This weekend is our last chance to get 2023 donations in! Below are some links and resources which might be helpful.
Why donate this weekend?
- 31st of December is the last day to claim donations on your 2023 tax return (US). More info on the tax deductibility of donations is here.
- Satisfying mental accounting, or keeping pledges. It’s pretty satisfying to be able to say that you gave a nice round percentage of your income in 2023. Being able to fulfil a specific percentage is especially important for anyone who has taken a Giving What We Can Pledge, a trial pledge, or has loudly pledged to friends (like me).
- You get to put a heart on the banner.
Where to donate:
- If you’re strapped for time:
- Give to an expert-led fund (animals, longterm, global health, EA). Grant-makers at a fund will spend a long time assessing the absolute best places to donate the money in their care. Donating to a fund which shares your values is a great way to multiply the impact of your donations. In short, the argument is that evaluators at the fund will have more time, skill and resources to spend on charity evaluation than the average donor, and will often have access to donation opportunities which donors don’t. The GWWC donation platform features a list of these funds.
- Or, a Donor Lottery. A donor lottery raises money, and then gives the responsibility for deciding where the money goes to just one of the lottery’s donors. The winner pre-commits to spending some time seriously thinking about where the money should go, so this is another opportunity to multiply the impact of your donation without spending the time yourself. This donor lottery is open at GWWC right now.
- Or, defer to the Forum. Our Donation Election just concluded, with 341 Forum users voting. If you like, you can take the results as donation recommendations.
- If you have more time to do analysis yourself:
- Read posts about funding gaps on the Forum. During Marginal Funding week the Forum elicited information from a broad range of charities about what they would do with extra funding, and how large their funding gaps are this year. If you have time, check out some of the funding gaps info (you can find a brief summary for all the marginal funding posts on the Forum in here, a collection of the full posts here, and detailed responses from more charities in this thread).
- Hone your cross-cause opinions. Perhaps the most impactful donation decision you make is the cause area you choose to support. For someone with an afternoon to spare, Rethink Priorities’ new cross-cause cost-effectiveness model (a work in progress), is a fun way to put some numbers on your thinking, and test your assumptions. For more details, check out this post.
If you do donate this weekend, consider sharing your decisions on our where are you donating thread.
If you have more helpful advice for donors (ideally advice that isn't "donate to my charity") I'd love it if you commented it here.
