Updates on the effective giving ecosystem 2026

Written by Lucas Moore (Senior Partnerships Manager), Giving What We Can for the Effective Giving Summit 2026. Published with some elements redacted.

This memo provides a high-level overview of the effective giving landscape as of May 2026. It builds on the memo we wrote for last year's summit (later published with some elements redacted) and is based largely on the 2026 EG pulse survey and money moved sheet (not public). Please leave a comment if you'd like us to clarify anything. All figures are in USD.

Background

The effective giving ecosystem is an interdependent network of >70 organisations directing philanthropic resources to where they can do the most good, guided by principles such as cost-effectiveness, cause prioritisation and counterfactual impact. Within the ecosystem, some organisations identify high-impact opportunities (evaluators) and others fundraise for them (fundraisers). Many do both.

Key updates

• Money moved by the ecosystem (not public)^[1] grew by ~60% between 2024 and 2025, from ~1.2B to ~2B money moved

  • The bulk of that growth came from Coefficient Giving and GiveWell

    • Coefficient Giving: stable at ~650M since 2022, grew ~50% to ~1B in 2025

    • GiveWell: stable at ~200M since 2021, grew ~100% to ~490M in 2025

  • Significant growth also from Founders Pledge, Navigation Fund and Giving Green

    • Founders Pledge continued its YoY trajectory: ~25M (2022) to ~80M (2023) to ~140M (2024) to ~180M (2025)

    • Navigation Fund cemented itself as a major funder (moving 10-100M per year)

    • Giving Green emerged as a major fundraiser: ~30M in 2025^[2], up from ~10M in 2024

  • Though smaller in absolute terms, the rest of the ecosystem grew at similar relative levels

    • Excluding Coefficient Giving and GiveWell, the ecosystem grew by ~50% from ~340M to ~490M

    • Total money raised by national fundraising orgs grew by ~45% from ~44M to ~64M

      • Effektiv Spenden (DACH) showed that the national fundraising model has not (yet) hit a ceiling in any market: ~40% growth (from ~25M to ~35M)^[3]

    • The number of organisations moving more than 1M grew from ~22 to ~24

  • The "third wave" could represent the largest expansion in funding the EG ecosystem has yet seen
    • Many of the people coming into wealth are likely considering giving effectively
      • Many are part of the effective giving movement, and have been so since before they became wealthy. Some of these people (e.g. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei) took the 10% Pledge with Giving What We Can when they were still students; others have been GiveWell donors for years, or are working with organisations like Coefficient Giving to donate strategically across causes such as animal welfare, biosecurity, or risks from AI.
    • That said, there remains a lot of uncertainty about both whether and when this money will materialise and whether and to what extent donors will elect to spend it using effective giving principles
• Other notable updates
  • Coefficient Giving has started to diversify away from sole reliance on Good Ventures (Dustin and Cari) and more than doubled money moved from new partners
  • The Centre For Effective Altruism acquired Effective Altruism Funds
  • GWWC published a new round of evaluations of evaluators and now relies on
    • GiveWell (2025 report)
    • Animal Charity Evaluators' Movement Grants (2024 report)
    • Effective Altruism Funds' Animal Welfare Fund (2023 report)
    • Longview Philanthropy's Emerging Challenges Fund (2023 report)
    • Effective Altruism Funds' Long-Term Future Fund (2023 report)
    • (Re-)evaluations in 2026 are planned in global catastrophic risks, animal welfare, and potentially democracy/institution building

Overview of the ecosystem

• Database of organisations (evaluators and fundraisers)
  • >70 effective giving orgs
  • Most are <5 FTE. Other than that ~20 are >5 FTE. The largest by headcount are Coefficient Giving, GiveWell and Founders Pledge (all >50 FTE)
• Database of publicly accessible evaluators
  • The public-facing impact-focused charity evaluation and grantmaking field is still (very) small. Only 9 evaluators have at ≥3 FTE on evaluation and/or grantmaking: Coefficient Giving, GiveWell, Founders Pledge, Centre For Effective Altruism (having acquired EA Funds), Animal Charity Evaluators, Longview Philanthropy, Navigation Fund, Giving Green and Happier Lives Institute
  • No impact-focused evaluator exists for meta charities (i.e. charitable projects working one level removed from direct impact), pandemics or AI risks apart from Founders Pledge. Although, a few grantmakers do operate in those spaces (Coefficient Giving, Navigation Fund, Astralis, Macroscopic Ventures, Longview Philanthropy, Centre For Effective Altruism (having acquired EA Funds), Sentinel Bio, etc.)
  • Rethink Priorities launched a Cross-Cause Fund (the first of its kind) to pool donations from multiple donors and allocate them to high-impact giving funds across cause areas, such as global health, animal welfare, and global catastrophic risk reduction
• Effective Giving Global Coordination and Incubation
  • In May 2023 Giving What We Can hired Lucas Moore (me) to support coordination and collaboration in the global EG ecosystem, including by organising the annual Effective Giving Summit
  • Following the 2026 EG Summit, Giving What We Can decided to continue providing three public goods to the effective giving ecosystem, and these are the only ecosystem work that Giving What We Can should take on for now:
    • Convening: the EG Summit and Evaluators Forum
    • Information node: the ecosystem annual pulse survey and associated update (this post), money moved (not public) and total number of donors (not public) sheets, ecosystem overview, and evaluators database.
    • Quality control: evaluating evaluators, impact evaluation toolkit.
  • See Giving What We Can‘s public ecosystem strategy.
• Where operational funding comes from
  • Coefficient Giving is the largest single funder of meta charities
    • ~7M/yr budget for EG orgs, from their career/EG focused portfolio of ~10M/yr
    • In 2026 their career/EG program budget has increased to ~30M/yr (unclear what % will go to EG orgs)
  • Meta Charity Funders (funding circle) is a key funder for smaller and early-stage meta charities like EG orgs
  • See other funding sources

How much money is moved to high-impact destinations^[4]

• 1 organisation moved >1B (for the first time)
  • ~1B: Coefficient Giving
• 3 organisations moved >100M (same as 2024)
  • ~1B: ^ see above ^
  • ~490M: GiveWell
  • ~180M: Founders Pledge
• ~12 organisations moved >10M (up from ~10 in 2024)
  • >100M: ^ see above ^
  • ~30M: Effektiv Spenden (DACH), Survival and Flourishing Fund, Longview Philanthropy, Giving What We Can, Giving Green
  • >10M: The Life You Can Save, Astralis Foundation, Centre For Effective Altruism (via EA Funds, mainly through Giving What We Can’s donation infrastructure), Navigation Fund
• ~24 organisations moved >1M in 2025 (up from ~22 in 2024)
  • >10M: ^ see above ^
  • >5M: Doneer Effectief (Netherlands), Sentinel Bio, Animal Charity Evaluators
  • >1M: EA Australia, Gi Effektivt (Norway), RC Forward (Canada), Ultra Philanthropy, Ayuda Efectiva (Spain), Ge Effektivt (Sweden), One For The World, EA New Zealand, Giving Multiplier

• For some organisations (e.g. Ark Philanthropy, Effective Institutions Project, Macrosopic Ventures, AI Safety Tactical Opportunities Fund^[5], etc.) we don't have a good sense of the amount of money moved

Donors giving through the ecosystem

• A rough estimate of donors giving through EG orgs suggests the number grew by ~24% between 2024 and 2025, from ~69k to ~86k^[6]

• The donor distribution is generally heavy-tailed with a small share of donors accounting for a large % of total giving across ~all EG orgs

Where money goes

• A rough look at this (aided by Claude) indicated that the money moved by the EG ecosystem (not public) went to the following cause areas:
  • ~50% to global health
  • ~30% to global catastrophic risk reduction (up from ~20% in 2024)
  • ~10% to animal welfare
  • ~5% to climate change mitigation
  • (the rest is unknown or a bit harder to categorise: ~5%)
• Coefficient Giving and GiveWell dominate the effective giving space (~80% of money moved), and their cause area distribution may not reflect the (future) distribution of donors in the broad EG community as it grows (e.g. the potential influx of new "third wave" donors may change this, even when many of them may give through Coefficient Giving and GiveWell as well).
  • GiveWell moved 100% to global health in 2025
  • Coefficient Giving moved roughly to the following cause areas for 2025
    • ~35% to global health
    • ~50% to global catastrophic risk reduction
    • ~10% to animal welfare
    • (the rest is a bit harder to categorise: ~5%)
• Our current rough estimate (excluding Coefficient Giving):
  • ~70% to global health (up from ~60% in 2024)
  • ~10% to global catastrophic risk reduction (down from ~20% in 2024)
  • ~5% to animal welfare
  • ~10% to climate change mitigation
  • (the rest is unknown or a bit harder to categorise: ~5%)
• Our current rough estimate (excluding Coefficient Giving and GiveWell):
  • ~40% to global health
  • ~20% to global catastrophic risk reduction (down from 30% in 2024)
  • ~10% to animal welfare
  • ~20% to climate change mitigation
  • (the rest is unknown or a bit harder to categorise: ~10%)

1. ^{^}

    For the purposes of this overview, "money moved to high-impact destinations" refers to funds donated directly to an organisation's accounts by a donor, with a high-impact destination (i.e. one recommended or granted to by an impact-focused evaluator). Some organisations also move money to destinations not considered high-impact, but these funds are not included for our purposes e.g. in 2025 Founders Pledge moved a total of ~300M, but only ~180M is considered high-impact. This also excludes a few organisations that did not share their money moved figures for 2025 with us, e.g. Ark Philanthropy, Effective Institutions Project, Macrosopic Ventures, AI Safety Tactical Opportunities Fund, FarmKind.

2. ^{^}

    Giving Green received a ~50M donation from an anonymous donor in 2025, however when they receive very large gifts (~20M or more) without an indication of donor intent or multi-year commitments, they may choose to spread grantmaking over two years to ensure that they have money available for highly impactful future opportunities. This is what they’ve done in 2025 such that they’ve only reported ~30M.

3. ^{^}

    In 2024 it was unclear whether the model could keep growing past a level of market penetration. E.g. Effektiv Spenden (DACH) had plateaued at ~20-25M for a couple of years. The 2025 growth of Effektiv Spenden (DACH) of ~40% has further validated the model and we have not (yet) found a ceiling for how far it can scale.

^{^}

 Again, for the purposes of this overview, "money moved to high-impact destinations" refers to funds donated directly to an organisation's accounts by a donor, with a high-impact destination (i.e. one recommended or granted to by an impact-focused evaluator). Some organisations also move money to destinations not considered high-impact, but these funds are not included for our purposes e.g. in 2025 Founders Pledge moved a total of ~300M, but only ~180M is considered high-impact. This excludes a few organisations that did not share their money moved figures for 2025 with us, e.g. Ark Philanthropy, Effective Institutions Project, Macrosopic Ventures, AI Safety Tactical Opportunities Fund, FarmKind.

^{^}

 The AI Safety Tactical Opportunities Fund is likely still moving >10M, but we haven't been able to confirm for 2025.

^{^}

 Self-reported figures from the 2025 and 2026 pulse surveys give a rough sense of how many people are giving in accordance with EG principles. These should be understood as order-of-magnitude estimates only because the same individual can give through multiple orgs, so the totals may overstate distinct individuals, and not all organisations reported on this (though the largest few retail fundraisers did).

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