Hi @Unwobblypanda! It’s honestly incredibly impressive to see how many pledges you’ve driven through your tabling. Amazing work! 

I'm Lucas, Partnerships Manager at Giving What We Can and I’d love to jump on a call with you all to hear more about what you’re doing and how you've had such success. We’d be really keen to explore how we might support your work and whether your approach could be replicated in other student groups as well.

Thank you all for your comments and for your enthusiasm for this project. After careful consideration we have decided to discontinue our investigation into whether there’s some value in (someone) building a community for those in the earning to give (EtG) space and to close down the EtG Pledge Club.

At GWWC, we’ve recently made the difficult decision to retire a number of initiatives in order to focus our attention on our ambitious new strategy. 

Note: CEA have indicated to us that they might be interested in filling this gap directly or indirectly (see their most recent strategy post).

Hey Joe, this is a really interesting idea! I’d love to dig in more and explore how I—and the broader effective giving sector—might support it. I work as the Effective Giving Global Coordinator and Incubator at Giving What We Can, helping connect and support effective giving initiatives.

I think the best audience for this could be self-improvement enthusiasts—people who follow pop psychology and are drawn to giving as a way to boost wellbeing (e.g., Laurie Santos’ Happiness Lab listeners, Atomic Habits readers, etc.). Framing it as a daily micro-donation—“the cost of a cup of coffee” to a pre-vetted high-impact charity—could really work.

Would love to chat more. Feel free to book a time here: Calendly link or email me at lucas.moore@givingwhatwecan.org!

Thank you for sharing this insightful post! As the Effective Giving Global Coordinator and Incubator at Giving What We Can, my role involves incubating new effective giving initiatives and I’m particularly keen to connect with anyone interested in exploring the idea of launching a Christian giving initiative. The intersection of Christian generosity and effective giving is incredibly compelling, especially given the substantial opportunity to engage Christians in the U.S., where the largest market exists for such an initiative.

If you're interested in discussing this further, or if you have ideas or projects you’d like to share, I’d love to hear from you. Feel free to reach out or connect with me directly via email at lucas.moore@givingwhatwecan.org.

This year, I’m giving 20% of my income—double my 🔸10% Pledge.

I believe that growing the total amount of money directed toward high-impact charities is a crucial bottleneck. As part of this, I’m giving 20% of my donation budget to Giving What We Can. In my view, our multiplier at GWWC is exceptionally high, and I’ve written more about why I think effective giving organizations could do with more support here. While I’d love to give to other effective giving organizations, my role as Effective Giving Global Coordinator and Incubator means that I see value in avoiding any appearance of bias that could complicate my work.

Another clear decision for me this year is giving 20% to AIM’s Incubated Charities Fund. I’ve had the privilege of working closely with AIM, and I’ve been consistently impressed by the rigor and ambition of their work. Their track record is very strong and I think that they are likely to continue incubating exceptionally high impact charities.

For the rest of my giving, I’ve leaned on recommendations from Giving What We Can’s evaluator reports, filtered through my own values and priorities:

• 20% to GiveWell’s All Grants Fund
• 10% to the EA Animal Welfare Fund and 10% to ACE’s Movement Grants Program
• 20% to Longview Philanthropy’s Emerging Challenges Fund

Outside of my 10% pledge, I’ll give to Giving Green’s Grantmaking Fund to offset my annual carbon footprint and to a variety of animal welfare charities, inspired by FarmKind’s Compassion Calculator, to offset the harm caused by my (minimal) animal product consumption as a vegetarian.

Thanks for this follow-up! In my view the key distinction is between:

1. Taking a lower-paying job for impact (opportunity cost)
2. Explicitly sacrificing part of your available salary (active sacrifice)

While both involve financial sacrifice for impact, only the second case counts towards the pledge. This is because pledge is specifically about donating a portion of the income you actually receive or could immediately receive in your current role. It's not about the opportunity cost of career choices or hypothetical alternative salaries you could earn elsewhere.

So in your example - if someone has offers for $2X but takes a $X job for impact, this opportunity cost doesn't count towards their pledge amount. The pledge would be calculated based on the $X they actually earn.

There are a few reasons for this approach:

1. Clarity and consistency in pledge calculations across different situations
2. Avoiding complex counterfactuals about alternative career paths
3. Maintaining the pledge as an active commitment to give from current income
4. Preserving the behavioural and advocacy benefits of regular giving

What are your thoughts on this distinction? I'm curious to hear your perspective on how we might better support people making career changes for impact while maintaining the integrity and clarity of the pledge.

I think that you raise a good point that in a partnership with fully shared finances and joint decision-making, there's a reasonable argument that each partner could view their effective "personal income" as 50% of the household income. This could align with the spirit of the pledge, which is about committing a meaningful portion of one's resources to helping others.

Another approach could be to sign the pledge together as a couple. Many GWWC members have found this to be a meaningful way to approach their giving as a couple. You can track your joint donations through a single pledge dashboard, making it easier to manage your giving together.

Ultimately, the goal of this advice is to help members stick to their plan of taking significant action to benefit others. All guidelines about how to calculate income should be thought of as serving that goal. In other words, our overall advice is to follow the spirit of the pledge, which is using a significant portion of one's income to benefit others. We recognise that a simple rule won't work perfectly for all possible situations, and encourage pledgers to define 10% of income in the way that makes sense to them. 

Hey @PabloAMC 🔸! Thanks for the question. We think direct work at a charity or nonprofit can be extremely impactful! However, your pledged amount does not change depending on your workplace or occupation. Those of us who work for nonprofits, even if we left higher-paying jobs to do so, still donate our pledged amounts.

If your giving pledge is preventing you from doing more impactful work then it might be appropriate to resign from your pledge. Read more about this in “How permanent is a giving pledge?”.

Great post! At GWWC we're currently looking for pledgers excited to help us shape our new Pledge Advocacy Programme. 

We've found that word of mouth is one of the best ways for people to learn about the pledge! But, we’ve also heard from many pledgers that it can be difficult to bring up the pledge in conversation so we're launching a new Pledge Advocacy Programme to support our community members to have thoughtful conversations about pledging with their friends, family, and colleagues. 

We're still in the pilot phase, but if you're keen to help shape this exciting new initiative then please sign up here!