |
| Faced with a huge problem and no idea how to solve it, we either end up apathetic or cynical, or try our best without much impact. But here’s the thing – while poverty remains a huge problem, we are getting better and better at finding the best ways to solve it. | Coralie Oddy | London, England, UK | Speech and language therapist at ReminiSense | The Pledge 2015 |
| Suddenly my hopes and doubts weren’t fighting against one another, but working together. By critically examining how charities spend their money, I could choose to give to only the most effective. | Coralie Oddy | London, England, UK | Speech and language therapist at ReminiSense | The Pledge 2015 |
| I also decided I needed to give consistently, and hold myself accountable for doing what I’d always wanted – to make a difference, and to continue to make a difference throughout my life. | Coralie Oddy | London, England, UK | Speech and language therapist at ReminiSense | The Pledge 2015 |
| After giving away 10% of my salary, I’m still earning more than 99% of people in the world (you can see where you fit in with Giving What We Can’s calculator). | Coralie Oddy | London, England, UK | Speech and language therapist at ReminiSense | The Pledge 2015 |
| Now I know I am making a difference – most people could do the same. | Coralie Oddy | London, England, UK | Speech and language therapist at ReminiSense | The Pledge 2015 |
| I have pledged to give 10% of my lifetime earnings to these effective charities. And I will endeavour to do better than that. The immense benefits that some of the money I have earned can bring to individuals in poorer countries far outweigh the cost of having less money myself. In fact, the decision to donate 10% of lifetime earnings to the poorest people on the planet has come at no cost at all, for it has made me happier and given my life greater meaning. | Mark Barnes | London, England, UK | Mark Barnes is a travel blogger at Anywhere We Roam | The Pledge 2015 |
| There are so many pressing problems that it can often feel like it's insurmountable or we don't know how to get started. Giving What We Can is one of the best ways I've come across where you feel like you're making a difference. You can give to effective charities and feel like you're making progress | Oliver Base | London, England, UK | Research analyst at Longview Philanthropy | The Pledge 2017 |
| It's a rare community, a really special community of people dedicated to trying to make a difference, which is just hard to come across. | Oliver Base | London, England, UK | Research analyst at Longview Philanthropy | The Pledge 2017 |
| Sometimes I set aside a set amount of money that I might otherwise spend on other things I like, and I do end up giving because of the pledge. | Oliver Base | London, England, UK | Research analyst at Longview Philanthropy | The Pledge 2017 |
| I feel proud. I feel part of a really special community, and, most importantly, I feel like I'm helping make progress on the most pressing problems. | Oliver Base | London, England, UK | Research analyst at Longview Philanthropy | The Pledge 2017 |
| It creates a goal for some people, or an aspiration: but it's normalising giving at this level. | Rick Holland | London, England, UK | Director of Confident Philanthropy | The Pledge 2021 |
| One of the things that really impressed me about Giving What We Can is that you're encouraging the conversations with supporters, with donors, with partners, not only to give but also to make that a commitment. I think that's something that we need to have more of. | Rick Holland | London, England, UK | Director of Confident Philanthropy | The Pledge 2021 |
| I haven't found it yet, but I'm trying to find the sweet spot between all of that data and all of the emotion and figuring out how we combine all that. Finding the middle where people are not only giving what they can but giving as much as they can, rather than as little as they can. | Rick Holland | London, England, UK | Director of Confident Philanthropy | The Pledge 2021 |
| And it's one of the clearest things you can do, the most impactful things you can do, an actionable thing: because thinking is one part, but the action is really important. So I thought, "What can I do right now?" And I thought to myself: "I can give, okay, I'll give". I took The Pledge because I think Giving What We Can makes sense. It's a good pledge to have. | Rickey Fukazawa | London, England, UK | Physical education teacher | The Pledge 2019 |
| A pledge keeps you accountable, keeps you motivated and it's about a community that's involved in it, so they inspired me as well. | Rickey Fukazawa | London, England, UK | Physical education teacher | The Pledge 2019 |
| I think at any point in my life, because of the luck I have, just the fortunes I have, just being born in a fortunate family, no matter where I am in my career pathway, I'll always be able to give. | Rickey Fukazawa | London, England, UK | Physical education teacher | The Pledge 2019 |
| There’s no escaping the fact that money can make a huge impact: buying 10 years of deworming treatment for the cost of a latte seems like an unrivalled opportunity to me. | Sashika Coxhead | London, England, UK | Doctor at Homerton University Hospital | The Pledge 2013 |
| I don’t believe that extra 10% will increase my happiness significantly, and I certainly don’t think I will spend it on anything as valuable as multiple years of healthy life for another person. | Sashika Coxhead | London, England, UK | Doctor at Homerton University Hospital | The Pledge 2013 |
| Being part of Giving What We Can is a really fun and exciting part of my life: I get to hang out with friendly, like-minded people who are continually questioning and improving on the knowledge we have about the best ways to help others. | Sashika Coxhead | London, England, UK | Doctor at Homerton University Hospital | The Pledge 2013 |
| I’d like to see a world where using significant amounts of our wealth to help others is a completely normal thing to do, and being part of this community takes us one step closer to that. | Sashika Coxhead | London, England, UK | Doctor at Homerton University Hospital | The Pledge 2013 |
| It's like a tax I am choosing to pay. This year I have been successful, it's my duty to redistribute some of that success. | Sophia Cheng | London, England, UK | The Pledge 2020 | |
| I first came across Giving What We Can at a talk that I went to as an undergraduate at Oxford University. The talk was about 80,000 Hours and they mentioned The Pledge. So I’d already thought that I’d donate some proportion of my income to charity but hearing about Giving What We Can really helped me raise my ambitions to donate a significant portion of my income and also think really hard about the effectiveness of the charities that I was donating to. Both those ideas made a lot of sense to me and so I signed the Further Pledge while I was an undergraduate. Fast forward 10 years and now I really enjoy being part of the effective altruism community. Many of my close, best friends, and my colleagues are people that I’ve met through EA – and that all traces back to that first meeting about 80,000 Hours, and hearing about (and signing) the Further Pledge. | Habiba Islam | Oxford, England, UK | Advisor at 80,000 Hours | Further Pledge 2011 |
| I’d been topping up my donations each month to the 10% mark, when I’d got my paycheque and paid my rent, and I hadn’t had to change my behaviour or spending to accommodate it. All that I had was a deep satisfaction each month that my money was winging its way to charities that are making a real, personal difference to people’s lives. | Katherine Steiner | Oxford, England, UK | Assistant librarian at the Bodleian Education Library | The Pledge 2014 |
| It’s been really incredible watching GWWC grow from a few members early on to a 5,000 strong community. It’s really incredible how much people in our community donate and how much they think about how to use those donations to help people as much as possible. I really feel it’s helped me to live up to my values and I hope it’ll make a better world for [my son] Leo to grow up in. | Michelle Hutchinson | Oxford, England, UK | Head of Advising at 80,000 Hours | The Pledge 2011 |
| I’m so excited that Giving What We Can is over 200 times larger than when we launched 10 years ago. It’s overwhelming to be part of such a large and friendly community of people, all striving to make the world a much better place. | Toby Ord | Oxford, England, UK | Co-founder of Giving What We Can, philosopher, author of The Precipice, and a researcher at Future of Humanity Institute | Further Pledge 2009 |
| I discovered that by donating a portion of my future income to the most efficient charities, I could save around tens of thousands of years of healthy life. Since I already had most of the things I value in life on my student stipend, I realised that my money would do vastly more good for others than it could for me and decided to make a commitment to donating to the most effective charities I could find. Many people contacted me asking how they could do this as well, which is how I came to set up Giving What We Can. | Toby Ord | Oxford, England, UK | Senior Research Fellow at the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford University | Further Pledge 2009 |
| I thought that I would make a relatively small sacrifice to help so many people, but it has turned out to be no real sacrifice at all: the sense of engagement in the project of making the world a better place is worth far more to me than some new gadgets or a slightly larger house. | Toby Ord | Oxford, England, UK | Senior Research Fellow at the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford University | Further Pledge 2009 |
| Getting to 5,000 members absolutely blows my mind. That’s a full 217 times as many members as we had at launch 11 years ago. I remember when I first took the pledge, it felt really quite scary. I was a graduate student at the time and I had a scholarship for my accommodation paid for but I was living on about £4,500 per year and I was trying to give £900 of that away over the year. It was tough. I remember I refused to get a haircut because it seemed like an unnecessary expense... One of the things I worried about back then was whether I’d be a social outcast, always having to explain to people why I’ve chosen this weird life for myself. The answer turned out to be “no”, quite the opposite in fact. The pledge functioned like this bat signal, attracting people all around the world with a similar set of values and it’s been such a joy to see so many people come together and make a commitment to use a significant proportion of their income for the common good. So thank you, for taking the pledge and for showing what it means to take giving seriously. | William MacAskill | Oxford, England, UK | Co-founder of Giving What We Can, philosopher, author of Doing Good Better, and a researcher at Forethought Foundation | Further Pledge 2009 |
| Regularly donating effectively is a natural consequence of aligning my actions with my philosophy. | Matthew Allcock | Sheffield, England, UK | Natural hazards researcher at EDF Energy | The Pledge 2017 |
| We are social creatures. By making this pledge publicly, I can add to a culture of giving effectively. If just one other person decides to take this pledge and donate considerably more and more effectively because of my influence then my positive impact on the world is effectively doubled. | Matthew Allcock | Sheffield, England, UK | Natural hazards researcher at EDF Energy | The Pledge 2017 |
| The crux is that there are vast numbers of people living in the world that only see a slither of the international pie that is disproportionately in the hands of those like myself living in a wealthy nation. Even after donating 10% of my income, I will be in the wealthiest 4.6% of the world. | Matthew Allcock | Sheffield, England, UK | Natural hazards researcher at EDF Energy | The Pledge 2017 |
| I spent the years since university reading and thinking more about effective giving and taking the pledge. I felt like I could contribute by earning money to give away. | Simran Dhaliwal | Slough, England, UK | Managing Director at Effective Giving | The Pledge 2014 |
| Giving What We Can helped motivate me to think about what I wanted from life and my work. It was a contributing factor in giving me the confidence and impetus to apply for an internship in banking (through Teach First). When I got the offer from the bank, I signed the pledge online, which was a very important day for me! | Simran Dhaliwal | Slough, England, UK | Managing Director at Effective Giving | The Pledge 2014 |
| I feel like the pledge will make sure I am always engaged with ideas about how to make a difference most effectively. Remembering just how lucky I am to have been born where I was, have the family that I do and the opportunities that I have had. | Simran Dhaliwal | Slough, England, UK | Managing Director at Effective Giving | The Pledge 2014 |
| Nobody needs to have loads of money. I think I’ll be happier knowing that I´ve got a bit less but that will make a significant difference somewhere else. I’m not ashamed to say that I hope it enriches my life and increases my happiness, as well as those that it reaches! | Simran Dhaliwal | Slough, England, UK | Managing Director at Effective Giving | The Pledge 2014 |
| It’s extraordinary to see the way this community has grown over the past decade and all of the good that it has accomplished. When Will MacAskill shared the idea of a giving pledge with me in 2009, I thought it was a great way for a handful of people committed to certain values to raise the cost of drifting away from them. But I don’t think anyone imagined that the community would grow as it has, or that it would help to spark a broader movement. I’m grateful for and inspired by all of the work that so many put into achieving a milestone like this. | Ben Eidelson | Boston, MA, USA | Assistant professor of law at Harvard Law School | The Pledge 2009 |
| I give because I have seen enough suffering. I have many things I do not need, and I wish to share my luck with others if possible. I also understand — and this is something I learned at a young age through my family — that much of the good in my life was made possible by others. My parents raised me and so many others worked very hard so that I could have food, medical care, education, clothing, goods, etc. Given this reality, I find it impossible to reconcile the difference between (a) my quality of life and (b) the quality of life of others, whose labor I benefit from. I became a teacher to try to give back, and I give for the same reason. | Carlos Tkacz | Las Vegas, NV, USA | Teacher | The Pledge 2020 |
| I signed and completed the Pledge for the first time last year and it helped me feel completely whole. I never once felt void of purpose and when I checked my credit card and saw the monthly donations to GiveDirectly, an indescribable warmness would often come over me as I imagined the real tangible benefits my dollars were doing for real humans I would never meet. There are personal gains from giving. | Nathan Golden | Mars, PA, USA | Middle School Math Teacher and Research Associate at The UBI Center | The Pledge 2020 |
| ...a major barrier for my past self was just that I thought of charitable giving as something cool that ‘other people’ did. I certainly couldn't have seen myself jumping right in by giving away 10% of my income. | Richard Chappell | Miami, FL, USA | Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University of Miami | The Pledge 2010 |
| Once you start to think of yourself as the kind of person who really wants to make the world a better place, you'll hopefully find the thought of signing on to GWWC's 10% pledge positively appealing. | Richard Chappell | Miami, FL, USA | Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University of Miami | The Pledge 2010 |
| The difficulties people said I would face have not materialized. It is astounding to me that I live better than most kings in history: I eat fresher and more varied food, I listen to the world's best music at a press of a button, I have heating, cooling, and internal plumbing in my apartment, and I don't need to worry about being assassinated. | Boris Yakubchik | Morganville, NJ, USA | Developer at Forbes in Jersey City, NJ. | The Pledge 2013 |
| It brings me a great deal of satisfaction to know that a significant fraction of my time that I spend at work, I work not to better my life, but to tremendously help thousands of others. | Boris Yakubchik | Morganville, NJ, USA | Developer at Forbes in Jersey City, NJ. | The Pledge 2013 |
| I was astounded to learn that by giving to the most cost-effective charities, instead of the regular ones, my $10 could do as much good as $10,000! | Boris Yakubchik | Morganville, NJ, USA | Developer at Forbes in Jersey City, NJ. | The Pledge 2013 |
| In my experience, these conversations are friendly and welcome when you share your excitement about the opportunity most of us have to improve the lives of others. The feedback loop is long: conversations you have today might not result in actions until years down the line. Don’t be discouraged. I once gave a short talk in my office about charitable giving; it generated a few lively conversations that week. It’s been a year, and I still have coworkers occasionally approach me to talk about giving. It’s a topic that many people want to talk about, and finding someone who is eager to chat about it is just great. | Boris Yakubchik | Morganville, NJ, USA | Developer at Forbes in Jersey City, NJ. | The Pledge 2013 |
| To me, the pledge is a gesture of commitment and accountability that manifests that. I hope to look back on this as one of the proudest things I’ve ever done. | John Yan | Mountain View, CA, USA | Software engineer at Facebook | The Pledge 2020 |
| For more than a decade, this pledge has reminded me and inspired me to give. The incredible growth of the effective altruism movement in that time – exemplified by nearly 5000 people taking the GWWC pledge – makes me optimistic about what we can do, as individuals and as a collective. Each of us can make a meaningful difference to the lives of others. Together we can keep each other committed to giving more, and to doing so on the basis of good evidence. | Joseph Millum | Northwest, Washington DC, USA | Bioethicist at the National Institutes of Health | The Pledge 2009 |
| I’ve known of the Giving What We Can pledge for a few years, but finally pulled the trigger for a couple reasons. One, I’ve simply learned more about the horrific scale of global poverty, and the tractability of ending it. | Max Ghenis | Oxnard, CA, USA | Founder and President of the UBI Center | The Pledge 2019 |
| I just think that I, as a middle-class white person in the US, have been given more advantages than 99% of the world. A lot of those advantages have been economic. I should be redistributing more of my wealth, which was not necessarily earned. | Catherine Thomas | Palo Alto, CA, USA | PhD student in social and cultural psychology from California who has worked in global health and international development for 11 years. | The Pledge 2015 |
| I like the idea that people will give together. I hope the pledge will start to build that social norm toward redistribution, specifically for basic needs and effective charities. | Catherine Thomas | Palo Alto, CA, USA | PhD student in social and cultural psychology from California who has worked in global health and international development for 11 years. | The Pledge 2015 |
| Giving What We Can is public and accountable, and I feel like I'm a small part of what is hopefully a growing movement. I especially hope it will grow among middle-class white people in the US to counter income inequality. | Catherine Thomas | Palo Alto, CA, USA | PhD student in social and cultural psychology from California who has worked in global health and international development for 11 years. | The Pledge 2015 |
| April 2020 was perhaps the most impactful month of my life. I made a decision to act in a certain way, to realize certain values. To take the opportunity that fell into my lap four years ago, and instead of waiting any longer to magically become a rich philanthropist one day and think through the meaty questions all at once, to go ahead and decide I have enough right now. It looks like I’m number 4661 to do so. I’ve pledged to give at least 10% of my income to the organizations that I think can do the most good with. | Andy Trattner | San Francisco, CA, USA | Engineer and writer | The Pledge 2020 |
| I took the GWWC pledge because I believed my donations could do much more good for others than they could do for me; I had enough money to be happy and productive; and I wanted to encourage others to give for the same reasons. I think there's something powerful about putting our ideals into practice as a group with the core intention of doing the greatest expected good for others. It's been a great way to inspire myself and connect with people who have similar priorities. I'm delighted that our numbers have grown to 5,000, and I look forward to celebrating the 10,000 mark in the future! | Nick Beckstead | San Francisco, CA, USA | Program Officer at Open Philanthropy | The Pledge 2009 |
| I know that suffering is purely detrimental for humanity. Anyone who has truly suffered knows that. I credit the minimization and then the end of my suffering to people who are much more altruistic than I ever was. I know that we can make a significant, effective change to uplift the lives of others. It isn’t my place to speak for anyone else but me, but I know that I am insanely lucky to live my life the way I do, and I feel a strong moral imperative to give what I can to improve the lives of others. | Nick Dudley | San Luis Obispo, CA, USA | The Pledge 2021 | |
| When I first learned about Giving What We Can, I remember feeling so relieved that there were all these other people out there who were not just thinking about what we can do for others, but were taking concrete action on that. | Julia Wise | Somerville, MA, USA | Community health liaison and former social worker | The Pledge 2012 |
| I've felt good about making this commitment. I like having it as part of my routine, something that I know is part of my plan in the years to come. It's a confirmation of what I value—a safe and healthy life not just for me and mine, but for all families around the world. | Julia Wise | Somerville, MA, USA | Community health liaison and former social worker | The Pledge 2012 |
Please contact media@givingwhatwecan.org if you would like to interview any of our members.