Summary: 40 years before Giving What We Can, a Quaker charity came upon the idea of pledging a percentage of income to help global development.

There’s no universal standard for what counts as an effective giving organization. But if you asked me, I’d point to a few core traits shared by One for the World, Giving What We Can, and others. They try to identify charities that provide the most help per dollar, usually by focusing on people (or animals) with the greatest needs. Traditionally, this means redistributing from first-world donors to people in global extreme poverty, but also sometimes non-pet animals and people in the future, through longtermism. Many also encourage pledges, stemming from Peter Singer’s argument about the moral responsibility of those better off to save the lives of those worse off.

However, before the modern spate of organizations linked with Effective Altruism, the One Per Cent fund was doing much the same thing. It was established in 1968 by London Yearly Meeting, the main Quaker group for the entire British Isles, and operated until 1989. At its peak it had circa 1,500 members, but that declined to less than 500 by the time it shut down. Like One for the World, its members agreed to spend 1% of their income each year on charities focusing on developing countries. Besides Britain, there was some support from Quakers elsewhere, including a Swiss group that increased the amount to 3%.

Additionally, it was supported by the Friends World Committee for Consultation (FWCC), another Quaker group that foreshadowed some early Effective Altruist principles in its Right Sharing of World Resources program. This called for Quakers to give a fixed proportion of income to development programs, volunteer on global development programs, and use political power to advocate for global development. But it also intermingled these concerns with views further from Effective Altruism, such as support for family planning and work on local poverty.

One problem in equating the One Per Cent fund and modern effective giving is that no sources I have are clear about how the One Per Cent fund chose its charities, besides that they focused on working in the developing world. They seem to have funded the New Economics Foundation, a heterodox economics group, so it appears that it included not just traditional charities that directly help people but also research groups. Furthermore, the Fund carried out advocacy for the British government to also spend one percent of gross national product on global development. By contrast, modern groups use tools like DALYs to ensure cost-effectiveness among charitable donations, but many support both direct charities and research groups.

Later, the One Per Cent fund developed into a charity called Right Sharing of World Resources. They ditched the pledge aspect, as far as I can tell, and now fund women-run businesses in developing countries. Sources disagree on the exact relationship between the two, but it seems like Right Sharing of World Resources was formerly an American version of the One Per Cent fund, separate from the British version.

Another difference between the One Per Cent fund and modern effective giving is the motivations. As effective giving comes from the Effective Altruism movement, it is principally grounded in utilitarianism, even if not all pledgers would consider themselves utilitarianism. However, Quakerism is not principally a utilitarian movement, and the language around the One Per Cent fund and related endeavors tends to cite duties or virtues instead, while being ultimately grounded in a religious faith. Thereby the existence of the One Per Cent fund demonstrates that it is possible for non-utilitarian movements to converge on many of the same views of modern Effective Altruism.

No evidence that I have found points to direct ties between the One Per Cent fund and its successors. Although early Effective Altruism did include at least a few Quakers, such as Julia Wise, there were about 20 years between the end of the One Per Cent fund and the beginnings of Giving What We Can. Furthermore, the One Per Cent fund is scarcely documented in online sources, so similarities likely represent convergent evolution.

All in all, the One Per Cent fund is an interesting case study in how the ideas of effective giving have popped up at other times. While none of my sources focus on the particular charities being effective, there are many mentions about the scale of the problem as a reason for supporting the fund. The combination of global development and a pledging model makes them, while not in complete agreement with modern standards, an interesting forerunner of today’s organizations.

Sources:

Britain Yearly Meeting. 2013. Quaker Faith and Practice. 5th ed. London: The Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) in Britain.

Bronner, Edwin B. 1969. “Friends and their Friends around the World.” Friends Journal, March 1, 1969.

Friends Journal. 2015. “Quaker Works May 2015.” May 1, 2015.

Kreager, Roland. 2007. “On Good Soil and Increasing Yield.” Friends Journal, October 1, 2007. https://www.friendsjournal.org/2007142/.