How does the Giving What We Can donation platform work?

Giving What We Can collaborates with charity evaluators, funding partners, and donors to maximise the impact of charitable giving.

Program selection

Our research team works closely with a range of charity evaluators and grantmakers. Their expertise informs us about high-impact programs, helping us guide donors to make the most meaningful impact with their contributions. We use this research to help us to decide which programs to support and recommend to donors and our funding partners.

Funding partners

We collaborate with funding partners that are registered charities in their respective countries. Each funding partner runs the Giving What We Can activities in their region. They use our website and brand to build a local effective giving community and raise funds for mutually supported programs. They provide a localised experience for our donors and members. This helps ensure that donations made through our donation platform are not only high-impact but also, to the extent possible, tax-efficient and available to donors in their local currency and language.

This means that when you donate through the Giving What We Can platform, your donation is received by one of our funding partners, and that funding partner also receives your allocation and uses it when making grants to the organisations that carry out these mutually-supported, high-impact programs.

After receiving donations, our funding partners legally control and oversee the use of funds to ensure they are used for the intended purpose in a manner that aligns with their charitable purposes and follows relevant local laws.

Programs we support

Our donation platform principally supports two kinds of programs (we call these our "supported programs"):

• Charitable projects Our team works with charity evaluators to identify specific high-impact projects (e.g. distributing bed nets to prevent malaria). These programs are delivered by organisations with a strong track record of delivering cost-effective outcomes, such as the Against Malaria Foundation. We recommend these projects to our funding partners who, after conducting their own due diligence, use our donation platform to raise and grant funds for these programs. Finally, we work with the funding partners and charity evaluators to conduct ongoing monitoring and evaluation.
• Grantmaking funds We collaborate with expert grantmakers to identify promising broad areas of work (e.g. improving animal welfare) and recommend these to our funding partners. Our funding partners then raise a pool of funds from donors under this program restriction. Based on our advice, the advice of our grantmakers, and their own due diligence, our funding partners then make grants to funding opportunities from these pools of funds. After grants are made, we then work with the funding partners and grantmakers to conduct ongoing monitoring and evaluation.

Honouring donor intentions

Our funding partners usually follow the preferred allocation for your donation, but legally, must retain final discretion over whether or not to do so. Should an issue arise where the intended allocation will not be followed, we coordinate with our funding partners and trusted evaluators to identify a comparable project that aligns with the original intent of your donation. (This is relatively rare but could happen if, for example, the program no longer aligns with our funding partners’ charitable purpose, the program we were supporting wraps up, government sanctions prevent us from granting, etc.)

Inquiries about donations

We are committed to high levels of transparency. Should you have any questions about the status of your donation, you can contact Giving What We Can, our funding partners, or the organisations that deliver our supported programs. If you provide any of them with your payment reference, they will be able to confirm the status of your donation.