Giving What We Can September Newsletter

Welcome to our September Newsletter!

Thank you for being a part of our growing community.

Every month, our community grows and it warms our hearts. Since the 1st of September, we’ve had 186 people take a new pledge with us and over 4000 people make a donation!

When someone takes a pledge with us, they are asked to write down what motivated them to pledge, and we wanted to share a few of our favourites from September:

• “... because I want to help other people and improve the quality of life on earth.”
• “I consider it every able person’s duty to do what they can to leave the world a better place for all.”
• “I want to dedicate my life to promoting the happiness and well-being of other beings.”
• “My main motivation in life is to minimize suffering. It is the value I hold the highest.”
• “I want to do more good, and I know I can.”

Knowing that there are thousands of people who are taking lifelong action to help others, especially those they will never meet, is a wonderful thing.
 

Get us to talk at your workplace or community group!

Many people start thinking about how to give back towards the end of the year. If you’d like us to host a talk or workshop at your workplace or with your community group about effective giving over the coming months, please fill in this form! We are excited to share the ideas of effective giving with new people and have found talks and workshops to be impactful.

There’s lots of interesting news, content from Giving What We Can and events to attend in the rest of our newsletter down below!

Until next time, keep doing good!

-Grace Adams & the rest of the Giving What We Can team

Many of our Giving What We Can Pledge members have received their Pledge Pins and have been wearing them out and about. Here’s one of our early members José Oliveira wearing his pin!

Attend An Event

Meetups
 

This month, join us for a discussion on our co-founder Will MacAskill’s new book, What We Owe The Future. Bring your questions and thoughts on the book and chat with other community members.

(Americas/Oceania)

• Oct. 8: 22:00 UTC (New York: 6:00 pm; San Francisco: 3:00 pm, Sydney: Sun, Oct. 9, 9:00 am, Auckland: Sun, Oct. 9, 11:00 am)
• RSVP on Facebook
• Register

(Europe/Asia)

• Oct. 9: 8:30 UTC (London: 9:30 am, Munich: 10:30 am, Mumbai: 2:00 pm, Singapore: 4:30 pm)
• RSVP on Facebook
• Register

Open Forum

Our open forum is an event where you can come along with questions about effective giving and/or to meet others interested in effective giving. This event alternates between Europe/Asia and Americas/Oceania each month.
 

Next Open Forum (Europe/Asia)

• Oct. 17: 11:00 UTC (London: 12:00 pm, Munich: 1:00 pm, Mumbai: 4:30 pm, Singapore: 7:00 pm)
• RSVP on Facebook
• Register
   

New content from Giving What We Can

Blog

• Should charity begin at home? - Alana Horowitz Friedman, contributing writer
• Member profile: Fernando Martin-Gullans
• Announcement: Renaming of legal entity to Effective Ventures Foundation - Giving What We Can team
• Rutger Bregman on Effective Giving: Highlights from an Interview with Effektiv Spenden - Grace Adams, Head of Marketing
• What is counterfactual thinking and why should you care about it? - Alana Horowitz Friedman, contributing writer

YouTube

• You can prevent animal suffering. Here’s how. - Giving Effectively series
• Zachary Brown shares his giving story - People Who Give Effectively series
• Don’t make these 10 mistakes when trying to improve the world: Dr. Michael Noetel, High Performance Psychologist - Effective Altruism series
• Using research & strategic thinking to help animals effectively: Interview with Neil Dullaghan, Senior Researcher at Rethink Priorities - Podcast series

Podcast

• Find audio-only versions of new YouTube content on the Giving What We Can podcast!
  • Lesson: You can prevent animal suffering. Here’s how.
  • Member story: Zachary Brown
  • Dr. Michael Noetel: Don’t make these 10 mistakes when trying to improve the world
  • Neil Dullaghan: Using research & strategic thinking to help animals effectively

News & Updates

Effective altruism community

• Caring about the future doesn’t mean ignoring the present: Kelsey Piper argues that perceived “trade-offs' ' between longtermism and present-day global health interventions are blown out of proportion.
• Oxford’s Andreas Mogensen, an effective altruist who rejects consequentialism,  makes a deontological case for effective giving (and the GWWC pledge!) in this 80,000 Hours podcast episode.
• EA for Jews is launching an 8-week virtual fellowship program starting the week of October 9th “that explores the core ideas of effective altruism and their relation to Jewish tradition, texts, culture, and history.” Apply by September 29th.
• Easy EMDR, a company offering “all-in-one solutions” for mental health practitioners specialising in trauma, has published a blog post — Fighting Global Trauma with Effective Altruism — about its commitment to effective giving.
• High Impact Professionals (HIP) has recently shown how running a corporate fundraising campaign at your workplace can be a highly effective way to multiply your impact. HIP has also published a list of key factors to organising a successful campaign.
• This EA forum post summarises results from and reasoning behind GWWC and EA Market Testing Team’s exploratory marketing messages trial, which aimed to compare the effectiveness of different messaging approaches during GWWC’s Giving Guide campaign.
• What we’re learning about spreading EA ideas: GWWC Head of Marketing Grace Adams speaks at EAGxOxford.
• Our very own Luke Freeman (GWWC Executive Director) has written a poem (and post-script) about funding constraints within effective altruism.

Evaluators, grantmakers and incubators

• GiveWell’s (formerly-named) “Maximum Impact Fund” will now be called the “Top Charities Fund”; GiveWell explains the name change in this blog post.
• GiveWell is launching a “Change Our Mind” contest to solicit critiques of its cost-effectiveness analyses that could improve its allocations. Entries are due by October 31st.
• Animal Charity Evaluators welcomes Stien van der Ploeg as its new Executive Director; she will assume the role in early October.
• Open Philanthropy has announced the winning submissions to its Cause Exploration Prizes process, which solicited suggestions for new cause areas to support and awarded prizes to particularly compelling entries.
• Founders Pledge has published an article about its approach to comparing funding opportunities in global health and wellbeing: Measuring Health: How We Use (And Sometimes Don’t Use) DALY Estimates
• Open Philanthropy is hiring for several roles, including an Executive Assistant to support its Biosecurity and Pandemic Preparedness team, a Programs Operation Assistant to support its Global Health and Wellbeing team, and a Grants Associate focused on longtermist grantmaking.
• GiveWell is hiring for several positions, including an Operations Assistant to support other operations staff and help ensure the smooth functioning of the office. It is still seeking candidates for its open Senior Researcher, Senior Research Associate, and Content Editor positions.

Cause areas

Animal welfare

• Good Food Institute has published a mid-year impact report.
• Faunalytics has published the third report (focusing on barriers and supports for new vegans/vegetarians) in its longitudinal study.
• Wild Animal Initiative has issued a grant to a project that will use thermal imaging to study the relationship of body temperature to stress signals and energy reserves in young birds.
• The Humane League reports on significant corporate cage-free progress:
  • After a worldwide Open Wing Alliance campaign, Toridoll Holdings Corporation released a “first of its kind” global cage-free commitment, which the Humane League reports will “directly improve the lives of 40,000 egg-laying hens by the end of 2023 in Japan alone.”
  • In response to consumer pressure, BJ’s Wholesale Club has renewed its commitment to go cage-free.

Global health and development

• GiveDirectly has appointed Former UK International Development Secretary Rory Stewart as President/CEO and is planning an ambitious program scale-up.
• The rise and rise of GiveDirectly: Dylan Matthews discusses the growth of GiveDirectly, how its cash transfer model has helped change the charitable giving landscape, and what’s coming next under Stewart’s leadership.
• Malaria Consortium comments on the R21 malaria vaccine’s impressive trial results (up to 80% protection).
• Against Malaria Foundation is hiring for a few roles, including Junior and Senior Operations Managers and a Donations Administrator.

Long-term future

• The Socialist Case for Longtermism: In an article for Jacobin magazine, Garrison Lovely explains why he sees longtermism as “perfectly compatible with a socialist worldview.”
• Clean Air Task Force has released a newly updated report showing that 14 million people are at increased risk of cancer due to toxic oil and gas emissions in the U.S. CATF also discusses concrete mitigation measures it believes the EPA should enact.
• Clean Air Task Force reports on a new global steel standard which it believes will help decarbonise the industry.
• Terra Praxis has announced a collaboration with Microsoft that will aim to “decarbonise coal facilities with nuclear power,” “repurposing over 2,400 coal-fired power plants worldwide to run on carbon-free energy.”
• The Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security is accepting applications for its Health Security track PhD program (2023-2024 academic year). Full funding is available.

Streamline your giving by setting up a recurring donation to a highly-effective charity today!

Useful Links

• Review our giving recommendations.
• Report your donations with your pledge dashboard.
• Share our ideas to help grow our community and multiply your impact.
• Join other members in the Giving What We Can Community Facebook group.
• Find more ways to get involved with Giving What We Can and effective altruism.
• Discuss effective giving and effective altruism on the EA Forum.

You can follow us on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, YouTube, or TikTok and subscribe to the EA Newsletter for more news and articles.

Do you have questions about the pledge, Giving What We Can, or effective altruism in general? Check out our FAQ page, or contact us directly.