The switch from “GWWC pledge” to “10% pledge” makes a lot of sense to me. I’m less sure about the coloured diamond logos. Is there any particular reason for choosing orange? Have you considered the potential for confusion with the Liberal Democrats in the UK?
Hi Andrew - we did notice the similarity many months ago when we started planning the launch - but with the election being called a few weeks ago, the comparison has definitely gotten more noticeable.
At the time, we thought it wasn't a big issue, and once the election is over, I suspect it will go back to being much less of an issue as well. Keeping in mind that less than a quarter of our community is in the UK - and the symbol doesn't have any clear association outside the UK.
Partly we are using the little orange diamond because it fits nicely with our GWWC logo having a small diamond, and the only two diamond emoji colours are orange and blue - and blue didn't fit as well with our colour palette.
My hope is that by the next election cycle, the Lib Dems feel like they need to adopt a new symbol because the 🔸10% Pledge is so prominent!
When I saw these emojis popping up on EA twitter accounts, I wondered if the Lib Dems had announced some animal welfare policy I hadn't heard about or something.
FWIW in the suggestion to use “🔸10% Pledge #XXXX with @GivingWhatWeCan” I didn't immediately figure out that you were supposed to replace XXXX with your pledge number, and I think that when you do replace it with your pledge number, IMO it's not really clear that it is your pledge number (or what a pledge number is).
I toyed with this for a while and set my twitter bio to "🔸611th member of the 10% Pledge with @GivingWhatWeCan", but it still feels a bit clumsy to me and maybe I'll end up just removing the number completely.
Re your footnote about pledges not equal to 10%, what is your recommended PR approach for in our social media bios etc? My guess is if someone has a <10% pledge (maybe this is uncommon except for trial pledges?) it is good not to use the 10% figure lest it be misleading. If someone has a >10% pledge, is it best to use the actual number or still 10%? (also possibly misleading, but at least in the less bad direction - can't be accused of inflating it for signalling gain.)
Unrelatedly, do you have a prediction market set up for GWWC 10% pledge growth? Could be good to do I think!
Hi Oscar! The 🔸10% Pledge is set at a minimum of 10% of income, so you're correct that if a pledge is less than this, it would be a trial pledge. Regarding pledges that are greater than 10%, we would recommend still using the 10% Pledge logo and tag(s) but including your actual pledge amount if you're comfortable with that, ex. "I've taken the 🔸#10PercentPledge to give at least ten percent of my income to high-impact charities (pledging x%) because ...."
We don't usually set up prediction markets but someone else would be welcome to!
Unfortunately, it looks like even in bio it's not possible! It says:
Account update failed: Description can't include "🔹".
It's not the biggest deal, the orange one is cooler anyway, so it's an extra reason to take the 10% pledge! 😉 In the meantime I'll use the blue one on swapcard.
Sounds good, I did this on LInkedIn, is there a way to tag/link to the GWWC page though from my bio? Cntrl + k didn't work, nor did @ or #.
(Maybe there could be an appendix with any handy tips for different common sites. E.g. how to get the orange diamond wasn't clear to me initially (I was trying :orange_diamond: ala Slack, which failed, but copy-pasting worked), and initially I put it in 'additional name' but it should actually go in the 'surname' box I think.)
Also, there is still one mention of 'The GWWC Pledge' on GWWC's LinkedIn that you should update.
Thanks Oscar - I updated the reference on LinkedIn!
I don't think there's a good way to tag GWWC on LinkedIn in the bio or headline, sadly.
Yeah this is a good point - we tried to keep the communications short but this missed the nuance of how to actually update it! We're seeing if we can create some guidance but it's on our list of lower priority tasks.
Also, probably no harm, but I feel like ~everyone on EAF would already know about GWWC so there is somewhat less marketing value?
I agree most people on EAF know about GWWC, but I guess seeing the yellow diamonds could still be a nice prompt to consider taking the 10 % Pledge. There is the potential for causing harm if EAF users overtake the pledge due to social pressure to conform, but I guess it is good to promote activities which are generally good. Posts about effective giving and kidney donations could lead to too much donations or kidney donations, but such posts seem to be generally considered good.
I also feel like it would be strange to promote the yellow diamonds to the outside world, but not on EA Forum on the basis that its users are already optimally considering taking or not the 10 % Pledge, such that adding yellow diamonds to the names of pledgers would make people overtake the pledge.
I agree with all this. If any Forum moderators are reading this, perhaps they could share instructions for how to update our display names? (Bizarrely, I can't find any way to do this when I go to edit my profile.)
Several effective giving aligned organisations have expressed interest in raising awareness about the Pledge to their audiences. We’ve heard from some of these organisations that it would be helpful if they could provide a way for their audiences to take the Pledge without introducing Giving What We Can as a new brand, which could be confusing for users, especially if they have to be directed to the Giving What We Can site to sign the Pledge!
It sounds like there's an intention to allow people to take the pledge without interacting with Giving What We Can directly, but will they still be listed on the Giving What We Can website? Will they be treated as identical to "direct" pledges? Would the partner organisation potentially track + display "their" pledges separately? Will pledgers be somewhat pushed in the direction of having a direct relationship with Giving What We Can anyway, in order to do things like managing their public profile and reporting income and donations?
All pledges taken through partners will appear on GWWC's website and will be treat as "direct" pledges! Partners could also decide to display the people who pledged through their "club" - but we're mindful that impact isn't double counted!
Most people will be added to our english comms about the pledge, but in some cases, where the audience does not speak english, they may not receive the same comms from GWWC, with the expectation that our partner will communicate in their language. We're handling this on a case by case basis.
At the moment, people will be directed to our website to report their donations and update their profile - but as we develop our partnerships further, we may include ability to report in our API or place the reporting of donations on a more neutral 10percentpledge.org website. We decided to see how the partnerships go before investing more technical time but we're excited for what the future could hold in this direction!
The Giving What We Can Pledge is now the 🔸10% Pledge! We cover the why (along with our near-term plans and how you can help!) below.
TL;DR:
The name change will help us grow awareness of the pledge by reducing brand confusion and facilitating partnerships.
We see it as an important part of reaching our goal of 10,000 pledgers by the end of 2024.
You can help by adding the orange diamond emoji to your social profiles 🔸 if you’ve taken the 10% Pledge! (or a small blue diamond 🔹 emoji if you’ve taken the Trial Pledge) as described below.
Full post:
For the better part of a year, Giving What We Can has been thinking more deliberately about how our brand choices could accelerate or hinder progress towards our mission of making giving effectively and significantly a cultural norm. One topic that has consistently surfaced is the name of our primary pledge.
While we think the “Giving What We Can Pledge” accurately captures the spirit we want to cultivate and the message we want to portray – that many people can afford to give more significantly – we’ve also identified some issues. We’ve noticed people referring to the Giving What We Can Pledge by all sorts of names (the income pledge, the lifetime pledge, the pledge, the giving all we can pledge, and the give what you can pledge, to name just a few) which leads to confusion and reduces “stickiness.” On that note, we’ve noticed people confusing the Giving What We Can Pledge with other similarly named pledges (like the Giving Pledge for billionaires, for example). We’ve also realised that having our organisation name in the title of the pledge can make it difficult for other organisations to easily promote it.
Above: An internal slide from our name-change deliberations
We considered several alternate names, had many healthy debates within our team, and surveyed over 30 key stakeholders from across the world and the effective giving ecosystem. The result?
We are delighted to announce that the Giving What We Can Pledge is now the 🔸10% Pledge!
What will this help us achieve?
As we announced at EAG London, we’re aiming to reach 10,000 active 10% pledgers in 2024 and we have ambitions to grow to 100,000 and eventually, to 1 million pledgers and beyond.
To achieve these ambitious goals, we need a name and a brand that can achieve saturation. We think the 10% Pledge could get us there because:
It’s short
It’s easy to say, remember, and understand
It can be hosted by partner organisations (more on this below!)
It has the potential for “stickiness” and increasing awareness, especially with the addition of the 🔸orange diamond symbol!
Above: 1. Benefits of renaming to the 🔸10% Pledge 2. Our vision of the diamond logo at work
How can you help?
If you’ve taken the 🔸10% Pledge (formerly known as the Giving What We Can Pledge), we’d be grateful if you could add the 🔸“small orange diamond” emoji to your name on your social media accounts. (If you’ve taken the Trial Pledge, you can instead add a small blue diamond 🔹 emoji.)
We’re hoping that seeing several 🔸’s across social media will cause people to be curious about what this signifies and lead them to learn more. It would be ideal to also add a statement like “🔸10% Pledge #XXXX with @GivingWhatWeCan” or “I’ve taken The 🔸@10percentpledge) to give to effective charities” to your bio so those who do want to learn more can easily find out about it!
And if you want to help the diamond emoji be even more visible for launch week, consider posting with the phrase "I've taken the 🔸#10PercentPledge because..." It would be exciting to see social media light up with these types of posts!
More broadly, whether or not you’ve taken a pledge, you can sign up to help us reach 10,000 pledgers. If you’re keen, fill out this form to let us know in which ways you might be able to help out!
More about our new partnerships
Several effective giving aligned organisations have expressed interest in raising awareness about the Pledge to their audiences. We’ve heard from some of these organisations that it would be helpful if they could provide a way for their audiences to take the Pledge without introducing Giving What We Can as a new brand, which could be confusing for users, especially if they have to be directed to the Giving What We Can site to sign the Pledge!
The 🔸10% Pledge rename allows us to more easily work with partners to integrate pledge signing (for both the 🔸10% Pledge and Trial Pledge) into their website. Partners will either have a custom co-branded pledge flow, or be able to host our pledges directly on their website using an API. When someone signs a pledge with a partner organisation, both Giving What We Can and the partner organisation will be notified of the new pledger and be able to send follow-up communications.
Everything except for the name of our primary pledge and the launch of our new partnerships! We will continue to operate in the same way as before and with the same mission. We are NOT renaming the organisation (which will remain Giving What We Can) and we are NOT renaming our other pledges (which will remain the Trial Pledge, the Further Pledge and the Company Pledge).
Additionally, the 🔸10% Pledge, formerly known as the Giving What We Can Pledge, still works in the exact same way. You can still pledge more than 10% of income[1], and you can also pledge to give the greater of 10% of income or a custom percentage of wealth.
Questions?
If you have any unanswered questions about this change or want to share your ideas for how we can grow pledgers now and into the future, you can reach us at [email protected]
A big thanks
Finally, we’d like to thank Alex Savard, who initiated a large part of the renaming proposal while he was an employee at Giving What We Can.
We are aware and have discussed at length one of the downsides of the rename, which is that it doesn't directly acknowledge that 10% is a minimum and that many choose to pledge more. However, we think the benefits of the name outweigh this concern, and that the 10% Pledge (pledge a minimum of 10%!) is still logically consistent.
This is the third in a sequence of posts taken from my recent report: Why Did Environmentalism Become Partisan?
Summary
Rising partisanship did not make environmentalism more popular or politically effective. Instead, it saw flat or falling overall public opinion, fewer major legislative achievements, and fluctuating executive actions.
Public Opinion...
I think right now EAs might be making a significant mistake by paying insufficient attention to the political realm. As EAs we tend to figure out what’s most impactful for us to work on and focus hard. That’s great! But there are various actions that are ‘non-delegatable’ - the extent to which an individual can do the action is limited (like voting, going to a protest, making hard money contributions to particular campaigns). It might be useful if we were all more in the habit of doing variou...
Bentham’s Bulldog recently argued that AI won’t definitely make factory farms obsolete. I agree, but I’d go further and argue that by default AI won’t make factory farms obsolete. However, I think it’s possible (though not guaranteed) that AI could make factory farms a lot more humane.
He throws out an 80% chance of cultivated meat being developed, and a 70% chance of it displacing factory far...
The switch from “GWWC pledge” to “10% pledge” makes a lot of sense to me. I’m less sure about the coloured diamond logos. Is there any particular reason for choosing orange? Have you considered the potential for confusion with the Liberal Democrats in the UK?
Hi Andrew - we did notice the similarity many months ago when we started planning the launch - but with the election being called a few weeks ago, the comparison has definitely gotten more noticeable.
At the time, we thought it wasn't a big issue, and once the election is over, I suspect it will go back to being much less of an issue as well. Keeping in mind that less than a quarter of our community is in the UK - and the symbol doesn't have any clear association outside the UK.
Partly we are using the little orange diamond because it fits nicely with our GWWC logo having a small diamond, and the only two diamond emoji colours are orange and blue - and blue didn't fit as well with our colour palette.
My hope is that by the next election cycle, the Lib Dems feel like they need to adopt a new symbol because the 🔸10% Pledge is so prominent!
When I saw these emojis popping up on EA twitter accounts, I wondered if the Lib Dems had announced some animal welfare policy I hadn't heard about or something.