Ask Giving What We Can anything, all week

Hey @huw! Thanks for the question. My answer below should be read as guidance from a GWWC team member on how to interpret the 10% Pledge, but not as a formal or final position on what it means to stick to it.

We often hear from high-impact non-profit founders or employees (particularly those connected to AIM) that they are excited about effective giving and would love to take the 🔸10% Pledge, but haven’t done this (yet) mainly because they are already taking a lower salary at their organisation, and aren’t currently in a position to donate 10% of their remaining income. 

In many cases, the above conclusion is based on misunderstandings about the 10% Pledge which are resulting in opportunities for impact being missed by people like yourself not pledging. For example, pledging would allow you to more effectively and authentically advocate for effective giving and the 10% Pledge among your peers. People founding / working at high-impact non-profits are often in a particularly valuable position to advocate, as their personal stories make them examples for others trying to live up to effective altruism principles and “practising what they preach”.

To help clarify some of these misunderstandings, let's walk through a few options that could be worth considering for people like yourself founding or working at high-impact organisations:

Salary sacrificing: We think salary sacrificing can be perfectly in line with the spirit of the 10% Pledge if the following two conditions are both met:

1. You think your sacrificed money is best spent on the non-profit you are working for
   1. I.e. you think you have at least as much impact by salary sacrificing as by taking the salary and then donating to any other non-profit (taking into account tax benefits and any other logistical considerations). 
      Some considerations here:
      1. This is a different question than asking whether your organisation is the highest-impact place to work for you. 
         • E.g. most people would agree GiveDirectly is a high-impact organisation and for many employees it may be the highest-impact place to work, but they may still think that their marginal dollar is better spent donated to Malaria Consortium.
      2. If your organisation is not currently as funding constrained as some others, your money may have a larger impact elsewhere (it’s worth thinking about funging in this case).
      3. From a communications/advocacy perspective (for instance, “putting your money where your mouth is”) it may sometimes be higher-impact donating (at least some money) to another organisation than your own (or vice versa).
2. You would have received the sacrificed money for the job you are currently doing, if you hadn't explicitly decided to sacrifice it, and are able to receive it at any point in the future if you wish.
   1. For example, this condition is met when:
      1. As an employee, you have it listed in your contract or in your organisation's internal accounts that your salary is X, but then instruct your employer to only pay out 90% of X to you. At any point in the future, you could instruct your employer to start paying you X instead and they would do so.
      2. As a founder, you have the explicit ability to pay yourself X (e.g. your co-founder, board and funders approve of you doing this), but then decide to only pay yourself 90% of X. At any point in the future, you are able to pay yourself X if you wish.
   2. For example, this condition is not met when:
      1. You've founded or taken a job at a high-impact non-profit, knowing that you could have instead taken a higher-paying job elsewhere.
      2. You're confident you could have negotiated a higher salary with your employer, or paid yourself more as a founder, but haven't formally checked or arranged this in any way.

Donating less now but still taking the 10% Pledge: A common misconception about the 10% Pledge is that it would oblige you to give 10% every year. Instead, it is a lifetime pledge, so it's fine if you donate a bit less in some years and more in others to make up for that.

We obviously only recommend doing this if you’re confident you can and want to make the 10% lifetime commitment, and where feasible we still generally recommend people to give at least 10% yearly as a useful rule of thumb. This holds you accountable, embeds a pattern of giving in your life and avoids you getting so far behind on your pledge that it becomes daunting or unachievable. But we think there are cases, e.g. for some very early stage non-profit founders and/or when you’re having a particularly challenging year financially, where it may be worth diverging from this rule of thumb.

Taking a 🔹Trial Pledge: If you're not ready to take a 10% Pledge but are excited to start giving effectively, consider taking a 🔹Trial Pledge (1-10% pledge for 6 months to 5 years), which still allows you to lead by example and additionally can serve as a helpful reminder to reconsider taking the 10% Pledge (or another Trial Pledge) at a later date.

Hi Vasco,

Thanks for your question - I think it's a good one!

I was going to write up a response but then I remembered we had this nice explanation on our research and approach page:

Some other organisations in the effective giving space advocate a particular “worldview”; for example, they might believe it is most impactful to focus on safeguarding the long-term future and as such, recommend giving to organisations working to reduce existential risk, rather than other high-impact causes like global health. Others may believe it is best to focus on non-human animal wellbeing, because the scale of the problem (if you value all sentient beings equally) is so enormous compared to human wellbeing and the solutions are much more tractable than attempting to safeguard the long-term future.

At Giving What We Can, we believe there are compelling arguments and reasons for focusing on any of the high-impact cause areas we recommend, and that no matter which one you choose, you’ll have the capacity to help solve some of the world’s most pressing problems and prevent the suffering of many. We’ve outlined why the cause areas we recommend are particularly impactful (and why we encourage supporting these over others) but we don’t currently take a view on which of our high-impact cause areas we deem most impactful as we think this is quite value-specific. Instead, we wish to provide the public with a variety of highly effective giving options, and then empower them to determine which ones best align with their own worldviews/values. Some of our donors feel strongly that they’ll have more impact by prioritising one of these cause areas; others prefer to diversify their giving portfolio across several cause areas.

So I think the TL;DR of this answer is that we provide recommendations across a number of worldviews but don't currently want to weigh in on what we think is the "correct" worldview. This means that we'll be unlikely to create a ranked link of recommendations across our cause areas unless we change our view on how we think about worldview diversity.

I think that you raise a good point that in a partnership with fully shared finances and joint decision-making, there's a reasonable argument that each partner could view their effective "personal income" as 50% of the household income. This could align with the spirit of the pledge, which is about committing a meaningful portion of one's resources to helping others.

Another approach could be to sign the pledge together as a couple. Many GWWC members have found this to be a meaningful way to approach their giving as a couple. You can track your joint donations through a single pledge dashboard, making it easier to manage your giving together.

Ultimately, the goal of this advice is to help members stick to their plan of taking significant action to benefit others. All guidelines about how to calculate income should be thought of as serving that goal. In other words, our overall advice is to follow the spirit of the pledge, which is using a significant portion of one's income to benefit others. We recognise that a simple rule won't work perfectly for all possible situations, and encourage pledgers to define 10% of income in the way that makes sense to them. 

Hi Simon,

Thanks for the question!

The EA Hub used to facilitate donation swaps - but the project was retired so now there's no one owning this.

I think it can be hard to formally organise this, and have some reservations as to whether there could be legal implications for an organisation to run a project like this.

That being said, I know some people who are informally organising donation swaps at the moment.

It could be a good idea to gauge feasibility and interest in this across the EA community. I don't know if it's something GWWC would want to own but I do think it's worth someone exploring!

Another thing to mention is that in the absence of a donation swap, if you expect a non-tax-deductible donation opportunity to be ≥2x times more impactful than one that you could claim a tax deduction on, you should probably choose the higher-impact option and forego the tax deduction. Here's a nice page to explain why: https://www.givingwhatwecan.org/donating-effectively-tax-deductibly

Thanks for your kind words about our work and team, too!!

Hey @PabloAMC 🔸! Thanks for the question. We think direct work at a charity or nonprofit can be extremely impactful! However, your pledged amount does not change depending on your workplace or occupation. Those of us who work for nonprofits, even if we left higher-paying jobs to do so, still donate our pledged amounts.

If your giving pledge is preventing you from doing more impactful work then it might be appropriate to resign from your pledge. Read more about this in “How permanent is a giving pledge?”.