Giving What We Can

History

Giving What We Can was launched as a giving society with 23 members in 2009 by Toby Ord, an ethics researcher at Oxford, his wife Bernadette Young, a physician in training at the time, and fellow ethicist William MacAskill with the goal of encouraging people to give at least 10% of income over the course of their working life to alleviate world poverty. This is similar to Ma'aser kesafim in Jewish tradition and zakat in Islam, but Ord said there was no religious motivation behind it. Ord cited writings from Peter Singer and Thomas Pogge about one's moral duty to give to the poor as inspiration for starting the organisation, and personally planned to give away everything above about $28,000 a year, the median after-tax salary in the U.K.

In 2011, a sister organisation at Oxford led by MacAskill and others called "High Impact Careers", soon after renamed to 80,000 Hours., was spun off from Giving What We Can. In 2012 both organisations incorporated the Centre for Effective Altruism as a nonprofit to serve as an umbrella organisation. In 2024, Giving What We Can became its own legal entity, and is no longer part of the Centre for Effective Altruism or Effective Ventures Foundation.

Giving What We Can began providing regular reports on what charities were most effective at addressing poverty in the developing world, using research conducted by GiveWell along with the concept of the quality-adjusted life-year, as early as 2011. It no longer focuses only on global health, recommending research-backed charities in several cause areas including global poverty alleviation, animal welfare, and the welfare of future generations. (See the section on Research and recommendations for more details.)

Pledges

Giving What We Can promotes giving pledges as a means to help individuals align their actions with their values, take concrete steps to improve the world, and influence societal norms around charitable giving. All members share a commitment to donating at least part of their income and are commonly referred to as "pledgers."

The 10% Pledge

The 10% pledge is a voluntary and non-legal commitment to donate 10% or more of one's income. This figure is the minimum percentage and was chosen because it has a good balance of significant and achievable. It is a significant proportion of income, in recognition of the importance of the problem and the need for real action. But it is also within the reach of most people in the developed world. Some members decide to go further and commit to donating 20% or even 50%. |access-date= October 25, 2020}}

In late 2023, the option to pledge wealth in addition to income was added. The optional wealth component of the Pledge allows individuals to commit to giving either 10% of their income or a custom percentage of their wealth annually, whichever is greater. Head of TED Chris Anderson who helped develop the wealth pledge option, was among the first to take it.

Other pledges

The Further Pledge

Some members decide to sign the "Further Pledge", where the member defines a basic annual income to live on and donates all income above this level to effective measures. |access-date= October 25, 2020}}

Founder Toby Ord further pledged to donate anything he earned over £20,000 a year, based on his conviction that he could live comfortably and happily on this income.

Co-founder Will MacAskill is also among those who have made such a pledge.

The Trial Pledge

GWWC also offers a temporary commitment called "The Trial Pledge" for people that may be interested but not yet ready to take the 10% Pledge. This involves making a commitment to donate at least 1% of one's income for a specified period of time. |access-date= October 25, 2020

The Company Pledge

In 2020, an option for companies to commit to donating to effective organizations was launched. In this case, companies commit to donate at least 10% of their net profits to effective charities. By 2024, 51 companies had signed up. |access-date= October 25, 2020

Research and recommendations

Giving What We Can conducts research to determine which charities it recommends for members and other people to support. Rather than evaluating individual charities, its research team evaluates the work of impact-focused charity evaluators such as GiveWell, Animal Charity Evaluators and Founders Pledge, and then publishes the recommendations of the evaluators it has judged to be best-suited for helping donors maximise their impact. It provides recommendations in the areas of global health, animal welfare, and reducing global catastrophic risks and allows donors to support those and other programs via its donation platform.

Impact-focused charity evaluators differ from others in terms of the importance given to metrics of charity performance. While evaluators such as Charity Navigator use the fraction of donations spent on program expenses versus administrative overhead as an important indicator, the evaluators that inform Giving What We Can’s research use the cost-effectiveness of the charity's work.

This begins with cause prioritization – identifying global problems that are pressing, solvable, and neglected. By focusing on high-impact causes, GWWC aims to direct donations to areas where they can have the most substantial effect. This strategy acknowledges that the variance in cost-effectiveness among charities often stems from the nature of the causes they address.

Members

By 2012, 264 people from 17 countries had taken the 10% Pledge. It surpassed 1,000 members in 2015 and 5,000 members in 2020. As of 2025, it had over 10,000 members.

Prominent members

Since its inception in 2009 the Giving What We Can Pledge was signed by various prominent individuals:

• A. J. JacobsAmerican journalist, author, and lecturer best known for writing about his lifestyle experiments
• Adam Swiftprofessor of political theory at University College London
• Alan Fenwickprofessor of tropical parasitology at the Imperial College London, Founder of the Schistosomiasis Control Initiative (SCI)
• Amelia GrayAmerican writer
• Aviva BaumannAmerican actress
• Ben DeloBritish mathematician, computer programmer, and entrepreneur, co-founder of BitMEX
• Ben LesterBritish recording artist and multi-instrumentalist
• Bruce Friedrichexecutive director of The Good Food Institute, a non-profit that received donation funding from Y Combinator
• Clare GallagherAmerican ultrarunner
• Chris AndersonHead of TED (conference)
• Derek Parfitsenior research fellow at the University of Oxford, visiting professor of philosophy at Harvard University, New York University, and Rutgers University
• Derek ThompsonAmerican journalist and staff writer at The Atlantic
• Diana FleischmanAmerican evolutionary psychologist and senior lecturer at University of Portsmouth
• Dustin MoskovitzAmerican entrepreneur who co-founded Facebook, Inc. and Asana, Inc., and philanthropist who co-founded Open Philanthropy
• Dylan MatthewsAmerican journalist, correspondent for Vox
• Ellie Chownshousing and communities spokesperson and Member of Parliament for the Green Party of England and Wales
• Eva VivaltCanadian economist, assistant professor of economics at the University of Toronto and the founder of research institute AidGrade
• Janet Radcliffe Richardsprofessor of practical philosophy at the University of Oxford
• John BohannonAmerican science journalist and scientist who is director of science at Primer, an artificial intelligence company
• Jonathan BlowAmerican video game designer, programmer and Twitch streamer
• José GonzálezSwedish indie folk singer-songwriter and guitarist
• Kelsey PiperAmerican journalist and staff writer at Vox
• Ken BaumannAmerican actor, writer, publisher and book designer
• Leah PriceAmerican literary critic
• Liv Boereetelevision presenter and former professional poker player
• Marcus DaniellOlympic tennis player from New Zealand with 5 ATP titles and founder of the organization High Impact Athletes
• Michael GregerAmerican physician, author, and professional speaker on public health issues and advocate for plant-based diets
• Michael Kremerholder of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics, professor in economics and public policy at the University of Chicago
• Nir Eyalprofessor of bioethics and director of the Center for Population–Level Bioethics at Rutgers University
• Peter EckersleyAustralian computer scientist, computer security researcher and activist
• Peter Singerprofessor of bioethics at Princeton University, and laureate professor at the Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics at the University of Melbourne
• Pilvi TakalaFinnish award-winning performance artist
• Rachel Glennersterchief economist at the Department for International Development (DFID)
• Romesh RanganathanEnglish actor, comedian and presenter
• Rutger BregmanDutch popular historian and author of four books on history, philosophy, and economics, including Utopia for Realists
• Sam HarrisAmerican author, philosopher, neuroscientist, podcast host, and prominent atheist
• Thomas PoggeLeitner Professor of Philosophy and International Affairs at Yale University, director of the Global Justice Program
• Toby Ordsenior research fellow at the University of Oxford's Future of Humanity Institute
• William MacAskillassociate professor in philosophy at the University of Oxford

References

References

1. "About us". Giving What We Can.
2. "Transparency".
3. Espinoza, Javier. (28 November 2011). "Small Sacrifice, Big Return". [[Wall Street Journal]].
4. (2015). "The Most Good You Can Do: How Effective Altruism is Changing Ideas about Living Ethically". Yale University Press.
5. (14 November 2009). "Academic pledges to give away £1m". BBC.
6. (6 January 2012). "Editorial: Unthinkable? Giving 10%". The Guardian.
7. Richard Woods. (15 November 2009). "Take My Money, I Don't Want It". The Sunday Times.
8. Gill, Martha. (8 January 2013). "The man who gives away a third of his income. Would you give up a luxury to save a life?".
9. (13 December 2010). "Toby Ord: Why I'm giving £1m to charity". BBC News.
10. (22 November 2011). "80,000 Hours is launched!".
11. "Centre for Effective Altruism". UK Companies House.
12. (31 August 2024). "Giving What We Can is now its own legal entity!".
13. (5 December 2012). "Putting Charities to the Test". The New York Times.
14. "We're renaming the Giving What We Can Pledge".
15. "Giving What We Can has a new pledge option!".
16. Bajekal, Naina. (2022-08-10). "Inside the Growing Movement to Do the Most Good Possible".
17. (February 2025). "Evaluations of GiveWell". GiveWell.
18. "Why and how Giving What We Can evaluates evaluators". Giving What We Can.
19. (2024). "Effective Altruism: An Introduction". Polity.
20. (December 2013). "A framework for strategically selecting a cause". 80,000 Hours.
21. (December 2013). "How much do solutions to social problems differ in their effectiveness? A collection of all the studies we could find.". 80,000 Hours.
22. "Members".
23. "WHO {{!}} Professor Alan Fenwick".
24. "Chris Anderson talking about his pledge on X".
25. "Dustin Moskovitz sharing his pledge on Twitter".
26. "Profile of Janet Radcliffe-Richards".
27. "New Zealand's Marcus Daniell is giving back to the game".
28. "I Just Pledged to Donate 10% For the Rest of My Life".
29. "Rutgers profile page for Dr. Nir Eyal".
30. (9 September 2022). "Peter Eckersley Helped Encrypt Internet Traffic to Foil Snoops". [[The Wall Street Journal]].