Where are the Giving What We Can team donating in 2025?

As the year ends, some staff members volunteered to share where they are giving this year, and a little bit about how they currently think about their donations.

For previous years and more on why we do this, you can read our similar posts from 2023 and 2024. And if you enjoy this post, we also encourage you to check out similar posts from teams at other organisations who’ve shared their personal giving this year too, such as GiveWell and Coefficient Giving.

Aidan Whitfield

Because I believe the opportunities to reduce severe suffering of animals through effective animal advocacy are really extraordinary, I expect the majority of my donations this year to go to the two funds that GWWC recommends to donors in our animal welfare cause area: EA Funds’ Animal Welfare Fund and ACE’s Movement Grants Fund. 2025 was my first full year with a 🔸10% Pledge and, like others on the team, I’m excited to continue to reflect on and develop my giving strategy in the future!

Amalie Farestvedt

This is an exciting year for me as it is a year where I’ve transitioned from being a student with the occasional part-time job, to a full-time job, enabling me to donate at a significantly higher level than before:

• GiveWell All Grants Fund: With USAID cuts this year, this fund's flexibility felt all the more important.
• Animal Charity Evaluators Recommended Charity Fund and EA Funds Animal Welfare Fund: Highly-rated funds for animal welfare.
• Anima International: Since many of the corporate cage-free pledges have 2025 as a deadline, this has seemed like an important year to fund high impact charities working on these commitments.
• Giving What We Can (through 10% salary sacrifice): It’s both motivating to donate to an organisation that has a strong giving multiplier and to give myself an additional incentive to do my work in a cost-effective way.

I'm excited to reflect more deeply on my giving strategy in the coming years, as I'm still setting myself up for a lifetime of giving!

Casey Yates

I'm still on a learning journey with my giving! My background is in public health, so global health has always felt like natural territory which is why roughly 70% of my giving this year has landed in global health, including through GiveWell's Top Charities and All Grants Fund and to some of Giving What We Can’s recommended programmes including the Against Malaria Foundation, Malaria Consortium, Helen Keller and New Incentives. I was also excited to begin supporting Ansh, (which was recently onboarded to Giving What We Can) and which supports the delivery of Kangaroo care for at-risk newborns in India.

Roughly 20% of my donations also went to supporting programmes focused on reducing animal suffering including the Humane League and through Giving What We Can’s Effective Animal Advocacy Fund - I think the opportunities here to reduce suffering at scale are extraordinary!

I’ve also deliberately tried to diversify my giving this year and also supported preparedness and long-term thinking through the Giving What We Can's Risks and Resilience Fund (roughly 5% of my giving).

I joined Giving What We Can in March, and took a trial pledge in June this year. The past few years—studying, starting a family, moving countries (too many times)— has meant I’ve found it often difficult to strike the right balance with giving. Taking a trial pledge has really helped simplify that and help make sure the habit sticks, even when life feels chaotic. I’m excited to continue with that pledge through 2026 and beyond. 

James Rayton

Like many people, I’m still on a learning journey with my giving. This year I’ve deliberately tried to diversify. Why? Because it feels like a way of de-risking my impact. I don’t hold a settled view on which of the cause areas we support carry the greatest moral weight, so I hedge. That said, you’ll still see my instincts coming through: a larger share goes to global health, which has long been where my motivation and experience run deepest.

• 40% GiveWell All Grants
• 10% EA Funds Animal Welfare Fund
• 10% Risks and Resilience Fund
• 10% Charity Entrepreneurship
• 10% to GiveDirectly
• 10% to Giving What We Can
• 10% to Founders Pledge Climate Change Fund

James Steijger

While I have worked for non-profits and impact research since the start of my career, I only took the 10% pledge in May this year – right before joining GWWC.

I used to think that the salary I sacrificed vis-a-vis what a similar commercial role would offer me was sufficient. Researching GWWC as I was going through my application process made me realize something. All the convictions I already held that made me dedicate myself to non-profit work applied just as much to giving 10% of my lifetime income. So I took the pledge.

Having only donated token amounts in the past (mostly to Planned Parenthood and climate / nature conservation charities), the process of deciding how much and where I wanted to donate was much more difficult than anticipated. From what my colleagues tell me, it’s a journey, and I’m excited to see what the future holds.

I’ve donated 15% of my income this year to the following causes:

• 50% to Giving What We Can
  I strongly believe in our multiplier and want to keep myself accountable for the impact of our work.
• 25% to Fondo Salud Global (23.75%) at Ayuda Efectiva (1.25%) Global health is one of my two core priorities, and this is the most tax-efficient way to give to GWWC’s recommended global health charities as a Spanish resident; I tipped 5% to support their operations.
• 25% to GFI Europe
  Climate change is my other core priority, so I relied on GivingGreen’s research and recommendations to select a high-impact organisation close to my heart.

Lorenzo Buonanno

Like last year, I’ve capped my salary at GWWC to €25k/y, so my largest donation would be to GWWC. I believe we currently have a good multiplier on marginal funding, and it’s very tax-efficient to reduce my salary instead of donating.

Other than that, this year I gave €2k to match donations to my birthday fundraiser hosted on the Italian effective giving organisation benefficienza.it, with the hope that this helped them debug/test their shiny new donation platform and get some first donations through it.

I’m mostly holding off for more donations this year, aiming to contribute ~€7k to the April round of the Charity Entrepreneurship Seed Network, when they aim to launch some great animal charities.

Lucas Moore

I fundamentally believe that currently growing the total amount of money directed toward high-impact charities is a crucial bottleneck. As part of this, I’m giving 10% of my income this year to Giving What We Can. In my view, our multiplier at GWWC is exceptionally high, and I’ve previously written more about why I think effective giving organisations could do with more support here. While I’d love to give to other effective giving organisations, part of my work as Effective Giving Global Coordinator and Incubator means that I see value in avoiding any appearance of bias that could complicate my work.

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.

Sjir Hoeijmakers

This year, I decided to give 50% of my income (I wrote about why here), largely to:

• The Giving What We Can Risks and Resilience Fund, Global Health and Wellbeing Fund, and Effective Animal Advocacy Fund, because this is what I recommend to most people without expertise in charity evaluation, and I want to practice what I preach.
• The Happier Lives Institute, Animal Charity Evaluators, and Ambitious Impact, because these are building new infrastructure to make more high-impact giving happen, and they can productively use more funding.
• High Impact Professionals and to Giving What We Can itself (via salary sacrifice), because they quite reliably provide a strong giving multiplier on my donations.

I also gave to Effective Altruism Netherlands and the Patient Philanthropy Fund, which are two projects I co-founded and have close context on, and I know could productively use extra funding as well.