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GWWC Team

Where are the GWWC team donating this year?

As part of Giving Season, we’re sharing where our team is giving this year, and a little bit about how they currently think about their donations.

Currently, all staff at Giving What We Can have taken the 

 to give at least 10% of their income to effective charities until they retire.

In December, I’ll be doing donations as gifts for my close friends and family via Effective Altruism Australia who are producing digital cards. Those donations will go to a mix of 

I’m also planning to make a donation to 

. I think the approach of looking for excellent opportunities outside of the Top Charities really makes sense - and I’m impressed with the grants given so far!

I’ll also be donating over and above my 10% Pledge to 

Effective Altruism Australia Environment’s Fund

 of effective climate change charities to offset my CO2 from travel.

This year, I’m giving 20% of my income—double my 

I believe that growing the total amount of money directed toward high-impact charities is a crucial bottleneck. As part of this, I’m giving 

our multiplier at GWWC is exceptionally high

, and I’ve written more about why I think effective giving organizations could do with more support 

. While I’d love to give to other effective giving organizations, my role as 

Effective Giving Global Coordinator and Incubator

 means that I see value in avoiding any appearance of bias that could complicate my work.

Another clear decision for me this year is giving 

. I’ve had the privilege of working closely with AIM, and I’ve been consistently impressed by the rigor and ambition of their work. Their track record is very strong and I think that they are likely to continue incubating exceptionally high impact charities.

For the rest of my giving, I’ve leaned on recommendations from Giving What We Can’s 

, filtered through my own values and priorities:

Longview Philanthropy’s Emerging Challenges Fund

Outside of my 10% pledge, I’ll give to 

 to offset my annual carbon footprint and to a variety of animal welfare charities, inspired by 

, to offset the harm caused by my (minimal) animal product consumption as a vegetarian.

I’ve been on a real journey with my giving this year. I previously donated exclusively to the 

It reflected my passion for global health, social equality and justice as fairness.

It was simple. I’m a big believer in ‘outsourcing’ my giving choices to the experts and I think GiveWell are excellent.

I wasn’t as aware of the other cause areas GWWC promotes or their claims to be super effective.

I have a relatively high risk appetite in my giving and I thought that the All Grants Fund’s broader spectrum of giving suited me better than the GiveWell Top Charities fund.

This year I’ve changed my donations a couple of times, but now the split looks like this.

 Having been exposed to the ideas behind animal welfare as an important cause area which is big, tractable and unpopular, I felt duty bound to support this cause.

Whilst I think the likelihood of things like rogue AI, Nuclear Weapons and species threatening pandemics are probably quite low, I am convinced by the argument that the impact should they happen would be unimaginably bad. So I have apportioned some of my donation here.

 I had the pleasure of meeting many of the AIM Incubated Charity teams this year, including 

. I was so impressed and whilst I think they’re much higher risk than the likes of GiveWell Top Charities, their potential for impact exceeds those recommendations. I view this as diversifying my risk profile in my giving.

 I have long admired GiveDirectly, ever since I was involved in setting up cash transfer programming and coordination back in 2018 whilst working at Save the Children. I think they do brilliant work. I stopped donating to them because they were judged not to be as impactful as GiveWell’s top charities, but I have started again because 1) they have recently been 

 and 2) I am convinced that saving lives is important, but that the quality of those lives matters too. I am sold on the importance of 

. For every $ donated to us, we’re able to generate over $10 more for effective charities. This is pretty amazing and made me want to sacrifice my salary back to the organisation which I’m so proud to work for.

, I’ve capped my salary at GWWC to €25k/y, so my largest donation is ~€50k to GWWC. I believe we currently have a good multiplier on marginal funding, and it’s very tax-efficient to reduce my salary instead of donating.

Other than that, this year I gave €6.5k to 

, with the hope that one day their multiplier effect could be even greater than ours.

First of all, how is it December already? The holidays are almost here, and while I'm dreaming of cozy evenings with loved ones and non-alcoholic mulled cider, there's one December task I refuse to procrastinate on

I have a selfish reason to write this section of the post: 

 and public accountability help ensure I don’t rack up donation debt.

Working at GWWC has also shifted how I think about personal giving. My biggest impact comes from my work at GWWC, which gives me the privilege to let both effectiveness and personal meaning guide my personal donation choices. Here’s where my donations are headed in 2024:

Not to toot our own horns - I genuinely believe in GWWC's recommendations (check out our

if you haven’t already!). This is actually lower than my previous years as I feel more freedom to be more experimental with my personal giving as I work at GWWC.

This one’s also close to my heart. The 

 Fund currently features six programs across health, education, and gender in China. I've been following their newsletter and am consistently impressed by their work. Being Chinese, supporting impactful work in my home country feels personally meaningful and motivating.

I set aside this portion for responding to immediate needs throughout the year - like disaster relief or helping someone in crisis. While these donations may not be the 

 cost-effective, these responsive donations are important for my giving.

5% 云山保护 Cloud Mountain Conservation

A conservation charity in Southwest China doing cool work. I particularly appreciate their approach of combining rigorous research with public engagement and sustainable development through community-based initiatives.

I haven’t yet made my full donation allocation decisions for this year, and expect to do this during an in-person “pledge party” event we’ll be having with a group of friends and acquaintances who’ve also pledged in the Netherlands next week. During this event we’ll collectively discuss, decide/act on and celebrate our donation allocations and whether we’ll renew/increase our pledges.

Upping my 10% Pledge to 20% per January 2025

I was inspired by a friend who recently decided to take a Founders Pledge of 100% of the equity in a company she co-founded above a certain amount. I’ve been confident for quite a while that I want to give a lot more than 20% of my income over my lifetime, and feel the time is right to solidify this commitment.

For reasons similar to Lucas and Lorenzo above, I’m deciding to dedicate part of my giving to GWWC itself. In addition to buying the general case for multiplier giving and believing we have a strong marginal multiplier at GWWC, I put some value on the associated “practice what I preach” and extra emotional incentive/accountability to very carefully evaluate that we spend and keep spending our money cost-effectively. I will however also dedicate a significant amount of my giving to other organisations, as I want to avoid taking this too far and e.g. being incentivized to rationalise GWWC’s cost-effectiveness.

After seeing how well Giving What We Can performed in recent evaluations (both 

), I've changed my approach to donations this year. The impressive giving multiplier effect convinced me to commit 5% of my income to the organisation as salary sacrifice. But I still want to stay actively involved in choosing where some of my donations go, so I'm keeping another 5% to donate directly to causes I care about. Like last year, part of this is going to 

 - animal welfare remains super important to me.

For the rest I wanted to try something different and get my family involved in choosing where to give. Convinced by conversations at an 

 during the event. My plan is to hand these out during the holidays and have my family and friends help choose where the money should go by redeeming them through 

's platform. I'm hoping this will spark some interesting conversations about giving or pledging and maybe even get them thinking about their donations - topics that don't usually come up naturally around the dinner table.

Once I wrap up my taxes early next year and have my final income figures, I'll check if I've hit my pledged amount. If I'm still a bit short, I'll probably donate the remainder to support Effektiv Spenden's operations. They're doing fantastic work, and their 

 backs that up. I also think there is much potential to grow effective giving in the German speaking region.

Lucas Moore

Luke Moore talks about why he took the 10% Pledge at age 17, the impact he's had so far, and his commitment to lifelong giving.

Why I took the 🔸10% Pledge before earning an income

, and it changed my life. It opened my eyes to the immense privilege of ‘normal’ people in high-income countries compared to the rest of the world. Coming from a family where both my parents were part-time primary school teachers, I never thought of us as among the wealthiest globally—yet, with a 

. The talk also emphasised that our donations could have an enormous, and measurable, impact—you don’t just have to give and hope it does something. This resonated deeply with me, and I took 

I wasn’t yet earning any income as I was still in high-school and then at university, so initially, I donated £10 a month to the 

. (When you take the 10% Pledge as a student, you’re committing to give 1% of your spending money. The 10% kicks in once you start earning a stable income). For me, 1% of spending money was roughly £100 a year—less than the cost of a couple of pints each month. 

As a student, I found giving incredibly manageable and was able to increase my donations to £50 a month in my final years as I started earning a small amount tutoring. It wasn’t hard and, honestly, it felt really rewarding to be able to make an impact, even on a small student budget. Living in alignment with my values gave my life a real sense of purpose.

Getting into the habit of giving early on has been great. Giving has become a core part of my identity, something I feel really proud of. Once I got my first proper job and was working full-time, starting to give 10% of my income was easy. I just set it aside each month and hardly noticed it was gone. Since I had never gotten used to the extra 10%, I didn’t feel like I was sacrificing anything—which is part of why I think pledging while still a student is actually a really great idea. Of course, major life changes—like buying a house, getting married, or starting a family—might cause some changes in my giving. But the 10% Pledge is a 

 commitment, and I plan to donate more now in order to give myself some wiggle room if I end up needing it; I also know I can (and will) make up for any lower year by giving more in the next (or the next few).

So, what have my donations actually done?

I’m proud to say that my giving has so far protected about 100 families from malaria, prevented around 700 tons of CO2eq from entering the atmosphere (roughly equivalent to the individual carbon footprint of taking about 

) and doubled the annual income of 12 families living in extreme poverty in the global south through direct cash transfers. I’ve also supported alternative protein research, initiatives to reduce (and I hope end) factory-farming, and projects to address risks that threaten the future of our life on Earth.

My giving has also so far saved the life of at least one child under the age of five

In some ways, this is just a drop in the ocean given how unequal and unfair the disparities in health outcomes are between people living in the world today. But while I acknowledge these inequalities and do my best to also campaign and vote in ways which I hope and believe will bring about a world where giving 10% is no longer necessary, I also want to celebrate the meaning of the individual life that now gets to be lived by another person who I will never know or meet, but whose life I can imagine. And imagining the whole life of this person—the highs, the lows, and all the ordinary days in between—reminds me how alike we all are, bound together by the same hopes, joys, and experiences that make us human.

To me though, the Pledge is not just about what 

can do with my donations. I believe that the cumulative effect of 

each of us giving effectively and significantly can lead to monumental change on a global level

. By taking the 10% Pledge and joining this global movement, I feel that I’ve been able to play a role in a larger narrative of hope and progress. Now 

almost 10,000 people, from more than 100 countries, have taken the 10% Pledge

) to donate a portion of their income to effective charities. Together, our giving can transform lives, uplift communities, and address the most pressing challenges of our time.

So since it’s Pledge Week – here’s a quick plug (and honestly, I would say this any week of the year because it’s always a good time to pledge!):

, as a student or otherwise, my advice is simple: just do it! Taking the 10% Pledge has been one of the best decisions of my life – each month, the ten percent I spend on donations is, by far, the use of money that brings me 

. Sure, it can feel daunting, but the sense of purpose and joy that comes from giving is unparalleled. That said, I don’t think that giving is or should be about us, I think it’s about the huge positive impact that can be achieved by strategically giving away a relatively small portion of the resources that we have by virtue of nothing other than the blind luck of birth. If you're hesitant, consider starting with 

 and see how it feels! And who knows? This could be the start of one of the most meaningful commitments you'll ever make.

Grace Adams

How I moved from a 3% Pledge to a 10% Pledge

When I first heard about the idea of pledging a percentage of your income to effective charities with Giving What We Can, I was sold. I knew I had more than I needed to get by, and I’ve always struggled with the enormous inequality in the world.

I originally settled on donating 3% of my income for my 

. I chose 3% because it’s more than I had ever given before (I calculated that in previous years, I gave around 2% of my income) but it also felt like an achievable amount for me. I had just stopped working full-time, dropping down to 3 days a week because of some chronic health conditions, and also had to pay a few hundred dollars a month for the medication I was on. So 3% seem like a step up, but also one that wouldn’t stress me out. (As a side note, giving like this was possible thanks to my parents letting me live with them during that period, and having access to (mostly) free healthcare in Australia. I also knew I had both a personal, and government safety net to catch me.)

As 3% of my paychecks made their way to effective global health charities, I realised that I missed the money less than I thought I would – even though I had less at the end of the month than I had ever had since starting my career.

In combination with not missing the money, I also thought hard about what it really means to donate. I realised I was willing to spend several hundred dollars a month on medication to reduce my suffering, and that, for the same amount of money, I could deliver medication to prevent malaria (a disease that causes severe suffering and death) to a whole classroom of children every month. Understanding on a more visceral level how miserable I would be without my medication brought into sharp focus the meaning of providing something similar to others – especially when such a relatively small amount of money could go so far.

My health was improving thanks to the medication, and I was able to work more, which increased my budget. So I sat down and had an honest conversation with myself about whether I could afford to give 10% of my income over my lifetime. It would be a big sacrifice – it would mean not having as many savings, or not being able to take as many holidays – but if I really could prevent hundreds of people from suffering like I had, and what’s more, prevent tens of families from the grief of losing a loved one, then it was a sacrifice I was willing to make.

I’ve now donated over $30,000 to effective charities, about $20,000 

than I would have if I didn’t decide to step up my giving. It’s probably the single thing I’m proudest of in my life.

Of course, not everyone can realistically give 10% of their income, and we absolutely encourage people to look after themselves and their loved ones first (no-one is looking out for you as much as you!), but I’m sharing my own personal story to encourage you to think about whether you could increase your giving in 2025.

By slowly working your way up, you could end up giving much more than you thought you’d be able to. You might end up giving enough to prevent the death of several children over your lifetime. Imagine knowing that there are people who get to grow old, to laugh with their families, and to go on to help others in their communities, in part because of your donations. Wouldn’t that be a beautiful outcome?

How I moved from donating 3% to a 10% Pledge

Alana Horowitz Friedman

Giving What We Can

What do we mean when we say you can have 100x more impact by donating to the best charities?

Comparing effective giving to other forms of charitable donations: Dos and Don’ts 

On our homepage and throughout our website, we make a claim that is quite central to the project of effective giving: 

where you choose to donate greatly affects how much impact your money will have.

To make this point, we use language like: “You can often have 100x more impact by donating to the best charities” or, in a bit more detail, “Many of us can easily 100x our impact by giving to charities that achieve more per dollar spent.”

You may also notice similar claims on other effective giving websites. They may be phrased or framed slightly differently, but the core premise is the same.

Perhaps in part because there are so many different phrasings and framings of this idea, we’ve noticed some misconceptions surrounding what it really means, and we now believe language we’ve used in the past (such as “the best charities are often 100x better than others”) may, regrettably, have contributed to this.

The language we currently use (and this explanatory post) is an attempt to correct these misconceptions and stop them from happening in the future. Here, we’ll explain more about 

why we’ve shifted to a donor-facing perspective

can often have 100x more impact by donating to the best charities” or “the best charities can do 100x more with your dollar” — and we’ll also clarify what we do and don’t mean by statements like this. We hope this exploration also helps others (especially those who regularly talk or write about effective giving) discuss impact differences between charities in a clear and compelling way.

The language we used previously — “the best charities are 100x better than others” — is a good “broad brush” statement to encapsulate the reality that where you choose to donate has significant impact consequences. However, it runs the risk of being taken too literally while at the same time being quite vague.

The “than others” part of the statement — the best charities are 100x better 

? Is it most charities? A handful? Something in between? There’s no information about 

 are 100x worse than the “best” charities.

This leads us into the potential for misinterpretation: 

We’ve seen this statement be interpreted to mean that effective charities are 

, which is a stronger claim than we feel comfortable making. 

the case that highly effective charities are significantly more impactful than many other giving options

Blog

Where are the GWWC team donating this year?

Why I took the 🔸10% Pledge before earning an income

How I moved from donating 3% to a 10% Pledge

Comparing effective giving to other forms of charitable donations: Dos and Don’ts

Pledge Week 2024

2025 charity recommendations are in!

The 2024 Giving What We Can Donor Lottery is now open

GWWC's Community Celebrates our 15th Anniversary

Taking the 10% Pledge whilst living in an informal settlement: An interview with Tom Delaney

The virtues of virtue signalling