Rethinking the 10% Giving Pledge: Questions from a Recent Grad

satelliteprocess

Rethinking the 10% Giving Pledge: Questions from a Recent Grad

satelliteprocess

2 min readApr 19, 2025

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Joel Tan🔸

Just to address some of the valid points you raise:

(1) On charity effectiveness: At least in global health & development, GiveWell is considered the gold standard, and they are extremely rigorous in their evaluations - whether in terms looking at the scientific evidence or consulting experts or surveying beneficiaries or crunching the numbers in cost-effectiveness analysis or monitoring and evaluation.

I strongly suggest taking a look at their intervention reports (e.g. on mosquito nets to combat malaria: (https://www.givewell.org/international/technical/programs/insecticide-treated-nets) and their CEAs (https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/18ROI6dRdKsNfXg5gIyBa1_7eYOjowfbw5n65zkrLnvc/edit?gid=1364064522#gid=1364064522), to see just how meticulous and thorough they are, and to judge whether they take into account the concerns you have on corruption etc.

To provide some examples of what GiveWell adjust for, in their typically obsessive way - they adjust for (i) risk of wastage from double treatment/ineffective goods/goods purchased and left in storage till expiry, (ii) risk of misappropriation and of false monitoring, (iii) risk in the charity changing priorities or having non-funding bottlenecks or funging funding between more vs less effective programmes; (iv) % of mosquito nets actually used, (v) coverage years lost due to use of residual nets from previous distributions, (vi) program not having impact because it simply moved distributions closer together, (vii) internal & external validity issues with the randomized control trails used as evidence etc.

(2) On giving now vs later. I think it generally comes down to the following considerations.

(a) Value drift: I do think it's a real risk that by not donating, you lose the motivation to do so (it's easy to come up with excuses to put it off, not unlike exercise or dieting or quitting smoking/drugs/alcohol etc) and just end up not giving at all.

(b) Reduced cost-effectiveness over time: For most top GHD interventions available to the public, their cost-effectiveness will decline over time, because economic growth makes countries richer and reduces poverty and disease burdens over time - so if you give later, some of the cheapest ways of saving lives or reducing poverty will no longer exist (e.g. think of how expensive it is to save a life in America vs in the Congo, as an extreme example).

(c) Interest rates - as you point out, saving allows for your donation pool to grow (whether you invest in stocks or bonds or whatever).

Overall, (a) + (b) probably outweigh (c), making it more optimal to give now rather than later.

simon

1y*

Point (c) regarding interest rates is quite tricky & subtle. At least, you should probably take into account something like the real interest rate instead of the nominal rate, because ceteris paribus it's much more plausible that only real (ie inflation adjusted) growth of your donation pool matters.
I would go even further and claim that, in expectation, you need to outperform the real risk free rate in order to generate a net benefit by donating later.
This means that unless you're happy to take some investment risk and aim to ouperform in real terms point (c) doesn't matter much.
However, imo if you're at an early point in your career, investing in your future career flexibility by having savings can have extremely high returns, which can outweigh all the other points.

Jason

On taxes, you can deduct charitable giving from the amount of income used to figure your federal taxes if you "itemize." The alternative to itemizing is claiming the standard deduction, which in 2025 is $15,000. That means that, as a practical matter, the first $15,000 in itemized expenses don't help you on your taxes, but anything over that does. A very general explanation of itemizing is here.

Major categories of itemized deductions include state/local taxes (capped at $10K), mortgage interest, and charitable giving. I'm not from California, but it looks like your state/local taxes may be ~$7K based on your income. That means that, as a practical matter, the first ~$8K you donate in a year may not help you on your taxes, but everything after that will. The usual (partial) workaround is to save up your donations in a separate account and donate them every few years for more favorable tax treatment. That's what my wife and I do.

I believe most people consider the amount of their income on a post-tax basis to the extent that their donations are not tax-deductible. For you, that would involve considering some taxes (e.g., Social Security/Medicare, maybe state) and part of your federal tax.

You're absolutely right that the pledge doesn't adjust for personal circumstances, cost of living, and other factors. In my opinion, it's overdemanding for some people, and underdemanding for others. I would consider 10% as both a community norm and as the specific ask of GWWC's flagship pledge. I think GWWC would primarily explain the use of a flat percentage ask as based on something other than it being the fairest / most philosophically sound ask in an ideal world.

I'll talk here about the community norm, which is more flexible than the pledge. As to specific factors:

The cost of living is often somewhat reflected in the amount one earns -- you're in less of a position to give than someone who earned $120K/year in Peoria, but you probably wouldn't be making $120K/year in Peoria either. However, a flat percentage approach probably places a heavier burden on people in very high COL areas.
By definition, most people have fairly typical personal circumstances on net, with some factors enabling a higher donation percentage and others inhibiting it. Some have significantly more challenging circumstances than average and some have significantly more favorable circumstances than average. It sounds like you have some factors that are relatively favorable (e.g., no kids, some family support, developed country, relatively high income by US standards) and some factors that go in the opposite direction (e.g., very high COL area, just starting out). I think it's best to read the community norm as commending 10% to people in fairly typical personal circumstances, with the understanding that this may not be reasonable for people in less-than-average personal circumstances.

Mo Putera

I think GWWC would primarily explain the use of a flat percentage ask as based on something other than it being the fairest / most philosophically sound ask in an ideal world.

Just to expand on this, GWWC say

We chose 10% of income for the 🔸10% Pledge because we think it’s a good balance of significant and achievable: It is both a significant proportion of one's income, in recognition of the importance of the world’s problems and the need to take real action, while also remaining within reach of most people in wealthy countries.
Ten percent also carries with it a strong historical connection to the idea of tithing, a tradition in Judaism and Christianity of giving 10% of your income to charity or the church. Islam has a similar practice, Zakat, in which those who are able give between 2.5% and 20% of their wealth to those who are less well-off.
That said, 10% is just a minimum. Many of our members donate a lot more than their pledged amount, and other members pledge a higher starting percentage (contact us if you’d like to do this) or even take The Further Pledge — a pledge to give everything earned above a specified living allowance. And if 10% doesn’t yet seem achievable, consider starting with a 🔹Trial Pledge (where you choose a custom amount of 1% or more and your own time commitment), or donate to effective charities without taking a pledge.

Mo Putera

Tangentially, my own introduction to the EA 10% pledge was via Scott Alexander's old (2014) essay Nobody Is Perfect, Everything Is Commensurable, in particular this passage, albeit aimed at a very particular audience:

And Cliff Pervocracy’s concern of “Even if I do a lot of politics, am I still a bad person for not doing all the politics?” is superseded by “Even if I give a lot of charity, am I a bad person for not doing all the charity? And then a bad person in an additional way, about 1% as large, for not doing all the politics as well?”
There’s no good answer to this question. If you want to feel anxiety and self-loathing for not giving 100% of your income, minus living expenses, to charity, then no one can stop you.
I, on the other hand, would prefer to call that “not being perfect”. I would prefer to say that if you feel like you will live in anxiety and self-loathing until you have given a certain amount of money to charity, you should make that certain amount ten percent.
Why ten percent?
It’s ten percent because that’s the standard decreed by Giving What We Can and the effective altruist community. Why should we believe their standard? I think we should believe it because if we reject it in favor of “No, you are a bad person unless you give all of it,” then everyone will just sit around feeling very guilty and doing nothing. But if we very clearly say “You have discharged your moral duty if you give ten percent or more,” then many people will give ten percent or more. The most important thing is having a Schelling point, and ten percent is nice, round, divinely ordained, and – crucially – the Schelling point upon which we have already settled. It is an active Schelling point. If you give ten percent, you can have your name on a nice list and get access to a secret forum on the Giving What We Can site which is actually pretty boring.
It’s ten percent because definitions were made for Man, not Man for definitions, and if we define “good person” in a way such that everyone is sitting around miserable because they can’t reach an unobtainable standard, we are stupid definition-makers. If we are smart definition-makers, we will define it in whichever way which makes it the most effective tool to convince people to give at least that much.
Finally, it’s ten percent because if you believe in something like universalizability as a foundation for morality, a world in which everybody gives ten percent of their income to charity is a world where about seven trillion dollars go to charity a year. Solving global poverty forever is estimated to cost about $100 billion a year for the couple-decade length of the project. That’s about two percent of the money that would suddenly become available. If charity got seven trillion dollars a year, the first year would give us enough to solve global poverty, eliminate all treatable diseases, fund research into the untreatable ones for approximately the next forever, educate anybody who needs educating, feed anybody who needs feeding, fund an unparalleled renaissance in the arts, permamently save every rainforest in the world, and have enough left over to launch five or six different manned missions to Mars. That would be the first year. Goodness only knows what would happen in Year 2.
(by contrast, if everybody in the world retweeted the latest hashtag campaign, Twitter would break.)
Charity is in some sense the perfect unincentivized action. If you think the most important thing to do is to cure malaria, then a charitable donation is deliberately throwing the power of your brain and muscle behind the cause of curing malaria. If, as I’ve argued, the reason we can’t solve world poverty and disease and so on is the capture of our financial resources by the undirected dance of incentives, then what better way to fight back than by saying “Thanks but no thanks, I’m taking this abstract representation of my resources and using it exactly how I think it should most be used”?
If you give 10% per year, you have done your part in making that world a reality.

Davidmanheim

Other answers are very much on point, but I want to flag a point others are not focused on.

While I’m currently living with my parents and paying $700 per month in rent, I’ve been thinking seriously about saving more aggressively now that I'm just starting my career.

You should absolutely be doing this, and it should be a focus. I don't think it's a reason not to donate, but this has been discussed several times before.

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/ZXQ53du9sBjLZs5XB/how-to-balance-personal-savings-and-giving

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/psvQMXEgQsT5RMDTu/consider-financial-independence-first

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/w9ENDad268PT9KnWn/thoughts-on-personal-finance-for-effective-altruists

And on donating now vs. later,

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/7uJcBNZhinomKtH9p/giving-now-vs-later-a-summary

Henry Howard🔸

Two benefits of giving now rather than in your will in 80 years:

1. It's one small step in normalising giving. People are more likely to consider donating their money if they have people around them that do. You will nudge people.

2. Doing good accumulates compound interest. Empower someone to live a better life today rather than 80 years from now and they have and extra 80 years to be a productive member of society and help themselves, their family, their community.

Ryan Boyd🔸

1y*

Regarding donating 10% of your wealth in your will, as others have said, your donations will likely be more cost-effective now versus decades down the line. Moreover, 10% of your wealth upon death can be a drastically different amount of money than 10% of your annual income.

There are additional tax and other considerations like you’ve mentioned, but some simple math:

$60.10 * 2,080 (hours in a year assuming 40-hour work week) = $125,008 annual salary

If we assume a 3% pay increase each year, and that you work another 40 years:

Under these assumptions, a 10% pre-tax donation rate until retirement will mean you've donated $942,576, so in order to match this amount by donating 10% in your will, you would need to have an estate worth at least $9.4 million. Your savings rate, investments, and a myriad of other factors could make a 10% donation in your will a much higher or lower number, therefore you may need to allocate a significantly higher or lower percentage of your estate to match the amount from annually donating.

If you haven't found this resource yet, the 10% Pledge webpage from Giving What We Can has an FAQ section that discusses a number of the points you brought up, and I would highly recommend reviewing it.

Congratulations on your recent graduation and good luck on your journey!

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Mo Putera

And Cliff Pervocracy’s concern of “Even if I do a lot of politics, am I still a bad person for not doing all the politics?” is superseded by “Even if I give a lot of charity, am I a bad person for not doing all the charity? And then a bad person in an additional way, about 1% as large, for not doing all the politics as well?”
There’s no good answer to this question. If you want to feel anxiety and self-loathing for not giving 100% of your income, minus living expenses, to charity, then no one can stop you.
I, on the other hand, would prefer to call that “not being perfect”. I would prefer to say that if you feel like you will live in anxiety and self-loathing until you have given a certain amount of money to charity, you should make that certain amount ten percent.
Why ten percent?
It’s ten percent because that’s the standard decreed by Giving What We Can and the effective altruist community. Why should we believe their standard? I think we should believe it because if we reject it in favor of “No, you are a bad person unless you give all of it,” then everyone will just sit around feeling very guilty and doing nothing. But if we very clearly say “You have discharged your moral duty if you give ten percent or more,” then many people will give ten percent or more. The most important thing is having a Schelling point, and ten percent is nice, round, divinely ordained, and – crucially – the Schelling point upon which we have already settled. It is an active Schelling point. If you give ten percent, you can have your name on a nice list and get access to a secret forum on the Giving What We Can site which is actually pretty boring.
It’s ten percent because definitions were made for Man, not Man for definitions, and if we define “good person” in a way such that everyone is sitting around miserable because they can’t reach an unobtainable standard, we are stupid definition-makers. If we are smart definition-makers, we will define it in whichever way which makes it the most effective tool to convince people to give at least that much.
Finally, it’s ten percent because if you believe in something like universalizability as a foundation for morality, a world in which everybody gives ten percent of their income to charity is a world where about seven trillion dollars go to charity a year. Solving global poverty forever is estimated to cost about $100 billion a year for the couple-decade length of the project. That’s about two percent of the money that would suddenly become available. If charity got seven trillion dollars a year, the first year would give us enough to solve global poverty, eliminate all treatable diseases, fund research into the untreatable ones for approximately the next forever, educate anybody who needs educating, feed anybody who needs feeding, fund an unparalleled renaissance in the arts, permamently save every rainforest in the world, and have enough left over to launch five or six different manned missions to Mars. That would be the first year. Goodness only knows what would happen in Year 2.
(by contrast, if everybody in the world retweeted the latest hashtag campaign, Twitter would break.)
Charity is in some sense the perfect unincentivized action. If you think the most important thing to do is to cure malaria, then a charitable donation is deliberately throwing the power of your brain and muscle behind the cause of curing malaria. If, as I’ve argued, the reason we can’t solve world poverty and disease and so on is the capture of our financial resources by the undirected dance of incentives, then what better way to fight back than by saying “Thanks but no thanks, I’m taking this abstract representation of my resources and using it exactly how I think it should most be used”?
If you give 10% per year, you have done your part in making that world a reality.