There is a new "Forget Veganuary" campaign, apparently part-funded by the EA Animal Welfare Fund:  https://www.forgetveganuary.com/ https://www.farmkind.giving/about-us/who#transparency (the "Transparency" link on the campaign page) Reddit link to news article that calls this a "meat-eating campaign" and discussion: https://www.reddit.com/r/unitedkingdom/comments/1px018m/veganuary_champion_quits_to_run_meateating/  The idea seems to be to promote a message to not give up animal products, but rather donate to organisations that effectively campaign to improve farm animal welfare (including EA favourites like The Humane League, Fish Welfare Initiative and the Shrimp Welfare Project). Promoting donating to such organisations seems all well and good, but it puts out very negative messages about being a vegan (which apparently means you will have "annoyed friends and family" and "got bloating from plant protein" etc.). This has got a lot of negative attention from vegan groups that I've seen. The website seems a bit ridiculous in places e.g. its "expert" views are just those of some eating champions. Interestingly the person who seems to be doing the PR, Toni Vernelli, used to do the PR for Veganuary, and wrote on the forum defending it less than a year ago: link. It's unclear if they actually changed their mind or have some other motivation to change their stance. Anyway, it seems like quite a controversial initiative, unnecessarily negative about veganism and quite poorly put together. As a donor to the EA Animal Welfare Fund, it's not something I'd expect to be paying towards myself.

After a few years of missing the mark, this year I've exceeded my goal of giving 10% of my income away by a substantial margin (I never took the Giving What We Can pledge, but I still aspire at this point in my career to exceed the 10% bar).  It's bittersweet, because I think that the reason I succeeded is that it seems like there's more funding gaps than there were a few years ago - insofar as that's about there being more good giving opportunities (which I think it partly is) that's exciting but I also think it's partly due to there being more promising opportunities that aren't getting funded by large funders or other small funders, for a variety of reasons. And that's unfortunate.  I got into EA more than ten years ago when the focus was more squarely on giving. I think that the relative switch over to careers has been a great thing and to this day I think the overwhelming majority of my impact will come through my choices about my career rather than my giving. But I'd encourage "old school" EAs like me who haven't been as focused on personal giving to re-engage with the question of: 1. Whether they're giving away an amount that they would endorse, or are falling short 2. If they are giving to the most impactful causes they can find, or might have gotten into the habit of giving somewhere that isn't as strong as some of the newer opportunities 

Merry Christmas, everyone! This year, I’m feeling grateful to be me. Recently, I gave some information about myself to Claude, and asked how I compared to other 38-yr-old men in the world. I thought I understood global inequality well, but I still found the results quite moving. The usual AI sycophancy and reassurance was gone: I’d appreciated my privilege in income, but hadn’t thought as much about the nature of my work, my health, or my leisure time. I recommend you try it, too (I’ve put a prompt below). You can also try Giving What We Can’s new Birth Lottery tool — find out what your life would be like if you were born as a random person in the world. When I tried it, I was born in India. On average my life would be around 9 years shorter, with 13 years of schooling instead of 18, and income around 10× lower—even after adjusting for local prices. I asked Claude to give me a day in the life of a typical 38-year old Indian man:   If you’re feeling privileged this year, consider making a donation to an effective charity - we give gifts to our friends and family at Christmas, so why not give a gift to the world, too. I’m doing a matching scheme, with a list of great charities, on Substack here and Twitter here, and pasted below, too. Thanks so much to everyone who’s donated so far - currently GiveDirectly and the EA Animal Welfare Fund are in the lead!  And if you want to turn that giving into a regular commitment, consider taking the 10% Pledge — it’s among the single highest-impact, and most personally fulfilling, choices you can make.  My matching scheme: I’m matching donations up to £100,000 (details below), across 10 charities and 6 cause areas. If you want to join, say how much you’re donating and where, as a reply! I’ll run this up until 31st December. Details of the match: I’ll give this money whatever happens, so this isn’t increasing the total amount I’m giving to charity. However, your donations will change *where* I’m giving. I’ll allocate m

I made a tool to play around with how alternatives to the 10% GWWC Pledge default norm might change: 1. How much individuals are "expected" to pay 1. The idea being that there are functions of income that people would prefer to the 10% pledge behind some relevant veil of ignorance, along the lines of "I don't want to commit 10% of my $30k salary, but I gladly commit 20% of my $200k salary" 2. How much total donation revenue gets collected   There's some discussion at this Tweet of mine Some folks pushed back a bit, citing the following: * The pledge isn't supposed to be revenue maximizing * A main function of the pledge is to "build the habit of giving" and complexity/higher expectations undermines this * Many pledgers give >10% - the pledge doesn't set an upper bond  I don't find these points very convincing... Some points of my own * To quote myself: "I think it would be news to most GWWC pledgers that actually the main point is some indirect thing like building habits rather than getting money to effective orgs" * If the distribution of GWWC pledgers resembles the US distribution of household incomes and then cut implied donations in half to account for individual vs household discrepancy (obviously false but maybe still illustrative assumptions), the roughly 10,000 GWWC pledgers are giving $60M/year * That's a lot of money. It matters a lot in absolute terms * This isn't a giving game situation where a few college fellowships give $100/semester - there the main effect is indirect, not via the $100 moved. But at $60M/year, even relatively modest % increases matter a lot * The 10% GWWC pledge functions as a norm that probably has some influence over total amounts given even though folks are free to give as much (or as little, really) as they want. * The simplicity/memetic fitness of flat 10% is nice, but this has to be weighed against the actual object level consideration of how much money gets moved per year * Plausibly more

Hey folks! I wanted to share a quick update on fundraising for the Center for Wild Animal Welfare (CWAW), as the year draws to a close, and as people consider finalising their end-of-year giving.  Our original forum post, announcing the launch of the Center and setting out the giving opportunity, is here.  We’ve had a great response, and have successfully raised our core Year 1 budget - whoop! The $60,000 1:1 donor match has been fully used up, so further donations to CWAW won’t be matched.  We are still gladly accepting donations, which will be used for ‘stretch’ items in CWAW’s budget - things such as public polling and focus groups to inform comms and policy development, contracting experts for advice on specific policy areas, subscriptions for parliamentary and media monitoring, joining professional and policy networks, running events such as policy report launches, improving our website, and expanding our capacity for ‘mainstream’ fundraising. We think that these items offer substantial value for money at the margin.   If you’d like to support our mission, it’s super easy to donate, and there are a variety of tax-efficient giving options (for various countries). Please see the original forum post for full details.  If you’re considering making an end-of-year gift, and have any questions - whether to help you weigh up the strength of CWAW as a giving opportunity, or on logistics - please feel free to reach out to Ben and I at team@wildanimalwelfare.org.  I’m also delighted to share that we will be launching a newsletter to keep people up to date about CWAW’s work. Whether you’re a donor or not, if you’d like to receive this, please do sign up here.  Cheers, and happy new year!