Hi Habeeb,

I work at GWWC as the Head of Marketing :)

Thank you for your generosity and for sharing your perspective! We are actively interested in how we can help cultivate people giving effectively from all over the world, so this is really helpful feedback for us!

I've asked someone on the team who knows why we have the $5 minimum to follow up in the comments here, so stay tuned for their response. My guess is that with the processing fees associated, it might not make sense for us to support donations less than $5 - but this post will help us challenge those assumptions!

On why we don't have a bigger range of charities to donate to: We have a pretty strict process in terms of the charities we allow on our platform, which you can read more about in our inclusion criteria if you're interested. Basically, we want to make sure that donors have options that are sufficiently high-impact, and that the charities get sufficient value from being on our platform.

Some suggestions on donating smaller amounts:

• If there is a trusted person in the group, you could pool all your money together to be able to reach the threshold of $5, and maybe you could make a collaborative decision on where to donate - this could even be a nice way to help talk about giving and your thought process with friends.
• Wait until you are able to donate the minimum $5, and set aside this money in the meantime.
• Against Malaria Foundation allows donations as low as $2 USD: https://www.againstmalaria.com/Donation.aspx

I also liked the suggestions from others in the comments. I think there's lots of ways to donate and they don't all necessarily go through GWWC!

I appreciate your perspective on wanting to cultivate the habit of donating small amounts but also generally caution that especially for students, that you're making sure you have enough for your own expenses and emergencies first. Making sure that the habit is sustainable is an important factor for long term giving!

Thanks again for sharing this, Habeeb and I'll make sure someone else follows up about the $5 limit!

I do really think that donating thoughtfully in ways that mean that someone is statistically living because of the interventions you've funded is just something to be really proud of. 

I also wanted to say that I think it's truly okay to also value making your own life more enjoyable, alongside improving the lives of others. I choose to donate at least 10% of my income, but I also spend money on many things I don't need - but I value a rich life full of diverse experiences as well as helping others, and I don't feel bad about it! I'm fulfilling my goal of being a net positive addition to the world, and enjoying my life :) I wanted to add this because I think people in the EA Community often hold themselves to extremely high moral standards!

One quick GWWC tooling note: If you take a Trial Pledge (starting a 1% of income for at least 6 months) or 10% Pledge, we have really nice dashboards and graphs that help track your donations over time!

Hi satelliteprocess!

I'm Grace, the Head of Marketing at GWWC.

Giving What We Can offers a number of giving pledges, the most popular being the "Trial Pledge" and the "10% Pledge"

A Trial Pledge allows you to pledge between 1%-10% of your income for a fixed amount of time between 6 months to 10 years.

A 10% Pledge is a pledge to give 10% of your income until you retire.

There's no progressive "tax" scheme for GWWC's Pledges, unlike The Life You Can Save (TLYCS)'s recommendations. GWWC also has the option for people to pledge a percentage of wealth, and we encourage those with significant wealth to give a higher proportion of their assets.

We encourage people to "give what they can" and find a level of giving that best suits them. We find that people have very different expectations about how much they can or should give and think it's for each person to decide what works for them. For example, some people on low incomes still take the 10% Pledge while others who earn significantly more might take a Trial Pledge for 1% or 5%.

If you're new to giving, I'd recommend taking a Trial Pledge for a percentage that feels comfortable to you, and plan on increasing it if you decide you'd like to give more.

Re: pre or post income tax, you can find the answer in this FAQ.

I don't know what country you're in, but to calculate your annual pre-tax and post-tax income but if you google, there's usually calculators or tools that do this for your country!

Peter Singer has taken the 10% Pledge (although he's mentioned he gives much more) but he is the founder of TLYCS. They are two different charities, which is why we have different pledges.

Giving What We Can offers a more active community around pledging, including a global slack community and dashboards to track your progress over time - promoting giving pledges is one of the main things we do and we're planning on improving the experience for our pledgers over time! So I'm biased in saying that taking a pledge with GWWC is a good idea, starting with a level of giving that you're comfortable with.

If you have any further questions, you can reach out to us at community@givingwhatwecan.org 

Currently at GWWC in our materials for EA Groups, we suggest that a Trial Pledge is a good starting point for people who are interested in effective giving, but are just learning about it.

My personal POV: I think it's generally a good idea for people to try out giving 10% or take a Trial Pledge before committing to the 10% Pledge. I think it's important that people feel comfortable with giving that amount and think seriously about what tradeoffs they might need to make if they take a 10% Pledge. But I think introducing people to the idea of the 10% Pledge at university is a good idea. We see people end up taking pledges even 10+ years after learning about it at university!

Thanks David - really helpful to be able to read about this succinctly!

Thank you for this beautiful post, Julia. Your writing always really resonates with me.

Just echoing Luke's response here: When I moved from my corporate job to GWWC, I gave up ~30% of salary I would have had if I stayed. I still give at least 10% of my current salary.

I think I was lucky to be in a high paying role to begin with, and that I get paid a fair salary at GWWC but there definitely was a large financial cost to moving to a non-profit, especially on top of donating min. 10%.

Hi Simon,

Thanks for the question!

The EA Hub used to facilitate donation swaps - but the project was retired so now there's no one owning this.

I think it can be hard to formally organise this, and have some reservations as to whether there could be legal implications for an organisation to run a project like this.

That being said, I know some people who are informally organising donation swaps at the moment.

It could be a good idea to gauge feasibility and interest in this across the EA community. I don't know if it's something GWWC would want to own but I do think it's worth someone exploring!

Another thing to mention is that in the absence of a donation swap, if you expect a non-tax-deductible donation opportunity to be ≥2x times more impactful than one that you could claim a tax deduction on, you should probably choose the higher-impact option and forego the tax deduction. Here's a nice page to explain why: https://www.givingwhatwecan.org/donating-effectively-tax-deductibly

Thanks for your kind words about our work and team, too!!

Hi Vasco,

This isn't something that GWWC is currently planning to look into, but I think it's a good question and I'd like to see us develop our thinking about it further. We've made an internal note on this to discuss within the team!

We may also review this page mentioned next year to include sources.

Thanks as always for your feedback :)