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What is the case for new initiatives as opposed to expanding GWWC / OftW's operations to more countries? Or regional offices for these orgs?
What is the case for new initiatives as opposed to expanding GWWC / OftW's operations to more countries? Or regional offices for these orgs?
Great question.
We think that both strategies have merits, however we also think that there is less to the distinction than meets the eye. Different locations have quite different audiences and so getting new projects started which can target them seems valuable. But, to expand into new legal justifications (and get tax deductible status) it's important to start a new legal entity so starting a new initiative in many of these new countries will need to happen anyway.
I also think that the expanding existing orgs vs starting new initiatives division is more of a spectrum. As mentioned in Appendix B, we think that it's possible that in some of these countries the new initiatives won't have to be completely independent. In many cases they can make use of tech infrastructure and branding from existing orgs like GWWC or Effektiv Spenden to cut down the set up work that they'd otherwise need to do.
Ultimately it will be for the cofounders of these new initiatives to decide how much they want to make use of the existing brands and/or tech infrastructures that have already been developed - and we will go into more detail on the pros and cons of adopting these existing resources during the program so that cofounders can make whatever choice that gives their initiative the best chance of success.
Having said all of that, many existing orgs are hiring country managers, e.g. we didn't include Austria as one of our target countries because Effektiv Spenden are likely to expand into that market. However, although GWWC, and other orgs, are expanding, we can only grow so fast and hire so many people in a year. As a result, getting new, more independent, projects started will accelerate the rate that we're able to bring effective giving to new markets.
TLDR: At Charity Entrepreneurship, in collaboration with Giving What We Can, we have recently launched a new program: Effective Giving Incubation. In this post, we present our scoping report that explains the reasoning behind creating more Effective Giving Initiatives (EGIs). Learn why we think this is a promising intervention, which locations are optimal for launching, and for whom this would be an ideal career fit.
Quick reminder:
You can apply to the Effective Giving Incubation program by January 14, 2024. The program will run online from April 15 to June 7, 2024, with 2 weeks in person in London.
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or sign up for the Effective Giving Incubation interactive webinar on January 4, 5 PM Singapore Time/ 6 PM Japan Time/ 3.30 PM India Time/ 10 AM UK Time/ 11 AM Belgium Time.
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CE is excited about launching EGIs in Ireland, Belgium, Italy, India, Singapore, South Korea, Japan, United Arab Emirates, Mexico, the US and France. We would appreciate your help in reaching potential applicants who are interested in working in these countries. Connect us via email at: [email protected]
In 2024 we are running a special edition of the Charity Entrepreneurship Incubation Program in collaboration with Giving What We Can focused on Effective Giving Initiatives (EGI). EGIs are entities that focus on raising awareness and funneling public and philanthropic donations to the most cost-effective charities worldwide. They will be broadly modeled on existing organizations such as Giving What We Can (GWWC), Effektiv Spenden, and others. We have identified some possible high-priority countries where we believe they will be most successful. Depending on the country and what is most impactful, these initiatives could be fully independent or collaborate with existing projects.
| Disclaimer: It is important to note that EGIs, including those we intend to incubate, are independent from CE and make their own educated choices of which charities to promote and where to donate funds. CE does not require or encourage any specific recommended charities (such as our prior incubated charities) to be supported by EGIs. |
Charity Entrepreneurship's (CE) mission is to cause more effective non-profit organizations to exist worldwide. To accomplish this mission, we connect talented individuals with high-impact intervention opportunities and provide them with training, colleagues, funding opportunities, and ongoing operational support.
For this scoping report, CE collaborated with Giving What We Can (GWWC) to better understand the opportunities Effective Giving Initiatives (EGIs) present as a high-impact intervention, what contributes to the success of such organizations, and where they might be best founded. GWWC was one of the first organizations to champion giving to high-impact nonprofits, has an extensive global network of people interested in effective giving, and more than a decade of experience operating an organization focused on promoting effective charities. EGIs are organizations or projects that aim to promote, typically in a specific target country, the idea of donating to cost-effective charities. They mostly engage in a mix of educational and fundraising activities, with the explicit aim of trying to move money to the most cost-effective interventions that aim to tackle the world’s most pressing problems.
This report builds on the experience of Giving What We Can, in-depth interviews with experts in the field and successful founders of EGIs, as well as quantitative & qualitative analysis of potential target areas. This report follows a somewhat different methodology than our regular research process used to identify high-impact non-profit ideas. Rather, it is intended to be a summary to help prospective founders and employees of EGIs understand why we think this is an impactful opportunity. It also serves the purpose of public accountability, by explicitly stating the theory of change we envision for this program.
We are grateful to all the experts who so kindly gave their time and thoughts in interviews and surveys.
Effective Giving Initiatives are entities that focus on raising money for effective nonprofits and other high-impact funding opportunities. Often, they narrow their outreach focus to a particular geographic area or interest group in order to tailor their messaging to their specific audience. EGIs can be fully independent organizations, but can also collaborate in a variety of forms with existing giving organizations.
Many successful giving organizations operate on a national level. These national organizations seek to enable local donors – who otherwise would not have been exposed to these ideas – to learn about the principles of evidence-based and high-impact giving. They tend to accept donations on behalf of their recommended charities and regrant the money to these charities. Additionally, as a donation platform, these organizations facilitate the donation experience and provide tax deductibility (where possible) to their donors, even if the recipient charity is based outside of the donor’s country. By directing the gifts from these donors to the most effective charities and projects, EGIs can amplify the impact of individual donors, contributing significantly to solving the world's most pressing problems.
Through local language websites, EGIs are able to:
In early 2019 a new EGI called Effektiv Spenden was founded in Germany. Over the following 3 years, this small team was able to establish itself as an authoritative voice on evidence-based giving and high-impact philanthropy. They set up a website and started fundraising through their donation platform and philanthropic advisory services. According to Effektiv Spenden, they grew from €330.000 in donations in their first year in 2019 to having raised € 15.3 million from more than 9,000 donors in 2022 for some of the most effective charities in the world. As a result of this success, the team grew from <2 FTE in 2021 to approx. 7 FTE in 2023 to invest in further growth.
Following in the footsteps of Effektiv Spenden, a new EGI called Doneer Effectief was founded in the Netherlands in 2022. They started an online donor platform on October 1st, 2022. In their first operating year, they’ve already raised €1.4 million. In addition to more established fundraising techniques, Doneer Effectief has pioneered using local ambassadors to promote effective giving (for example working with bestselling author Rutger Bregman) and appearing in many newspapers, magazines, public radio, podcasts and television shows.
Over the last couple of years, many new highly impactful charities have gotten started to solve the world's most pressing problems. However, as we have previously written about, there are still significant gaps in funding for these charities, which pose a significant risk to their survival and impact over the long term. Even many established highly impactful charities (in particular global health charities) have significant room to absorb more funding effectively (see AMF room for more funding as an example).
Our review of existing EGIs’ impact reporting shows that these kinds of giving organizations can raise substantial funds and direct them to highly impactful causes. Further, we find good evidence that the percentage of money raised that is counterfactual (i.e. would not have otherwise been donated) is about 50% of the total raised. For example:
Extra funding from EGIs can help diversify the funding sources for highly effective charities, which is a benefit over and above increasing the amount of money available. At the moment, funding for effectiveness-minded charities is concentrated in the hands of a few large donors. However, diversified donor bases are good for the health of individual organizations, to avoid being overly dependent on any one donor. Furthermore, large funders often have a cap on how much of an organization’s funding gap they will fill. This leaves room for other donors to fill in the funding gap.
Established EGIs have developed a deep repository of knowledge, resources, systems, and processes that new actors can build off of as a foundation. This has two large benefits: New EGIs will (a) have a significantly higher chance of successfully launching and (b) be able to move faster and have impact sooner than they would if they were starting from scratch. GWWC and ES are open to various forms of collaboration with new EGIs that have similar target audiences.
CE has an excellent track record of launching highly impactful organizations and has industry-leading expertise in incubating and training charity founders. CE also has a solid network and pipeline of excellent applicants which will ensure good candidate selection.
Expert interviews on the main contributors to success revealed a number of factors that could plausibly be provided by a CE Incubation Program:
GWWC and other relevant effective giving organizations have expressed their excitement for this new initiative and have offered to support its development and implementation, as well as to keep coordinating and collaborating closely with the new EGIs after the program. This includes facilitating a mentorship program to help these new organizations learn from more established effective giving organizations.
Effective giving organizations have a strong track record of encouraging donors to give more, and more effectively, and of measuring the impact of this (see for example the work of GWWC, Effektiv Spenden, and Founders Pledge). This means that new EGIs will benefit from shorter feedback loops enabling them to measure which strategies work and which don’t and to more quickly pivot and adapt.
Apart from the direct effects of encouraging donations to cost-effective causes, promoting effective giving can also have indirect effects - such as promoting more evidence-based, impact-driven, and transparent thinking in the philanthropic sector. Research also suggests that donating to effective charities is a significant entry point into more effective actions. For example, in the 2020 Survey run by the Centre for Effective Altruism, 21% of respondents reported that Giving What We Can was important for them getting involved in Effective Altruism, with ~14% of respondents reporting that GWWC was one of their three largest influencers for their ability to have a positive impact.
Although we think there is a case for a lot of different approaches within effective giving (e.g. career-based groups, pledges, geographically focused groups) we think one of the most promising avenues is regionally focused effective giving projects. In terms of target countries, a few stand out as uniquely promising, based both on the donation potential and tractability. To estimate the donation potential, we modeled funds raised from existing EGIs and extrapolated to new countries based on a number of metrics that appear to be relatively predictive of potential donations raised, such as population and GDP. A limitation of this approach is that the data we have on existing EGIs is in Western countries, with specific populations and wealth ranges. It is less clear that our model predicts donation potential as well for other regions in the world or other demographic settings.
For the tractability assessment, we used several proxies such as the World Giving Index ranking, the size of the Effective Altruist community as a proxy for impact-mindedness, as well as expert interviews with people from these countries. We have excluded countries that from our analysis seem to be fully covered by existing EGIs, but included some where activities might be substantially expanded. The results of this can be found in Appendix A: Country Analysis.
Based on this analysis, we are particularly excited about new EGIs in the following countries. However, we are also open to people presenting a strong case for countries that are not on the list.
Category A | Category B | Category C |
Ireland | Singapore | United States |
Belgium | South Korea | France |
Italy | Japan | |
India | United Arab Emirates | |
Mexico |
| Risk | Explanation | Mitigation |
| Funds raised are not sent to the most impactful charities | If funds raised through these organizations are not sent to the most impactful charities, this would be detrimental to their positive impact. This could happen if, for example, these organizations deferred to charity evaluators which are not rigorous or impact-focused, or if they fundraised for local charities over the most cost-effective charities globally. | Make external public auditing of impact conditional, train all founders in impact evaluation, and how to think about assessing external evaluators. |
| Lowest-hanging fruit has already been picked | Possibly, the countries where there are no EGIs present yet, are overall less promising than the ones where one has already been started, making it impossible to achieve results as good as already established EGIs. | Carefully research and analyze the potential of untapped countries. See more discussion below under “top recommended countries”. |
| CE has no experience in incubating EGIs | CE has previously incubated many successful charities but has not yet incubated EGIs. | Develop the program intensively together with partners who do have this specific knowledge, such as GWWC & ES. |
| Low counterfactual impact | Possibly, these organizations mostly raise funds that would have already been given to effective charities even if these platforms had not existed. | Make proper measurement & evaluation of impact conditional, including proxies of counterfactuality to assess which strategies lead to the most impact. Current organizations assume numbers ranging quite widely, but even with more conservative numbers setting up these organizations still seems promising. |
From our experience of launching somewhat similar organizations and meta charities, we believe that generalist skills, rather than any specific experience or formal credentials are especially important to be a good fit.
What all our founding teams do have in common is…
Specifically for this program, we think that ideal co-founders could additionally have strong skills in communication & relationship building. They would combine this with a strong focus on impact and results. They may also have previous experience in fundraising or strategic marketing, though this is not a requirement.
Having a strong cultural connection to the identified top countries (for instance from currently living in this country or having lived there for several years previously, or for other reasons), as well as speaking the language, is preferable for at least one of the co-founders. However, we encourage applicants of all nationalities to apply.
At least one co-founder would be conscientious and detail-oriented, and be quick to learn how to ensure that the organization remains compliant with local charity law. At least one co-founder would be willing to learn more about doing public outreach, such as speaking to the media, speaking at events, or similar.
An ideal founding team would feel positive about the impact that can be achieved through donations, which is high leverage, but also one step removed from direct interventions. Research skills seem to be less necessary for this kind of charity, though the founding team would need to be good at and/or interested in learning more about how the impact of charities is evaluated.
Our research to date suggests that founding an EGI requires many of the same skills that we look for in all our charity entrepreneurs. We, therefore, believe that a program could build on Charity Entrepreneurship’s existing Incubation Program complemented with additional training and support specific to launching EGIs. This might include, but is not limited to:
Co-founder Pairing
Nationally relevant strategy: Research and Planning
Training on Outreach & Marketing Strategies
Evaluating potential donation opportunities
Practical, legal, administrative and technical support
We believe that the following countries are both promising and tractable:
| Pros | Cons |
Donation Potential - Donation potential of about 2.2m USD / year Wealth - Very high GDP per Capita (PPP) EA Community - The EA community seems quite widespread with 3.7 EAs / 100,000 people Language - A lot of English messaging and content can be reused Culture of Donating - Ranks relatively high on World Giving Index at #14 | Size - With 5 million inhabitants, Ireland is quite small. About 80% of Norway and 50% of Switzerland (countries with comparable GDP per capita) Tax Deductibility - There are some uncertainties about the tax deductibility status |
| Pros | Cons |
Donation Potential - Donation potential of about 1.7m USD / year (extrapolating from other countries) Wealth - Similar GDP per Capita (PPP) as Germany EA Community - The EA community seems quite widespread with 2.5 EAs / 100’000 people Language - Can leverage the material in Dutch and French developed by Doneer Effectief (NL) and Don Efficace (FR) Efforts underway. There is a current effort underway to explore options. | Size - With 12 million inhabitants, Belgium is on the small side, ⅔ of the Netherlands and 1/7 of Germany Separate language regions - The Dutch & French language regions might be quite distinct, requiring a different approach in each region.
|
| Pros | Cons |
Donation Potential - Donation potential of about 4.5m USD / year GDP - 4th biggest economy in Europe after Germany, the UK and France and 8th in the world. Size - With 60 million people, Italy is a fairly large country Existing Effort - There is already a working group that is trying to set up something similar | GDP per Capita - The GDP per capita (PPP) is about 70% of that of Germany and 90% of that of France, potentially pointing to a lower disposable income. EA Community - With 0.4 EAs / 100’000 people, the EA community is not yet as developed as in other countries. This is about ½ of France or Spain and less than 1/10 of the Netherlands or Switzerland |
| Pros | Cons |
GDP - 5th biggest economy in the world Population - Second biggest country in the world Existing Effort - There is already a working group that is trying to set up something similar Local Opportunities - Several GiveWell-recommended charities are active in India, meaning that people can donate locally and still support very effective interventions EA Community - 4th country for the absolute number of EAs (about 1800 according to LinkedIn) Language - Some English messaging and content can be reused | GDP per Capita - At about 2500 USD (Nominal), the GDP per capita is lower Wealthy Population - it is the 15th country by the number of millionaires, ⅛ compared to China EA Community - As a percentage of the population, the EA community is quite small Unlike previous EGIs - Differences in income distribution and culture compared to organizations such as Effektiv Spenden make it likely a different approach is needed.
|
In this section, we cover countries that seem quite promising but also present some challenges. Success here could be more counterfactual than in other countries and could open brand new areas to the ideas of effective giving. However, we also imagine that there might be more obstacles to overcome in these locations.
| Pros | Cons |
Donation Potential - Donation potential of about 1.7m USD / year GDP per Capita - Very high GDP per Capita (Nominal) with 85 thousand USD EA Community - Strong EA presence with 6.2 EAs / 100k Wealthy Population - About 13% of the population are millionaires (3rd highest rate in the world after Switzerland and Hong Kong) Culture of Donating - Ranks relatively high on World Giving Index at #23 Language - A lot of English messaging and content can be reused | Size - With about 6m inhabitants, Singapore is quite small Tax Deductibility - It is not possible to get tax deductibility status for donations spent on non-local beneficiaries 80 / 20 Rule - Some rules require organizations to spend at least 80% of the money they raise in a way that benefits locals. It is unclear if these rules apply to all potentially successful variants of this project. We are currently investigating further whether these obstacles can be surmounted, in which case, an EGI in Singapore would seem quite promising |
| Pros | Cons |
Donation Potential - Donation potential of about 2.9m USD / year. Extrapolated from existing examples (which are mostly European and/or English-speaking), so it might not apply as well Strong Economy - 13th economy in the world Existing Effort - The EA community has received grants to do some community-building work and recently helped to set up a Korean AMF branch The Benefits of Success - Success here would probably be highly counterfactual and could prompt a more data-driven approach to charity more generally | EA Community - The EA community is not as developed, with about 0.1 EAs / 100k Language - There is a lack of Korean materials on effective altruism, effective giving, and other adjacent concepts. This will require the translation of a lot of materials. |
| Pros | Cons |
Donation Potential - Donation potential of about 10m USD / year. GDP - 4th strongest economy in the world, same as Germany
| EA Community - With 0.1 EAs / 100k, the EA presence is not very strong yet Low on the World Giving Index - Japan is ranked 103 out of 119 countries in their donating. Experts View - The people we interviewed were not very positive about the tractability of this |
| Pros | Cons |
Donation Potential - Donation potential of about 1.1m USD / year GDP per Capita - Similar GDP per Capita as countries like the UK and Germany EA Community - With 1.5 EAs / 100k, there is a reasonable EA presence Culture of Donating - Ranks relatively high on World Giving Index at #18 Tax - There is no tax in the UAE, meaning that there is no need to set up a legal entity in the UAE and obtain tax deductibility for donations. | Size - With about 9m inhabitants, the UAE is quite small Legal entity - It could be very difficult to set up a legal entity in the country. This is not necessarily a problem, although it would mean that only those already with a right to live and work in the UAE would be able to work on the project. |
| Pros | Cons |
Size - 10th country in the world in terms of population and 12th for GDP Language - A lot of Spanish messaging and content can be reused | Income - With a GDP per Capita of 11,000 USD, Mexico is considered Upper Middle Income EA Community - With 0.1 EAs / 100k, the EA presence is not very strong |
In this category, we cover countries that already have a registered organization in which we believe there is room for additional growth and acceleration. Initiatives there will most probably collaborate closely with the existing organizations.
Nb. Giving What We Can is currently active in the US. Given the size of the ‘market’, however, we think it is plausible that more initiatives could be developed. We foresee that close collaboration with GWWC is important to avoid duplication. GWWC is available throughout the incubation process to explore a variety of options with potential incubatees.
| Pros | Cons |
Donation Potential - The US has one of the world’s strongest economies, and individual states would rank pretty high even against other countries. California for example would be the 5th largest economy globally Room for Specialization - Due to the size of the US, we can imagine there is room for specialization, such as state-level efforts, specific target groups such as entrepreneurs, or other targeted approaches Possible Synergies - We can imagine possible synergies and collaborations with existing organizations like GWWC leading to a win-win situation | Possible Diminishing Returns - The US is already targeted by other organizations like Giving What We Can, GiveWell, etc. It can be argued that additional efforts would yield diminishing returns Risk of Duplication - A founder will need to think carefully about how best to collaborate with existing organizations in order to avoid duplicating work
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Nb. Acceleration in France would mean potentially becoming a co-CEO for an already existing organization: Don Efficace. We are not considering setting up a new organization in France.
| Pros | Cons |
Donation Potential - Our model estimates a relatively high donation potential of about 4.9m USD / year GDP - 3rd biggest economy in Europe after Germany and the UK Size - With about 68 million people, France is a fairly large country Acceleration - Don Efficace recently started its operation in France, we can imagine that going through the program could help the organization accelerate its growth | GDP per Capita - Slightly lower GDP per capita (PPP) than other European countries, ranking 15th in Europe EA Community - With 0.9 EAs / 100’000 people, the EA community is not yet as developed as in other countries Lower Counterfactual - As an EGI already exists, it can be argued that donations will eventually be captured even without the Effective Giving Incubation program |
GWWC will provide ongoing support to these new EGIs so they don’t need to build infrastructure from scratch and can learn from best practices in the effective giving space. In addition to offering general advice, support, and mentorship, GWWC can also provide its brand and product (website, donation platform, and pledge infrastructure) in some cases. If new EGIs wish to take advantage of these optional offers of additional support, there are currently 2 clear ways to further collaborate with GWWC, although other options can be discussed:
Under this arrangement, organizations would have the ability to use GWWC's brand with slight modifications if desired. However, there would be a condition that organizations using GWWC's brand would likely be limited to raising funds for charities endorsed by the GWWC research team in consultation with expert evaluators. While there may be some possibility to raise funds for other charities, it should be made clear that the level of research conducted on them is not as extensive as the core recommendations. Even in this case, the ability to do so would be at the discretion of GWWC.
E.g. Ayuda Efectiva – GWWC provided a brand partnership and Ayuda Efectiva acts as the community for their members in Spain with their Executive Director being an Ambassador for Giving What We Can.
In addition to using the GWWC brand, organizations may also be able to use the GWWC product. This includes the technical infrastructure of GWWC, such as the admin interface, business intelligence tool, website and content management system, donation platform, pledge platform, and end-of-tax-year tax receipts. Currently, GWWC does not have plans to develop a white-labeled product. Therefore, organizations wishing to use GWWC's product would have to also use GWWC's brand, along with the associated conditions.
E.g. Don Efficace – GWWC provided some funding, governance and legal support, access to their website and donation platform, and mentorship for the founding team.
Love this initiative! I think the potential can be even greater, based on my experience of being Irish and long periods living in Italy and Belgium (and yes, I applied - but I'd also be happy to help out if someone else starts this kind of initiative).
Ireland and Italy both have very strong attitudes towards charitable donations and doing good, including donating for causes that are not local. It's no coincidence that Bono and Bob Geldof are Irish - whatever your opinion of them personally might be, the attitude they represent, that world problems like poverty and famine are our responsibility to solve is a very Irish one.
I would contrast this with the US, where people are also very generous (in my experience), but where it feels like most people prefer to donate to US-based charities or at least US-run charities, which often commit to using US-sourced materials and so on.
(obviously all these comments are gross generalisations based on limited and subjective data, although I think Ireland has repeatedly topped lists of charitable donations per capita).
Hey Denis! Really glad to hear you've applied - please also let people in your networks know about the program :)