Adam Steinberg 

Learn about Highgate School's first ever Charity Election!

Compassion at scale: Bringing effective giving to high schools

It’s a great success when secondary students come away from a school event feeling it brought meaning to their lives. With a myriad of distractions and an excess of energy, sometimes maintaining their attention is hard enough—especially late in the school year when, in many locales, the weather turns balmy and thoughts turn to exams or summer vacation.

To see them, then, take advantage of a meaningful opportunity in sunny June to stop and reflect, think critically about their own personal values and have meaningful conversations with their peers about major world issues—that would be something very special.

These were among the thoughts of Jenny Chapman, Biology teacher at Highgate School, London, as she read through the post-event reflections from her students after running a Giving What We Can Charity Election event at her school in June 2023.

One student explained that the event ‘made me more compassionate about helping people more distant from me.’ Another wrote, ‘My view on my own impact has changed. Improving the world seems more possible.’ Says Chapman, ‘The reflections really made me think this program was so worthwhile—that this is what it’s all about.’

Other school staff also approached Chapman to praise the event. She remembers one teacher saying, ‘This was sort of a lightbulb moment for me. It made me think about how I gift and how I think about charities.’

Only about a week long and often held across a set of classes like social studies or history, the charity election is an experience in 

: It puts students in the position of directing a pool of funds (in this case, sponsored by international charity Giving What We Can), and then challenges them to consider three worthy charities with very different approaches and causes.

To make a decision about which charity they believe should be supported, they consider the cost-effectiveness and evidence base of each charity through a brief process of discussion, reflection and guided research.

They are then invited to use the evidence and their reasoning to make their decision and vote to direct their ballot, each worth $2 (or its international equivalent), to just one charity. The school decides how the combined results of all student ballots will be allocated: winner-take-all, 70%-20%-10%, or in proportion to the vote. No matter what they decide, since the funds are sponsored, there’s no cost to the school.

In the run-up to the event, Chapman used 

 to estimate that if all her eligible students voted, the Highgate cohort could:

🌤 remove 2407 tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere;

🧒🏼 help protect 6017 children from schistosomiasis; or

🤝 provide 96 months of basic income to someone in Uganda.

Part of the reason Highgate’s event was so successful was that Ms. Chapman put extra effort into its preparation. Though the program can be run straight out of the box with minimal preparation (through a provided slideshow, videos and worksheet), Giving What We Can encourages teachers to adjust it to their student cohort and teaching style. Wanting to make the experience deeper for her students, Chapman dove in and added her own activities to the ones provided, including one in which she had students list issues that were important to them in their everyday lives at school, like the quality of food in the dining hall or issues around school uniforms. For each, students then estimated the importance of the problem, its room for more attention or funding (‘neglectedness’), and how solvable they thought it would be. They then discussed how these factors could also be used to help them decide where to aim their efforts most effectively to 

The influence of this event is likely to carry on in another important way: At the beginning of each Highgate school year, the students propose causes that are important to them, and from these are chosen the school’s charities for that year: All fundraisers and volunteering support that year’s selection. Chapman explains, ‘As a result of the election, the person in charge of Charity and Partnerships at our school said they want to start getting students to include ideas about charity impact in student proposals about who to raise money for. So, in addition to their proposals, he will ask them to include a metric of charity impact.

‘This is massive, because it changes the ethos of how we decide where we will give—in this case, in school—and will become part of their decision process’—hopefully creating a lasting impact on students’ giving decisions later in life.

To learn more and apply for sponsorship at your school, visit the Charity Elections 

. If you have questions or want to support the programme financially, as a volunteer, or in some other capacity, please shoot us a quick note at charityelections@givingwhatwecan.org.

Charity elections are part of Giving What We Can. Giving What We Can is a fiscally sponsored project of 

 (UK) (England and Wales registered charity number 1149828 and registered company number 07962181). Giving What We Can can receive tax-deductible donations in the US, UK and Netherlands, 

Why should charity elections be limited to English-speaking schools?  Fabio Sandrecchi, a Philosophy and History teacher at the Istituto Salesiano Madonna degli Angeli (ISMDA) in Alassio, Italy, asked just this question. He and his school stepped up courageously to be the first institution to run an entirely localized version of the Charity Elections program in experiential altruism sponsored by Giving What We Can. 

Che bello! Charity Elections continues to go global

Why should charity elections be limited to English-speaking schools?

Fabio Sandrecchi, a Philosophy and History teacher at the Istituto Salesiano Madonna degli Angeli (ISMDA) in Alassio, Italy, asked just this question. He and his school stepped up courageously to be the first institution to run an entirely localized version of the Charity Elections program in experiential altruism sponsored by Giving What We Can.

In the program, high school students research, discuss, and reflect on three top charities, before voting to decide which will receive up to $2,000 in sponsored funds. Intended to develop SEL (social and emotional learning) skills and cultivate a culture of giving, among other goals, the program has been run in six countries so far in 2022-2023 – but all were in English until now.

Mr. Sandrecchi and his colleagues diligently translated the slideshow and key administrative documents into Italian, not to mention creating Italian subtitles for all three charity videos with the help of the Charity Elections team. They then ran a charity election involving 153 students across the secondary school and in the top year of the middle school.

The school put extra emphasis on the reflective aspects of the process, with student leaders conducting interviews with over 50 students and staff including teachers, administration and even members of the custodial staff. The interviewers asked about their familiarity with causes in general and the three election charities in particular, and also inquired about what approach people expected to follow in order to make a final decision.

According to one student leader, they were gratified to see that “despite all [our] different perspectives, so many people have a desire to do good and to act.”

The program was somewhat novel in another way, as students in grade levels below secondary also ran the program – only the second time this has been done. Election coordinator Sandrecchi was pleased to see even the younger students fully engaged in the program. “They were doing the research and they were very precise, taking notes of all the information and statistics on each website. They were excited and involved, even though they are so young and it was not so usual for them to do something like this. This was an important moment in the experience for me.”

Student leaders felt that the program fostered a positive school climate: “We had time together, constructive time, and actually exchanged opinions. Classmates that I never had any particular interactions with—we created a moment of debate talking about the charities, and I had the opportunity to speak with them. So it was also a good way to improve the unity of the class.”

“Sometimes you just donate without asking many questions,” observed another student leader, “but in this case you were encouraged to research before actually donating money. This research was very interesting and new and it was something that I learned and will use in the future for sure.”

The Giving What We Can Charity Elections programme has funding available for 20+ high schools in 2023. 

  with up to 800 voting students per school. You can also check out this 

 in Italian about the above charity election at ISMDA.

Communications lead for GWWC-supported Charity Elections and B2B marketing writer for high tech, Adam taught English Lang and Lit in international schools for 15 years (Germany, Wales) before returning to his communications roots. Prior to teaching, he cut film; edited texts in educational, technical and arts contexts; was volunteer editor-in-chief of an environmental magazine; and produced educational software. Then he ran off to NYC for an MFA in Musical Theatre Writing (Tisch). What? Passionate about service, effective giving, media literacy, lifelong learning, and his two sons, he has volunteered for Kiva and HIP, and loves recording his original songs (

Adam Steinberg

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Compassion at scale: Bringing effective giving to high schools

Che bello! Charity Elections continues to go global