TL;DR. Quantity over quality; table consistently; prioritize a friendly tone based on shared values; pitch the pledge as an accountability mechanism; don't spend too much time on the specifics of effectiveness; maintain a sense of agency and informed decision making; your mileage may vary but give it a try.
Important: See the response from Frank Fredericks, the Executive Director of One for the World, below in the comments.
Since January 2025, the Middlebury EA contingent has secured 300 Giving What We Can (GWWC) 1% Trial Pledges from students interested in giving to highly effective charities. I estimate that we have tabled no more than 30 hours cumulatively. This is how we did it, and more importantly, why it’s not that hard.
Our Theory of Change
- Quantity over quality. It is much easier to get 300 1% pledges than 30 10% pledges. We would also rather make the pledge feel as accessible as possible—and risk some pledgers slipping through the cracks—rather than overstate the commitment and get fewer sign-ups. To understand this post, you must understand that we are under no illusions that all 300 students will follow through, or how many of those would donate in the absence of a pledge. However, if even 10% of them donate to better charities—and I believe that the percentage is far higher—our time will have been well spent. Further, if this pledge serves as an entry point to EA for a student who ends up donating 10% or having a change of career, the ROI is extremely high.
- Middlebury in particular. Our school is home to some extremely talented, idealistic, and ambitious students. Yours probably is too. For some reason, even the wealthiest college students think (or pretend) that they don't have any money; however, now or in the future, our classmates could make very meaningful contributions to effective charities if they choose to. In addition, a lot of Middlebury students are motivated to make the world a better place but feel pigeonholed by the institutional incentives around them. We pitch effective giving as just one of many ways they can make a difference.
Yes, tabling is uncomfortable. We joke that it is our weekly public humiliation ritual. I am introverted enough to consistently dread it. But it’s also a great way to meet people and to build pitching skills. And every once in a while, you find someone who is truly delighted to stumble upon something they didn’t realize they were looking for.
Breakdown of the Pitch
Where: In the entrance area of our main campus library. Any high-traffic area works.
When: 30–60 minutes once per week, usually in the evening. Consistency is everything.
Who (us): We always pitch in pairs or groups of three. This reduces awkwardness and makes it easier to pitch multiple people simultaneously. Plus, it's fun.
Who (them): We attempt to pitch basically everybody, but sometimes don't bother if they appear to be in a rush or purposefully avoid eye contact. Groups of friends are great—nobody knows where the joke ends and where the serious consideration begins—and couples are even better. There is nothing more powerful than pitching charity donations to a guy in front of his girlfriend.
What: Your mileage may vary, but this is roughly how it we do it:
- Intro. Flag someone over—"Hey, do you have a second?" Introduce yourself. Ask how the person's day is going. This is always awkward, so break the ice. Crack a joke if possible.
- Set the stage. Build the person up—"As a [whatever] student, you're pretty smart and ambitious; you wouldn't be here if you weren't. But the cool thing about [whatever] students is that they also tend to be really idealistic. Odds are there's something you care about, whether it be climate change or global poverty or whatever it is you wrote your entrance essay about." For us, this is actually true: Most Middlebury students are actually quite idealistic. This is probably true for your college/university too. Young people want to do good. And if they actually aren't idealistic, they'll nod along anyways.
- Introduce value drift. We then introduce the risk of value drift. Students who are idealistic now might forget about those values in the future—"Statistically speaking, those ideals are at risk of falling by the wayside. You'll have a mortgage to worry about; you'll have to take your cat to the vet. That's normal life stuff, but we think it's kind of sad that we often forget about the issues we used to care about."
- The irony of resources. Sometimes this comes before (3), but we usually slot in something about the inverse relationship between influence and idealism—"You're idealistic now, but as a college student you have very little money and very little control over your time." This is objectively false for most students, but they think it's true. However—"When you enter the workforce and finally have an income and more control over your resources, then there's that risk of losing track of your idealism." It's a golden handcuffs type of argument.
- The pledge itself. Only then do we introduce the 1% commitment—"So what we have here is a pledge that says that when you enter the workforce and have a steady income, you will donate 1% of your income to charities that you care about."
- GWWC's dual role. Emphasize that you are not fundraising for GWWC itself, but that GWWC is a meta-charity. It does two things: First, it is an accountability mechanism that protects against value drift. Second, it is a research hub that publishes information to help pledgers make informed decisions about where their money goes—"Because frankly, some charities suck. But there are also nonprofits out there doing truly life-saving work. And we think it's incredibly important to form a habit of giving now, because over many years it could make a huge difference."
- The duality of 1%. 1% of pre-tax income is negligible for the earner, but for the receiver it could be truly transformative—"We're talking about a weekly coffee for you, but in the right hands, over many years, it could literally save lives." Middlebury graduates are, on average, well within the top 1% of earners globally. And most Americans donate more than 1% anyways. It's all a matter of where it goes.
- Emphasize agency. Make sure the person realizes that (i) the pledge is not legally binding, (ii) even though it's not legally binding, there's no point signing if you won't follow through, and (iii) the decision on where to donate remains squarely in the pledger's hands.
- Signing the thing. Flip the laptop around and walk people through the pledge. We use the GWWC x OFTW Pledge Club sign-up (I think other universities have custom pages, but we haven't even reached that level of sophistication). If someone is hesitant, answer their questions. If they remain hesitant, do not pressure them. Again, here we are at risk of people signing the pledge just to get us to shut up, so make sure that they are only signing if they are serious. Offer to send more info over email (the hit rate on this is extremely low, but still worth doing). Make sure pledgers use their non-university emails, because otherwise the email will get deleted when they graduate.
- Wrapping up. It's very important to make sure that the pledger verifies their email right there on the spot—"Otherwise, Giving What We Can thinks we're just making up fake emails." Finally, encourage the pledger to check out the information on the GWWC website for more resources on effective giving.
Other Notes
- "Effective altruism." Just don't say these words. For some people, the label carries baggage, and for others it's just an unnecessary complication to the pitch.
- Talking about charities. We don't do it much. We don't start with asking how much the person thinks it costs to save a life. We instead emphasize that (i) the pledger gets to decide where their money goes, and (ii) that GWWC publishes great resources to help them make informed decisions. What we care about is that the person cares at all. Through GWWC, they can make donations to whatever cause area speaks to them, but armed with better information. We are not here to argue about cause prioritization.
- Don't be a salesperson. We're usually just two guys with laptops—we don't have any marketing materials right now. Is this confusing to people? Maybe. But it also means people come with their guards down. If someone approaches and is immediately suspicious of ulterior motives—unfortunately, some people just go through the world thinking that nobody could spend their time doing something for free—the cause is probably already lost.
- Tone is so important. Make authentic conversation and focus on shared values. As friends, we quip with each other and jump in when one of us falters. Pay attention to what part of the pitch makes the person engage further, and lean into that. The most important part of this pitch is conveying sincerity and confidence.
- Post-graduation. Students are very hesitant to pledge 1% of their income if they don't have a stable job. For this reason, we give them the option to make the Trial Pledge start at their expected graduation date. However, we also point out that even with a very low income, it is very easy to donate 1% to get in the habit of giving.
- Our hit rate. It's over 50%. Again, quantity over quality. We do not schedule multiple layers of coffee chats, presentations, and follow-ups with our pledgers. This probably hurts retention, but it also means we can spend more time getting new pledges. I firmly believe that—for our school at least—this is the way to go.
- Why GWWC. We originally formed a One for the World (OFTW) chapter. While we like the 1% pledge, we found that OFTW's method of asking for credit card information upfront was off-putting. For our one-and-done, spontaneous pitching strategy, that's a turn-off for students. The GWWC Trial Pledge allows us to pitch a 1%, non-binding pledge with great resources behind it but that needs to be renewed regularly. With our link, the pledgers are cross-listed with OFTW. We hope that some of our pledgers will one day increase to 10%.
- Logistics. We keep a simple spreadsheet of all the names, dates, and emails of pledgers, with an indication of what/if they've signed.
- Areas for improvement. It would be interesting to test out different pitch percentages to see which have the best ROI. It would probably also be useful to follow-up with past pledgers (especially those who have graduated) to see if they're following through.
- Recruiting. We have found that tabling is also a great way to find new people who are either (i) already interested in EA world and might want to collaborate, or (ii) have values aligned with EA that we can follow up with and share more about EA with.
A Critical Note
We have garnered a fair amount of praise for our success in pitching 1% pledgers. While part of this might be because those 300 pledges are imagined to be higher-retention than they (probably) are, I think that it's also due to the fact that the bar for university tabling is very low. We have found great success in a year and a half of tabling weekly for half an hour. I am confident that this is not due to us being particularly great evangelists or our fellow students being particularly excited to sign pledges. Rather, I get the impression that most university groups simply haven't tried to table outside of once-per-semester club fairs.
Give it a shot. Consistent, low-stakes tabling is a great way to connect as an EA group, meet people at your school, and do some substantial good. Most importantly, you can probably do it better than we do. If you have any questions or suggestions, get in touch! :)
TL;DR: As the sponsoring organization, we are extremely skeptical of the value of these pledges. We attribute this skepticism to the temporary nature of these pledges, rather than permanent alternatives. We need more testing to verify this hypothesis. We do however think this method of tabling is a great top-of-funnel tactic, and commend Middlebury’s team!
Thank you for summarizing this! As the sponsoring organization of this work, I’m happy to share how we are thinking about it, because I think we have a much more bearish interpretation of these efforts so far.
For background, One For the World (OFTW) has had a chapter at Middlebury since January 2025, founded by the awesome folks behind this blog post. To be a OFTW Chapter means you are promoting our 1% Pledge on campus to prevent child deaths globally, and you get invited to our annual in-person training event, access to our funding for on-campus events and activism, and coaching on effective giving promotion from our dedicated and experienced staff. We have 35 campus chapters, with some variation as new join and some sunset. And these chapters have moved $3.4M in effective giving, preventing some 730 deaths as a result.
During the first semester, the Middlebury chapter leaders expressed that they faced an unusual amount of friction around our “hard pledge” with students as compared to other our campus Chapters. See, to “pledge” at One For the World, you currently must submit your credit card (or ApplePay, etc), even if you won’t start paying until years into the future (our “future pledging” feature is one of the more unique aspects of Donational, our proprietary donor platform). Given the fact that we process these donations ourselves (even if years in the future), we have an incredibly detailed view of our donors, donations, attrition rates, and lifetime customer value. With over 10 years of donor data, we created a pledge value estimator that both is categorical by pledge type, and with a sensitivity variable by starting ARR (annualized recurring revenue). Needless to say, we are data obsessed and take outcome-level data as an essential way of validating our value proposition.
However, we also take an entrepreneurial and experimental view to our work, and so when Middlebury leadership (Camiel, Tyler, Sam) presented this challenge, we thought it would be a great idea to develop an entrepreneurial test around it. Will a larger number of “soft pledges” (those without a credit card submission) lead to at least the same amount of actual effective giving as a smaller number of “hard pledges”?
To aid in our test, we decided together with the campus leaders to use the pledge partnership platform between OFTW and Giving What We Can (GWWC). We’ve partnered in the past years to help drive GWWC pledges, and I believe we’re among the biggest recruiter of GWWC pledges in the pledge partnership program (Luke from GWWC can confirm if that is true). So we were more than happy to leverage this existing technology to test the hypothesis.
The results have been fascinating, but inconclusive. From an output metric point of view, we’ve seen a great number of trial pledges come from these efforts. Specifically, this academic year, we’ve seen ~130 trial pledges, and 1 10% pledge (I’m not sure where the 300 number came from, as we don’t see that on our pledge platform dashboard, but perhaps some pledges were recruited outside the OFTW-GWWC pledge partnership platform). But these pledges are only output metrics, and if these pledges don’t lead to money moved, then it would invalidate the hypothesis, and would suggest these efforts aren’t nearly as impactful as our existing methods. Furthermore, we don’t attribute the larger pledge count to tabling, as most of our chapters engage in tabling, though we think that both the frequency of tabling, and the charisma of the Middlebury Chapter Leaders, who are delightful people if you get to talk with them. However, we definitely encourage people to heed the tabling advice in the article, which follows OFTW best practices brilliantly.
To determine the outcome of effective money moved is a more challenging endeavor. The most empirical method would be to conduct a longitudinal study of actual money moved, but that would delay institutional learning to a degree that would be unhelpful. So there’s three current heuristics being deployed to determine these trial pledge values:
So while our initial test was about “hard” versus “soft” pledges, the performance seems to be largely driven by the “trial” versus the permanent, ongoing pledges of either OFTW or GWWC. What does that mean for promoting trial pledges on campuses? While it’s too early to fully invalidate the hypothesis that soft pledges can generate sufficient returns in effective giving, we mounting evidence that temporary pledges are not valuable to recruit on campuses.
While we wait to see if more trial pledges recruited by the awesome Middlebury team can be upgraded to either OFTW 1% hard pledges or GWWC 10% pledges, OFTW is still exploring the feature-set around “soft pledges”. Specifically, our tech team has developed a “soft pledge” donor experience through our proprietary donor platform called Donational, which we will offer to a subset of chapters this year, for a more robust test by increasing the N-count and have a more comparable donor experience (small differences in the OFTW and GWWC pledge experience can affect outcomes). Also, we don’t know if the low quality of these pledge values are driven by the temporary nature of a “trial pledge” or the soft nature of not inputting a credit card (I’m more skeptical of the latter because I believe GWWC has evidence that their 10% soft pledge drives real effective giving, even in the absence of a credit card on file). In short, we haven’t invalidated “soft pledges” entirely, but we are entering the next test with heightened skepticism that soft pledging will outperform our existing campus chapter offering with hard pledges, even in the face of student hesitancy around inputting payment information at the point of pledging. Perhaps students who are unwilling to put in payment methods (or make permanent commitments) weren’t credible donors in the first place. The results above certainly make sense if that were true. Further testing should be done exclusively using “soft”, permanent pledges, rather than offering any trial pledges at all (in our opinion).
So our main takeaways at OFTW:
Despite the length of this comment, this is a brief summary of our take on this test if you can believe it! We’d love to hear any questions or comments from you all, including readers, Middlebury organizers, and GWWC partners.
Also, if you want to bring effective giving to your campus or workplace, or want to use our proprietary tech at your own effective giving organization, reach out to us at One For the World!
Frank Fredericks
Executive Director, One For the World
I appreciate the effort and ambition you're putting into this and endorse you doing the kind of outreach you're most excited about. That said, I doubt this is nearly as valuable as it looks on paper, so groups shouldn't default to replicating it.
[emphasis added]
Based on this and the absence absence of meaningful follow up, I'd guess these pledges are worth ~5% of 300 high-touch pledges.
It seems like people are going to get an email from GWWC at some point in the future (maybe not even that?) which may or may not successfully remind them of this brief interaction, which may or may not motivate them to click through to the site, which is quite unlikely to convince anyone to donate to a highly effective charity.
Shifting some portion of your efforts to follow up seems like the right move. Getting one real EA 1% pledger up to 5% would be worth 80 of these pledges for example and seems doable.
Thanks for your comment. I agree with this assessment.
I wanted this post to describe our approach while communicating that the numbers are not what they seem at first. While I estimate that our overall efficacy is more than your estimated 5% (the follow-ups from GWWC are more robust than you describe), I agree that it is quite low—still, even if these efforts yield just a handful of effective givers in the long run, this will have been a worthwhile use of time.
I by no means believe that this is an optimal approach to tabling, but hope that this post will encourage other organizers to try something and continue to iterate on best strategies—because right now, I am under the impression that there is not very much of this work taking place on campuses.
Cool! Impressive numbers.
That sounds like a good strategy, and you explain it very well.
It's impressive that you managed to get that many trial pledges!
Congrats!
“Further, if this pledge serves as an entry point to EA for a student who ends up donating 10% or having a change of career, the ROI is extremely high.”
My personal guess is that the expected value of doing OFTW tabling is dominated by the chance of finding a highly talented student who can take a career in a highly effective cause area. If this is the case, shouldn’t there be a larger focus on selling EA to them as well?
We often will share more substantive information on EA (and follow up) with students who are especially enthusiastic. For example, it was through this tabling that we originally connected with a student who attended a recent EA retreat with us.