Giving What We Can (GWWC) has inspired thousands of people to commit a meaningful share of their income to some of the world's most effective charities. In this post, I explore whether the current framing of the 10% Pledge and the Trial Pledge may understate the appeal and potential of time-bound pledges. I examine possible tensions between permanent pledges and several widely held values and suggest that reframing the Trial Pledge as an aspirational option in its own right rather than as a stepping stone to the 10% Pledge could increase the overall impact of giving pledges.

I am grateful to the people who discussed these ideas with me before the publication of this post, including members of the GWWC team. Their thoughtful feedback helped refine the arguments presented here.

⚙️ The Mechanisms of Giving Pledges

Research on giving pledges suggests that public pledges increase both the amount and effectiveness of giving.^[1] The power of such pledges is understood to come from three main mechanisms (presented by GWWC through the themes of commitment, community, and culture):

• Pre-commitment: A pledge can function as a commitment device by locking in a decision in advance. This avoids the cognitive costs of repeatedly deciding whether to give and creates a psychological pressure to follow through.
• Identity formation: Identifying as a pledger and as part of a community integrates giving into one's self-concept. Giving then follows from this identity rather than from repeated cost-benefit calculations.
• Public signalling: Making a pledge visible creates accountability and expectations among others, raising the social cost of not following through as well as helping to normalise ambitious and effective giving.

Importantly, existing research on giving pledges does not specifically examine permanent pledges and therefore cannot establish whether and to what extent permanence matters. While permanence could plausibly strengthen some of the mechanisms above, none of them require it in principle. In fact, most commitments in everyday life are time-bound rather than lifelong and build on the same mechanisms of pre-commitment, identity formation, and public signalling, from taking part in a month-long challenge to registering for a marathon or enrolling in a university programme. Two familiar analogies often used to illustrate giving pledges help clarify where permanence matters and where it does not:

• The marriage analogy: Permanent pledges are sometimes compared to marriage. However, marriage is a two-way commitment characterised by far-reaching interdependence, where major life decisions like children or careers are closely intertwined. Such interdependence is absent in the case of individual giving commitments that are not directed at a specific charity and therefore do not play a role in any single charity's long-term strategy.
• The gym membership analogy: Another commonly given analogy is gym membership, which better reflects the dynamic of giving pledges because it does not involve this kind of interdependence. The logic of pre-commitment is intuitive: signing up increases the likelihood of going because the upfront cost creates an incentive to follow through. Notably, gym memberships are typically time-bound, as lifetime contracts would deter many potential members.

This suggests that the key factor is the degree of interdependence created by the commitment. When others rely on the commitment for their own long-term plans, permanence becomes important. When such interdependence is absent, as in the case of giving pledges, time-bound commitments could potentially work better than permanent ones because they lower the entry barrier.

⏳ The Values Behind Time-Bound Giving Pledges

While time-bound pledges are rooted in the powerful mechanisms underlying giving pledges and lower the entry barrier, they also align with broadly appealing values, including core EA values. This can make pledging more attractive to a wider range of people:

• Open-mindedness: A time-bound pledge reflects epistemic humility by avoiding overconfidence in current moral or empirical judgments. Unlike a permanent pledge, it does not implicitly assume that the present self knows better than the future self how future resources should be allocated.^[2] It also embodies a scout mindset by allowing commitments to be revised in light of new evidence or arguments. This helps avoid a form of personal value lock-in, where past commitments create social or psychological pressure to act against the best available evidence.

• Optimism: Choosing not to let the present self constrain the future self indefinitely reflects trust that our future selves may make better decisions than we today. It leaves room for values and beliefs to evolve and does not treat future updates to our thinking as unwanted value drift that needs to be contained, thereby affirming confidence in personal growth.
• Agency: A time-bound pledge preserves a sense of agency by making giving an intentional choice rather than an automatic continuation by default. Each renewal of the pledge is an opportunity to reassess as circumstances and convictions evolve. The commitment is therefore not simply maintained but consciously reaffirmed, which can make it feel more deliberate and meaningful.

🏅 The Current Framing of Giving Pledges

Currently, GWWC offers two primary pledge options:

• The 10% Pledge: a public commitment to give at least 10% of your income for the rest of your working life.
• The Trial Pledge: a public commitment to give an individually chosen percentage of your income (at least 1%) for an individually chosen period (6 months to 5 years).

The Trial Pledge is framed as a transitional option for people who want to try out regular giving before taking the 10% Pledge or who currently find a 10% commitment difficult. However, some people are willing and able to give a substantial share of their income to high-impact charities over the long term but prefer time-bound commitments on principle, because they see them as better aligned with their values than permanent ones. Framing Trial pledgers as undecided or not yet ready may inadvertently diminish what could otherwise be an aspirational identity and reduce its appeal for those who see it as the most authentic expression of their generosity. Emphasising the tentative nature of the pledge may also weaken the sense of commitment and its signalling effect.

💡 A Proposal for Reframing Giving Pledges

Realising the full potential of time-bound giving pledges would likely require reframing the current pledge options so that the Trial Pledge is not presented merely as a stepping stone towards the 10% Pledge, but as an aspirational choice in its own right. One possible approach might look like this:

• The 10% Pledge: for those who want to make a strong, lifelong commitment to giving.

• The Open Giving Pledge: for those who want to build a culture of generosity while embracing the possibility of change.^[3]

Framed in this way, the two pledges prioritise different values rather than better or worse approaches to commitment. The Open Giving Pledge could take the form of a simple annual pledge or could also be technically identical to the current Trial Pledge. Compared with the Trial Pledge, the Open Giving Pledge would better leverage the power of pre-commitment, identity formation, and public signalling while also resonating with the broadly appealing values of open-mindedness, optimism, and agency. This reframing could have several implications. The following are likely among the most important:

• More pledgers: Many people considering a giving pledge may not currently pledge because the available options feel insufficiently aspirational (Trial Pledge) or too rigid (10% Pledge), particularly under conditions of uncertainty. The Open Giving Pledge would largely remove these entry barriers and attract people who might otherwise not pledge at all.
• Stronger signalling: The 10% Pledge would see higher follow-through and therefore gain credibility, as it would be chosen primarily by people who genuinely prefer permanent commitment.^[4] It would also become relatively rarer and therefore more distinctive. Meanwhile, the greater number of pledgers overall could signal a broader norm of high-impact giving.
• Some earlier exits: Some people who would currently take the 10% Pledge would instead choose the Open Giving Pledge and later decide not to renew it, although they might otherwise have stayed committed. This may partly be because the absence of permanent commitments could potentially weaken the mechanisms underlying giving pledges.

From an expected impact perspective, the key question is how these effects compare. Ultimately, this is an empirical question that could be tested. I suspect that the first effect would dominate, and the overall argument hinges on this premise. If correct, reframing the pledge would have a net positive impact on effective giving.

💭 Final Thoughts

I genuinely admire people who take the 10% Pledge. It's a beautiful expression of generosity and integrity. At the same time, I do not think it is the only way to make a truly meaningful giving commitment.

I have been a Trial pledger for a while, but I have never seen it as "trying something out" and have always felt somewhat at odds with the word "Trial". Instead, I think of it as something that is fundamentally aligned with who I am: I want to remain open-minded to the possibility of revising my views and decisions as my understanding evolves. Being an optimist at heart, I also like to trust my future self to make even better choices than my present self. And I want to retain a sense of agency by keeping my giving an intentional act aligned with my current values and beliefs. Renewing my pledge each year has become a conscious ritual of reflection on how I want to use my resources to make the world a better place. Much like anniversaries, it creates a moment to think deeply about something that truly matters to me.

I would be curious to hear whether others feel that time-bound pledges better reflect their values than permanent ones. If this perspective is more widespread than the current framing of giving pledges suggests, there may be an opportunity to frame them in a way that inspires more people to publicly commit to ambitious and effective giving and help build an even stronger culture of generosity.

1. ^{^}

   Smeets, P., & Kretschmer, J. (2025). Pledge First, Think Later! Breaking Down the Complexity of Donations Through Pledges. SSRN Electronic Journal. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=5425214

2. ^{^}

   Strictly speaking, both permanent and time-bound pledges rely on this assumption to some degree. However, over short time periods the present self is a reasonable approximation of the future self, whereas over longer time periods the two increasingly diverge.

3. ^{^}

   The name and description of the "Open Giving Pledge" are tentative proposals meant to meet several boundary conditions: they should frame the pledge as aspirational rather than transitional, signal openness to reflection and evolving views, avoid suggesting hesitation or a weaker form of commitment, feel warm and inspiring rather than technical or bureaucratic, and not diminish the status of the 10% Pledge. The word "Open" evokes a range of relevant associations, including generosity, low entry barriers, agency, and open-mindedness. While the word "Giving" could also be omitted, "Open Pledge" might sound less like a genuine commitment.

^{^}

Giving What We Can's 2023–2024 Impact Evaluation reports that only about 30% of 10% pledgers record donations after five years and suggests that many non-recording pledgers may not be donating to highly effective charities.

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