Alana Horowitz Friedman

Philip Popien 

A 10% Pledger shares an interesting way to gradually increase your giving pledge

Pledger Philip Popien Shares A Unique Approach to Pledging

The "Progressive Pledge”

You’ve heard of progressive tax systems, but have you heard of a progressive pledge? While giving away 10% of income feels daunting for some, for others, it doesn’t feel like enough. 

We spoke with Philip Popien, who took the 10% Pledge in 2016 after reading 

. He’s been following an approach he’s termed the “progressive pledge,” whereby he gradually increases his pledged percentage upon any salary increase. 

 in 2015, he noted down that his goal was to take the 10% Pledge immediately and then adjust that percentage upwards to 25% when his income rose. After following the “progressive pledge” approach for about 7 years, he’s exceeded that goal and in 2024, is up to 27.5

Note

s what Philip has to say about his “progressive pledge” approach to donating:

1. Can you explain how the “progressive pledge” approach works?

You start by donating 10%. Then, with any increase in salary, add 50% (or any other % above 10%) 

. The idea comes from Daniel Kahneman who wrote about doing the same thing with saving for retirement in 

2. Why do you like this approach to donating?

It balances your altruistic and non-altruistic goals in life. I knew I wanted to eventually give more than 10%, but I also didn’t think it was realistic for me to take something like the 

, where you give everything away above what you need to live on. With the progressive pledge approach, an increase in salary still means being able to spend more on yourself than before even with the increase in pledge percentage.

It allows your altruistic ambitions to rise with you getting richer. As I mentioned before, donating 10% is a large sacrifice for lower salaries, but not even noticeable for large incomes.

It increases your donations a lot over time without you ever "losing" money. If you would first see that money as yours, spend it, and later think about how much you would like to donate, it is much harder as now you have to give the money away which triggers 

It increases your motivation to negotiate well, since any salary increase means you get benefits not only for yourself, but for others as well.

3. Can you walk us through how this approach gradually increased your pledged percentage from 10% to 27.5%?

Sure! I started at 10% in 2016. My largest jump from 10% to 20% came from a job change, and then the incremental increases from 20% to 22% to 24% to 26% to 27.5% came from salary increases at the same job.

4. Would you recommend this way of pledging to others? In what circumstances?

Yes! I think a lot of people would like to donate more, but it feels painful to give away more and more. By giving away only from what you earn extra, it is easier to give more!

5. Do you think this approach to giving has increased your overall impact?

Definitely, as I have other monetary goals in life which made it hard to give away more. By coupling my job changes and promotions with increasing my donations, I never felt I lost something which made it possible to increase my donations from 10% to over 25% in 7 years.


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

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

About

Articles

The "Progressive Pledge”

We’re renaming the Giving What We Can Pledge