Alana Horowitz Friedman

We cover why we're renaming our primary pledge

The Giving What We Can Pledge is now the 

We're renaming the Giving What We Can Pledge

TL;DR

 better part of a year, Giving What We Can has been thinking more deliberately about how our brand choices could accelerate or hinder progress towards our mission of making giving effectively and significantly a cultural norm. One topic that has consistently surfaced is the name of our primary pledge.

While we think the “Giving What We Can Pledge” accurately captures the spirit we want to cultivate and the message we want to portray – that many people can afford to give more significantly – we’ve also identified some issues. We’ve noticed people referring to the Giving What We Can Pledge by all sorts of names (the income pledge, the lifetime pledge, the pledge, the giving all we can pledge, and the give what you can pledge, to name just a few) which leads to confusion and reduces “stickiness.” On that note, we’ve noticed people confusing the Giving What We Can Pledge with other similarly named pledges (like the Giving Pledge for billionaires, for example). We’ve also realised that having our organisation name in the title of the pledge can make it difficult for other organisations to easily promote it.

Above: An internal slide from our name-change deliberations

 considered several alternate names, had many healthy debates within our team, and surveyed over 30 key stakeholders from across the world and the effective giving ecosystem. The result? We are delighted to announce that the Giving What We Can Pledge is now the 🔸10% Pledge!

As we announced at EAG London, we’re aiming to reach 10,000 active 10% pledgers in 2024 and we have ambitions to grow to 100,000 and eventually, to 1 million pledgers and beyond.

To achieve these ambitious goals, we need a name and a brand that can achieve saturation. We think the 10% Pledge could get us there because:

It’s easy to say, remember, and understand

It can be hosted by partner organisations (more on this below!)

It has the potential for “stickiness” and increasing awareness, especially with the addition of the 🔸orange diamond symbol!

10% Pledge 2.  Our vision of the diamond logo at work

If you’ve taken the 🔸10% Pledge (formerly known as the Giving What We Can Pledge), we’d be grateful if you could add the 🔸“small orange diamond” emoji to your name on your social media accounts. 

(If you’ve taken the Trial Pledge, you can instead add a small blue diamond 🔹 emoji.)


Above: An example of adding the diamond and 🔸10% Pledge line in bio!

We’re hoping that seeing several 🔸’s across social media will cause people to be curious about what this signifies and lead them to learn more. 

It would be ideal to also add a statement like “🔸10% Pledge #XXXX with @GivingWhatWeCan” or “I’ve taken The 🔸@10percentpledge) to give to effective charities” to your bio (as pictured above) so those who do want to learn more can easily find out about it! 

(Note: You can look up your pledge number on 

And if you want to help the diamond emoji be even more visible for launch week, consider posting with the phrase "I've taken the 🔸#10PercentPledge because..." It would be exciting to see social media light up with these types of posts!

More broadly, whether or not you’ve taken a pledge, you can sign up to help us reach 10,000 pledgers. If you’re keen, fill out 

 to let us know in which ways you might be able to help out!

Several effective giving aligned organisations have expressed interest in raising awareness about the Pledge to their audiences. We’ve heard from some of these organisations that it would be helpful if they could provide a way for their audiences to take the Pledge without introducing Giving What We Can as a new brand, which could be confusing for users, especially if they have to be directed to the Giving What We Can site to sign the Pledge!

The 🔸10% Pledge rename allows us to more easily work with partners to integrate pledge signing (for both the 🔸10% Pledge and Trial Pledge) into their website. Partners will either have a custom co-branded pledge flow, or be able to host our pledges directly on their website using an API. When someone signs a pledge with a partner organisation, both Giving What We Can and the partner organisation will be notified of the new pledger and be able to send follow-up communications.

We’re excited to announce that we have already launched partnerships with 

 with several more planned in the coming weeks and months. You can see an active list of our current partners on our updated 

Everything except for the name of our primary pledge and the launch of our new partnerships! We will continue to operate in the same way as before and with the same mission. We are NOT renaming the organisation (which will remain Giving What We Can) and we are NOT renaming our other pledges (which will remain the Trial Pledge, the Further Pledge and the Company Pledge).

Additionally, the 🔸10% Pledge, formerly known as the Giving What We Can Pledge, still works in the exact same way. You can still pledge 

, and you can also pledge to give the greater of 10% of income or a custom percentage of wealth.

If you have any unanswered questions about this change or want to share your ideas for how we can grow pledgers now and into the future, you can reach us at 

Finally, we’d like to thank Alex Savard, who initiated a large part of the renaming proposal while he was an employee at Giving What We Can.

We’re renaming the Giving What We Can Pledge

A survey of Australians attitudes on effective giving reveals that Australians believe charities should be held accountable for their impact.

The general population cares more about effective giving than you might think: Results from a 2024 study in Australia

What happened when over 1000 Australiians were surveyed about their attitudes on charity? The vast majority (79%!) thought that 

The survey was done amidst the cost of living crisis, which 8 out of 10 respondents say has caused them to reduce their charitable giving.

In fact, the cost of living crisis may make it more important than ever for donors to seek impact and transparency. As Giving What We Can’s executive director Luke Freeman put it in a recent 

, “While people may not have more to give this financial year, they can make their donations go much further.”

 87% of respondents said they would be willing to switch their donations to a highly-effective charity

. This could provide a counter narrative to 

previous research showing that donors are resistant to switching their donations based on evidence

, though it could instead simply indicate a difference between donor intention and behaviour. 

The high percentage of respondents willing to switch their donations is even more striking when viewed in light of the fact that on average, respondents thought the best programs were only 1.44x better than average. Thus, people report a willingness to change their donation decisions even to get just a 

 bit more impact. (In reality, we estimate that 

many donors could achieve 100x more impact

 by changing their donation decisions, depending on their starting point, of course.)

Demand for information about charity efficacy was also surprisingly high, with a whopping 

93% of respondents indicating they would consult a reliable source of information that compared the effectiveness of different charities and use this to guide their donation decisions!

 In contrast, only 3 in 10 respondents were confident their last donation had a lot of impact.

While "effectiveness" may mean different things to different people, it would seem donors 

 interested in maximising the impact of their donations; they just might not know how and where to do so.

 (with many more interesting findings!) as well as the 

Alana has a background in teaching, writing, and culinary arts. She holds a BA in Comparative LIterature from Oberlin College and an MS in Education from Fordham University. Alana is passionate about effective giving, climate justice, adult literacy, and immigration justice. Before joining Giving What We Can as a Research Communicator, she was a professional writing consultant at Stevens Institute of Technology and taught Business Communication at the University of Massachusetts. 

Alana is a Research Communicator at Giving What We Can. She is passionate about increasing the reach of core effective giving concepts. 

Alana Horowitz Friedman

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We’re renaming the Giving What We Can Pledge

The general population cares more about effective giving than you might think: Results from a 2024 study in Australia