It’s that time again — Giving Season, 2025. We’ve got a packed schedule of events on the EA Forum, aimed at eliciting more and better donations, as well as reaching new audiences. In this post, I’ll tell you what to expect, and how you can help.

Last year, we calculate that organisations who posted on the Forum during giving season raised between $130K and $150K as a result. We'd love to beat that this year. 

If you do one thing after reading this post, consider donating to the donation election fund. 

Overview

Throughout giving season I'll be encouraging posts on effective giving relevant topics, looking for earning-to-give-ers and organisations who might run relevant AMAs, etc... On top of this, we also have back-to-back events for Forum users to take part in. 

November 10th to 16th

A week for discussing questions around funding strategy (broadly construed). For example:

• How can we diversify funding in EA?
• Do current funders have distortionary effects on the community’s cause prioritisation?
• How useful are funding circles? Should there be more?

You can see last year’s posts here for some more inspiration. Also @Will Howard🔹's post from last year "what I'd like to see during funding strategy week" is full of ideas, many of which still haven't been explored enough. 

How you can contribute:

• Write about funding strategy, and tag your post with the “funding strategy week” tag.
• Write a question post, or post a relevant debate poll.
• Take part in the discussions under the posts. 

November 17th to 23rd

During marginal funding week, a range of organisations will write posts outlining their funding gaps for the next year, and what they can do with extra money.

We're making a cool custom page for the marginal funding week posts, which we hope to advertise to a broader audience of interested donors. 

If you represent an organisation which wants to take part in marginal funding week or the donation election, message me on the Forum for details. 

November 24th to December 7th 

During the donation election, you can vote (via ranked choice voting^[1]) for the organisations which you think should receive funding from the donation election fund. You can also write posts making the case for prioritising particular causes or organisations, host relevant debates, and take part in the discussion in a pinned donation election thread. 

A couple notes on eligibility

• Only Forum users who have an account at the time of posting this announcement will be eligible to vote in the Donation Election (this is to avoid people making accounts in order to get extra votes).

• Only organisations which have posted during marginal funding week and are (a) a registered charity in the UK, (b) a 501(c)3 in the US or (c) fiscally sponsored by one of those, are eligible for the election. This is purely because of the practicality of Effective Ventures regranting to the winners. Charities not eligible are heavily encouraged to take part in marginal funding week regardless. 

The donation election fund, and rewards 

The donation election fund is live and taking donations. You can see 2023's winners here, and 2024's here. CEA will be matching the first $5000 donated.

There are awards available for donors, and collective awards if we hit certain totals in the fund. Find out more here. 

December 8th to 14th

I want to help make donating effectively a social norm (and I'm sure a lot of you do too). An important part of achieving this is being public about donating and its role in your life.

 This is a week for doing just that - writing posts about why we donate. I'll be working with the comms team to spread the best content from the Forum to wider audiences throughout giving season (mostly via consistent social media posting), I expect this week will produce some motivational and/or confronting posts for those audiences. 

GWWC is also corralling people to write 'Why I pledge' posts, and I'll be encouraging some organisations to publish staff donation posts like this one. 

It's also be great to interview/ host AMAs with some earning to give folks (like this, and this). If you are one of these people, or you would like to recommend one, message me. 

December 15th to the end of the year

For the last couple weeks of the year, we'll have a banner on the frontpage where you can drop a heart with a comment once you're done with your annual donations. It'll look something like this:

What's next?

In the next couple weeks, consider if you'd like to write a post for funding strategy week, and whether you'd like to donate to the donation election fund. Add the Forum events calendar to your google calendar if you'd like reminders of the current week, and what's coming up. Message me with suggestions for AMAs, or debates. 

More details for each event will be published when they are coming up, but feel free to ask me anything in the comments regardless. 

Thanks for reading, and happy Giving Season!

PS- thanks to @Agnes Stenlund 🔸 for the cool renaissance-y designs!

1. ^{^}

   The plan is to run the election to the same specification as last year, so this description will still be accurate.