All of GraceAdams🔸's Comments + Replies

Rowan, this is enormously sweet! I just logged in to the EA Forum for the first time in ages and I'm really honoured! Being public about my health has felt like a tough decision but knowing that it's resonated with you and others makes it feel really worth it!

I'm so thrilled that we've achieved this milestone- and I can't wait to see what we can achieve in the future <3

Hi Habeeb,

I work at GWWC as the Head of Marketing :)

Thank you for your generosity and for sharing your perspective! We are actively interested in how we can help cultivate people giving effectively from all over the world, so this is really helpful feedback for us!

I've asked someone on the team who knows why we have the $5 minimum to follow up in the comments here, so stay tuned for their response. My guess is that with the processing fees associated, it might not make sense for us to support donations less than $5 - but this post will help us challenge th... (read more)

I do really think that donating thoughtfully in ways that mean that someone is statistically living because of the interventions you've funded is just something to be really proud of. 

I also wanted to say that I think it's truly okay to also value making your own life more enjoyable, alongside improving the lives of others. I choose to donate at least 10% of my income, but I also spend money on many things I don't need - but I value a rich life full of diverse experiences as well as helping others, and I don't feel bad about it! I'm fulfilling my goal... (read more)

Hi satelliteprocess!

I'm Grace, the Head of Marketing at GWWC.

Giving What We Can offers a number of giving pledges, the most popular being the "Trial Pledge" and the "10% Pledge"

A Trial Pledge allows you to pledge between 1%-10% of your income for a fixed amount of time between 6 months to 10 years.

A 10% Pledge is a pledge to give 10% of your income until you retire.

There's no progressive "tax" scheme for GWWC's Pledges, unlike The Life You Can Save (TLYCS)'s recommendations. GWWC also has the option for people to pledge a percentage of wealth, and we encou... (read more)

Currently at GWWC in our materials for EA Groups, we suggest that a Trial Pledge is a good starting point for people who are interested in effective giving, but are just learning about it.

My personal POV: I think it's generally a good idea for people to try out giving 10% or take a Trial Pledge before committing to the 10% Pledge. I think it's important that people feel comfortable with giving that amount and think seriously about what tradeoffs they might need to make if they take a 10% Pledge. But I think introducing people to the idea of the 10% Pledge at university is a good idea. We see people end up taking pledges even 10+ years after learning about it at university!

Thanks David - really helpful to be able to read about this succinctly!

Thank you for this beautiful post, Julia. Your writing always really resonates with me.

Just echoing Luke's response here: When I moved from my corporate job to GWWC, I gave up ~30% of salary I would have had if I stayed. I still give at least 10% of my current salary.

I think I was lucky to be in a high paying role to begin with, and that I get paid a fair salary at GWWC but there definitely was a large financial cost to moving to a non-profit, especially on top of donating min. 10%.

Hi Simon,

Thanks for the question!

The EA Hub used to facilitate donation swaps - but the project was retired so now there's no one owning this.

I think it can be hard to formally organise this, and have some reservations as to whether there could be legal implications for an organisation to run a project like this.

That being said, I know some people who are informally organising donation swaps at the moment.

It could be a good idea to gauge feasibility and interest in this across the EA community. I don't know if it's something GWWC would want to own but I do... (read more)

Hi Vasco,

This isn't something that GWWC is currently planning to look into, but I think it's a good question and I'd like to see us develop our thinking about it further. We've made an internal note on this to discuss within the team!

We may also review this page mentioned next year to include sources.

Thanks as always for your feedback :) 

Hi Vasco,

Thanks for your question - I think it's a good one!

I was going to write up a response but then I remembered we had this nice explanation on our research and approach page:

Some other organisations in the effective giving space advocate a particular “worldview”; for example, they might believe it is most impactful to focus on safeguarding the long-term future and as such, recommend giving to organisations working to reduce existential risk, rather than other high-impact causes like global health. Others may believe it is best to focus on non-human a

Hi Vasco, I think you're probably right in rational terms! For me personally, I find it's actually helpful with donors sometimes to be able to talk about the different charities I donate to and meet them on their level. But I'm also probably not as rational as I could be!

I've done something similar with Effective Altruism Australia this year - we had christmas cards where you can make a donation in someone's name! I ordered 11 of them and will be keen to see if they encourage people to donate: https://effectivealtruism.org.au/ChristmasCards/

Thanks Nick! You inspire a lot of the GWWC team through your work and your thoughtfulness on the Forum!

Absolutely love this take! I'd love to see our community advocating for effective giving to their networks in ways that make sense for them!

I also see this as a reason to take a pledge with GWWC, even if you're already giving - by adding your name to the list of pledgers, and helping that list grow longer - you're showing that this is a real  movement of people who are taking giving effectively and significantly seriously. 

(Honestly, just scrolling through a really long list of names helped give me confidence to pledge despite not knowing anyone)... (read more)

Thanks for your work on this! In general I would love to see headache disorders like cluster headaches and migraine receive more funding for research because of their burden.

As someone who has chronic migraine, I can only imagine what experiencing cluster headaches would be like.

I think it's a great idea to do a fundraising campaign as part of your university groups! Fundraisers can be a great way to raise awareness as well as money!

At Giving What We Can (I work there in Marketing), we have a some resources on running successful fundraisers which could be useful:
https://www.givingwhatwecan.org/get-involved/run-fundraisers

There have also been initiatives in the EA community like:

• https://campagnes.doneereffectief.nl/looop-2024
• https://www.givingwhatwecan.org/fundraisers/from-england-to-istanbul

I think that fundraising for a cause tie... (read more)

Thank you Luke for your leadership of GWWC, and your mentorship of me as an employee at GWWC.

It was seeing a talk from you and Peter Singer that got me involved with effective giving, and GWWC. So without you, I would never have been involved with something that has become one of the most meaningful parts of my life. 

It has been an immense honour to work with someone as passionate, intelligent and caring as you.

So much of how GWWC has grown in the past few years since you joined is because of your hard work, and all of us who have worked with you pers... (read more)

Would Jimmy personally (or the business) ever consider taking a public pledge to give to effective charities, like the 🔸 10% Pledge - a pledge to donate at least 10% of income until you retire to the organisations that can most improve the lives of others? 

Prominent pledgers like podcaster Sam Harris, youtuber Ali Abdaal, author and historian Rutger Bregman amongst others have raised awareness of the pledges we offer, as well as the principles of effective charities - and influenced more than 1500 people to take a pledge to give, which we estimate will generate over $100m USD of effective donations over time.

Hi Ben,

All pledges taken through partners will appear on GWWC's website and will be treat as "direct" pledges! Partners could also decide to display the people who pledged through their "club" - but we're mindful that impact isn't double counted!

Most people will be added to our english comms about the pledge, but in some cases, where the audience does not speak english, they may not receive the same comms from GWWC, with the expectation that our partner will communicate in their language. We're handling this on a case by case basis.

At the moment, people wi... (read more)

Thanks Oscar - I updated the reference on LinkedIn!

I don't think there's a good way to tag GWWC on LinkedIn in the bio or headline, sadly.

Yeah this is a good point - we tried to keep the communications short but this missed the nuance of how to actually update it! We're seeing if we can create some guidance but it's on our list of lower priority tasks.

This is a bummer - we didn't realise! But it can still be added to the bio if you like - hopefully that's a reasonable alternative!

Ah, I was hoping it would be clear from the image that we included - but perhaps that wasn't quite enough to get the point across! 

Totally fine if you want to remove the number! Thanks for updating your profile :)

Hi Andrew - we did notice the similarity many months ago when we started planning the launch - but with the election being called a few weeks ago, the comparison has definitely gotten more noticeable. 

At the time, we thought it wasn't a big issue, and once the election is over, I suspect it will go back to being much less of an issue as well. Keeping in mind that less than a quarter of our community is in the UK - and the symbol doesn't have any clear association outside the UK.

Partly we are using the little orange diamond because it fits nicely with ... (read more)

Hi Rebecca! As always, grateful for your support of people in the community and helping them get their finances sorted!

We do encourage people to give regularly as part of the pledge, and would generally encourage people who are using DAFs as part of their giving strategy to disburse funds from it regularly so that they are actively contributing to doing good in the world now, rather than later. I do think that it’s possible for people to strongly believe that waiting for a particular moment in time might be the best use of their funds, i.e. development or ... (read more)

We do occasionally promote the Company Pledge in our newsletter and on our social media, especially on LinkedIn where businesses are most likely to see it! Mostly - we are just constrained in our efforts to promote our work more generally!

We are getting new Company Pledges every so often, and are really excited to have new Companies join! We’ve had Bullet Journal (a popular journaling system and product) join recently - and another great business in the works!

We may decide to step up on promoting the Company Pledge but seeing there are other great pledges ... (read more)

Thanks Brad - I think all of those are reasonable considerations! As mentioned in my response to Owen - we'll review this messaging based on this feedback! Thanks for sharing your reasoning!

Thanks Owen - I think those things are all reasonable - we might look to update this paragraph on the blog and update our messaging around this! It's always a challenge to write in a way that's engaging and legible to those outside the community, and also reflects all of the nuance expected in the community. We of course, always try to do our best, but sometimes we might miss the mark and we're always open to changing our minds!

Hi Elizabeth - it would be great if you could explain why? 

If you encourage a friend who wasn't otherwise giving effectively or significantly to pledge - and they do - this seems like a potential doubling of donations going to high impact charities. Maybe more or less if their salary is higher or lower but as a rule of thumb I think it seems like generally a fine thing to say.

Maybe you were thinking that donations might be less counterfactual if these people are already in the effective altruism community(?), but many people GWWC reaches are outside t... (read more)

Thanks for the kind feedback about our hiring process! I'll encourage the team to write up how we have approached the hiring for some roles where we think we ran a good process!

[Edit: Actually Michael Townsend wrote this in the past about our hiring process, which is worth reading]

This is a lovely reflection, thank you for writing it! 

I very much agree that those who are wealthiest have much more of a responsibility to give! - but GWWC is not explicitly aimed at trying to get billionaires to donate more, because we're not really set up to do that! And there are other organisations who are trying to do this much better than we could.

This video is definitely not asking all people to give large amounts to charity, but I also wanted to talk to all kinds of people about charity. People across all spectrums of income give to charity, even people with very low incomes, so I think it's worthwhi... (read more)

Oh I thought I responded to this already!

I'd like to say that people often have very good reasons for not pledging, that are sometimes visible to us, and other times not - and no one should feel bad for making the right choice for themselves! 

I do of course think many more people in our community could take the GWWC Pledge, but I wouldn't want people to do that at the expense of them feeling comfortable with making that commitment.

We should respect other people's journeys, lifestyles and values in our pursuits to do good.

And thanks Lizka for sharing your previous post in this thread too! Appreciate you sharing your perspective!

I was lucky enough to see Marcus play this year at the Australian Open, and have pledged alongside him! Marcus is so hardworking - in tennis alongside his work at High Impact Athletes! Go Marcus!!!

Thanks for sharing your perspective, Karthik! 

I think it's pretty unacceptable to be rude or unkind to anyone who hasn't take a pledge with GWWC. Everyone is on their own journey and should do what is right for them. I would be disappointed to hear of pledgers who are acting in a manner that's unkind to non-pledgers.

I second Liza's request here to ask people who are being uncharitable or unkind about the decisions of others around taking a pledge to refrain from doing so. 

I think it's acceptable to politely ask people if they'd welcome a discussion about reasons they should consider taking a pled... (read more)

Hi David!

I'm not sure why they thought it was so high! It also surprised me! 

I think maybe because we had talked about their own income beforehand? But I also hadn't really introduced much about charity before that point - so perhaps in other settings they are also being anchored? 

I had a small sample size so not sure I can draw any major conclusions here! The filming was about 10 months ago so I'm afraid I can't remember!

Hi Ula! Sorry for the very slow response! I got caught up with other work! 

A video like this would generally cost between 10k-20k GBP depending on the team used and how much staff time goes into it.

We're currently not running ads with this video, but will probably do so in the future. We have been trying to get as much organic traction on it as possible so far! Happy to share some further results with you when we have it!

Here's an explanation from Luke about how taking a voluntary salary sacrifice could count towards the pledge (as long as you still think it's one of the most effective organisations improving the lives of others): 

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/sQg4Hi5D2oD6xrbTY/notes-on-not-taking-the-gwwc-pledge-yet?commentId=GSAEzKwdaD8MjRLjC

Let me know what you think!

We'll update this! We do encourage people to give annually to keep in the habit but you're also right that it's not actually in the pledge text. I think this is a major point for a lot of people so we'll update the page! Thanks for pointing that out!

Thanks for sharing, Nuno!

We do have members who don't donate strictly on a yearly basis, and choose to donate every couple of years when there's something quite promising to donate to. Also donating every second (or more depending on how much you donate) year can make sense for some Americans given the tax benefits. 

I think that deciding when to donate (i.e. investing or donating now) is a difficult one, and depends a lot on your worldviews etc. My take is that if you're interested in improving the lives of people now, it's generally good to donate so... (read more)

Ah thanks Ian! You can reach me at grace.adams@givingwhatwecan.org and I'll update the post!

Thanks, JD! I think this is really useful!

One thing I always find so interesting is the contrast between people who are in a culture where giving 10% seems normal (and maybe therefore unnecessary or less valuable to take a pledge) and people who are in a culture where it seems extreme! 

The comment about community is also really interesting - hopefully we're addressing this over time and making it easier to connect with this global community!

Many of our members who currently work at EA non-profits choose to sacrifice salary as part of their pledge! If you were working somewhere else outside of EA, would you consider donating to effective charities or projects?

Hi Jason,

I think this perspective around how upbringing and financial insecurity is really common, and can absolutely understand why it generates hesitancy to make a lifelong financial commitment!

I also think your "fix" of taking trial pledges is also common for people with a similar perspective.

Agreed that it's really valuable for us to understand diverse perspectives here! This is really helpful for us in order to think through in order to help achieve our mission.

Thanks to both you and Joseph for sharing!

Thanks for sharing your thoughts, Joseph! Really appreciate you taking the time!

I think your feelings here are shared by many! And I do think that taking a significant pledge without a sense of financial stability might not be a good idea. I personally decided to take a pledge once I felt I was in a position to be able to cover expenses if I needed to stop working for a period of time.

The pledges we offer at GWWC don't require you to donate in the case of being unemployed, but this doesn't solve the issue of having enough runway to cover living expenses in... (read more)

I'd like to extend a massive thank you to Gemma, Chris and Denise for volunteering their time and energy to run the GWWC London Group! I'm really excited about the potential for this group (and the others we're seeding around the globe) - and none of it would happen without the generosity of volunteers!

I'm really excited to return to London next year and hopefully attend an event!!!