Updates on the effective giving ecosystem (MCF 2025 memo)

Written by Lucas Moore (Partnerships Manager) and Sjir Hoeijmakers (CEO), Giving What We Can for the Meta Coordination Forum 2025.

This memo provides updates on and a high-level overview of the effective giving landscape as of mid-2025, adapted from an earlier memo for Effective Giving Summit in June 2025. It is based largely on information gathered through our 2025 EG ecosystem pulse survey and builds on the memos we wrote for the MCF last year: 1, 2, 3, 4. Please leave a comment if you’d like us to clarify anything further. All figures are in USD.

Background

The effective giving ecosystem features an interdependent network of over 60 organisations trying to direct philanthropic resources to where they can do the most good, inspired by effective altruism principles and concepts such as cost-effectiveness, cause prioritisation and counterfactuality. 

Within this ecosystem, there are organisations identifying high-impact philanthropic opportunities (evaluators) and organisations fundraising for them (fundraisers). Many organisations are both evaluators and fundraisers.

Key updates

• The entire EG ecosystem grew by ~10% between 2023 and 2024, from ~1.1B to ~1.2B money moved
  • Mainly driven by the growth of Founders Pledge and Navigation Fund getting up and running
    • Significant growth for Founders Pledge: 25M money moved in 2022 → 80M in 2023 → 140M in 2024
    • Navigation Fund emerging as a major funder (moving 10-100M per year)
  • Overall money moved is still largely dependent on Open Philanthropy (~650M) and GiveWell (~240M), but getting less so every year
    • Excluding Open Philanthropy the EG ecosystem grew by ~20% from ~400M to ~500M
    • Excluding Open Philanthropy and GiveWell the EG ecosystem grew by ~50% from ~200M to ~300M
• There is now an example of all four main fundraising strategies surpassing the 10M threshold
  • Broad direct e.g. The Life You Can Save (17M money moved in 2024)
  • Broad pledge e.g. Giving What We Can (40M)
  • (U)HNW direct e.g. Longview Philanthropy (>50M)
  • (U)HNW pledge e.g. Founders Pledge (140M)
• The national fundraising model was further validated by significant growth in examples below but it is unclear if this model can continue achieving high growth rates beyond a certain level of market penetration^[1] (which Effektiv Spenden (DACH) may have hit a few years ago at ~20-25M money moved)
  • Doneer Effectief (Netherlands): 2.7M in 2023 → 6.3M in 2024
  • Ge Effektivt (Sweden): 650k in 2023 → 1.3M in 2024
  • Ayuda Efectiva (Spain): 1M in 2023 → 1.3M in 2024
• Various organisations launched pledge partnerships with GWWC, with a few showing significant early traction:
  • Effektiv Spenden (DACH): 34 🔸10% Pledges and 14 🔹Trial Pledges
  • Animal Advocacy Careers: 23 🔸10% Pledges and 43 🔹Trial Pledges
  • High-Impact Professionals: 21 🔸10% Pledges and 53 🔹Trial Pledges
• There are still many small organisations <1M which could (hopefully) break through to >1M in the next few years
  • Ambitious Impact’s incubated EG orgs not yet reaching the >1M mark; 2025 will show if they can scale like Effektiv Spenden (DACH) and Doneer Effectief (Netherlands)
  • For context, Effektiv Spenden (DACH), Doneer Effectief (Netherlands), and Effective Altruism Australia each took two giving seasons to get to 1M annually (others usually took longer)
• Many other organisations remained stable or showed slow, steady growth in 2024.
• GWWC published a new round of evaluations of evaluators and based on the results currently relies on:
  • GiveWell (2023 report)
  • Animal Charity Evaluators’ Movement Grants (2024 report)
  • Effective Altruism Funds' Animal Welfare Fund (2023 report)
  • Longview Philanthropy’s Emerging Challenges Fund (2023 report)
  • Effective Altruism Funds' Long-Term Future Fund (2023 report)
• the following (re-)evaluations are planned for 2025:
  • GiveWell
  • Happier Lives Institute
  • Effective Altruism Funds' Long-Term Future Fund
  • Longview Philanthropy’s Emerging Challenges Fund
• Following the 2024 Meta Coordination Forum, we (GWWC) began to explore whether there’s some value in (someone) building a community for those in the “earning to give” space (see this memo on “earning to give”). However, we subsequently discontinued this investigation in order to focus our attention on our new strategy.
  • Our initial announcement that we were scoping an EtG project was positively received by the EA community
  • ~35 people indicated interest in being involved in this by joining an EtG Pledge Club we set up. However, we did not end up doing any work to understand whether any of these individuals are aspiring, current, or past EtGers or what they hoped would come from the initiative
  • We came across some work being done to spin up EtG meetups in key locations, and learned that the hardest part of doing this is finding the people who might be interested
  • CEA have indicated to us that they might be interested in filling this gap directly or indirectly (see their recent strategy post on diversifying EA funding)
• USAID funding cuts
  • In January 2025, the US government froze large swathes of its ~75B annual foreign‑assistance budget, including the ~15B dedicated to global health, issuing stop‑work orders, halting payments, terminating projects and laying off staff. While the long-term effects remain unclear and exact numbers remain hard to find, Givewell researchers recently forecast a potential 50% cut in US global health funding and a 35% reduction in overall global health funding. (See this overview of the current situation from GiveWell)
  • Ultra Philanthropy published this overview of cost-effective funding opportunities following the USAID freeze and keeps it regularly updated
  • Founders Pledge and The Life You Can Save partnered to set up a Rapid Response Fund to fill time-sensitive funding gaps created by the suspension of US foreign aid. Now closed and replaced by the Catalytic Impact Fund (CIF) at Founders Pledge

Overview of the ecosystem

• Database of organisations (evaluators and fundraisers)
  • >60 effective giving orgs/projects, many of which were launched in the past few years
  • Most organisations and projects are small (<5 FTE); the largest ones in terms of headcount are Open Philanthropy, GiveWell and Founders Pledge (all >50 FTE)
• Database of publicly accessible evaluators
  • The public-facing impact-focused charity evaluation and grantmaking field is still (very) small: there are only 9 organisations with at least 3 FTE staff dedicated to evaluation and/or grantmaking: Open Philanthropy, GiveWell, Founders Pledge, Effective Altruism Funds, Animal Charity Evaluators, Longview Philanthropy, Navigation Fund, Giving Green, and Happier Lives Institute
  • There is no impact-focused charity evaluator for meta charities (i.e. charitable projects working one level removed from direct impact), pandemics, or AI risks apart from Founders Pledge currently; there are a few grantmakers in those spaces though (Open Philanthropy, Navigation Fund, Macrosopic Ventures, Longview Philanthropy, Effective Altruism Funds, Sentinel Bio, etc.)
• Effective Giving Global Coordination and Incubation
  • In May 2023 Giving What We Can hired Luke Moore to focus on supporting coordination and collaboration in the global EG ecosystem, including by organising the annual Effective Giving Summit (an MCF-like gathering for effective giving organisations)
  • Following Giving What We Can’s 2025 org-wide strategy, we’ve decided to continue supporting the effective giving ecosystem at 0.5 FTE and focus on the highest-value projects we’ve identified so far (incl. the EG Summit)

How much money is moved to high-impact destinations^[2] 

• ~3 organisations moved >100M (up from 2 in 2023)
  • >500M: Open Philanthropy
  • >100M: GiveWell, Founders Pledge
• ~10 organisations moved >10M in 2024 (up from ~7 in 2023)
  • >100M: ^ see above ^
  • >30M: Longview Philanthropy, Survival and Flourishing Fund, Giving What We Can, Macrosopic Ventures
  • >10M: Navigation Fund, Effektiv Spenden (DACH), The Life You Can Save, Giving Green (through Giving What We Can’s donation infrastructure)
• ~22 organisations moved >1M in 2024 (up from ~17 in 2023)
  • 8 grantmakers
    • Open Philanthropy
    • GiveWell
    • Survival and Flourishing Fund
    • Effective Altruism Foundation
    • AI Safety Tactical Opportunities Fund
    • Longview Philanthropy
    • Macrosopic Ventures
    • Navigation Fund (>10M as of 2024)
  • 3 public impact-focused evaluators
    • GiveWell
    • Animal Charity Evaluators
    • Giving Green (through Giving What We Can’s donation infrastructure) (>10M as of 2024)
  • 7 national fundraising organisations
    • Effektiv Spenden (DACH)
    • Doneer Effectief (Netherlands)
    • Effective Altruism Australia
    • Gi Effektivt (Norway)
    • RC Forward (Canada)
    • Ge Effektivt (Sweden) (>1M as of 2024)
    • Ayuda Efectiva (Spain) (>1M as of 2024)
  • 3 (U)HNW-focused organisations
    • Founders Pledge
    • Longview Philanthropy
    • Farmed Animal Funders (>1M as of 2024)
  • 3 global/broad focused organisations
    • Giving What We Can
    • The Life You Can Save
    • One for the World
  • For 2 organisations (Astralis Foundation and Generation Pledge) we don’t currently have a good sense of how much money they are (approximately) moving.

Where money goes

• Our current best guess estimate is that the money moved by the entire EG ecosystem went to the following cause areas:
  • ~50% to global health
  • ~20% to global catastrophic risk reduction
  • ~10% to meta charities
  • ~7% to animal welfare
  • ~6% to climate change mitigation
  • (the rest is unknown or a bit harder to categorise: ~7%)
• Open Philanthropy and GiveWell dominate the effective giving space (~80% of money moved), and their cause area distribution may not reflect the (future) distribution of donors in the broad EG community as it grows
  • In 2024 Open Philanthropy moved ~40% to global health, ~20% to global catastrophic risk reduction, ~20% to meta charities, ~10% to animal welfare (the rest is a bit harder to categorise)
  • In 2024 GiveWell moved 100% to global health
• Our current best guess estimate (excluding Open Philanthropy):
  • ~60% to global health
  • ~20% to global catastrophic risk reduction
  • ~10% to climate change mitigation
  • ~2% to animal welfare
  • (the rest is unknown or a bit harder to categorise: ~8%)
• Our current best guess estimate (excluding Open Philanthropy and GiveWell):
  • ~40% to global health
  • ~30% to global catastrophic risk reduction
  • ~15% to climate change mitigation
  • ~4% to animal welfare
  • (the rest is unknown or a bit harder to categorise: ~11%)

Where operational funding comes from

• Open Philanthropy is the largest single funder of meta charities with a budget of ~7M for effective giving organisations (e.g. fundraisers and charity evaluators), but has a strong preference for funding no more than 50% of an organisation’s budget and looks for a minimum counterfactual and grant quality adjusted ROI of >2x (but often more like >5x)
• Meta Charity Funding Circle is a key funding entity for smaller / early-stage meta charities. These funders are most interested in applications not already substantially supported by the Effective Altruism Infrastructure Fund or Open Philanthropy. See this overview of what they look for in applications
• Effective Altruism Infrastructure Fund is primarily focused on funding projects which spread the idea of giving effectively and encouraging impartial consideration of where donations can do the most good and thus have a preference for projects raising money for multiple core effective altruism causes rather than those raising for only one cause area
• Founders Pledge are open to requests from EG organisations with a counterfactual and grant quality adjusted multiplier of 2-3x. They typically make grants of 50–300k
• Beyond these grantmaking institutions many meta charities in the effective giving ecosystem are supported by various (U)HNW donors in their networks, as well as smaller donors. Many platform-based organisations that raise money on behalf of high-impact nonprofits cover some portion of their operational expenses through some sort of tipping mechanism at donor check-out, as well as by collecting interest on donations they hold temporarily before disbursement

1. ^{^}

   This might also be about finding new markets. Some of the existing orgs seem to have saturated the niche they've focused on, but could perhaps still appeal to other audiences in their country.

2. ^{^}

   For the purposes of this overview, "money moved to high-impact destinations" refers to funds donated directly to an organisation's accounts by a donor, with a high-impact destination (i.e. one recommended or granted to by an impact-focused evaluator). Some organisations also move money to destinations not considered high-impact, but these funds are not included for our purposes e.g. in 2024 Founders Pledge moved a total of 222M, but only 140M is considered high-impact.