About us
We support each other in our commitments to helping others and learning about effective giving. We aim to create a culture where people are inspired to give more, and give more effectively.
We aim to be your guide to effective giving
Whether you’re learning how to give effectively to maximise your charitable impact, looking to donate to the world’s most effective charities, pledging a portion of your income to highly effective charities, or advocating for effective giving — we’re here to help you on every step of your journey.
From left to right: Luke, Michael, Alex, Fabio, Grace, Sarah, Julian
See more about our team to learn why we love helping people to give effectively.
Our history
The idea of Giving What We Can came to Oxford philosopher Toby Ord after he was inspired by ethicists such as Peter Singer to pledge a significant proportion of his income to effective charities.
In November 2009, Toby and fellow Oxford philosopher Will MacAskill launched Giving What We Can, an organisation dedicated to creating a culture where people are inspired to give to the world’s most effective charities. The pair concluded that a tremendous amount of good could be done by carefully combining the head and the heart to analyse and compare charities based on how effective they are at helping others.
Giving What We Can was one of the first organisations in a growing community of like-minded organisations focused on effective altruism: the project of using evidence and reason to figure out how to best help others, and taking action on that basis.
Our co-founder, Toby Ord, personally sending letters to people who signed The Pledge.
Our vision
Giving What We Can's mission is to make giving effectively and significantly a cultural norm. We mean this quite literally: our goal isn't just to marginally increase the amount of money going to effective charities — we're aiming to make meaningful cultural change.
— Excerpt from our 2022 strategy update announcement
You can read exactly how we’re working towards this vision in our current strategy.
Our community
At its heart, Giving What We Can is a community. We are a group of like-minded people who are committed to make a meaningful positive impact on others’ lives by donating to highly effective charities.
We’ve got over 8,703 members across the world, just like Ollie and Habiba.
What Ollie says:
It's a rare community, a really special community of people dedicated to trying to make a difference, which is just hard to come across.
— Ollie Base, member since 2017
What Habiba says:
Fast forward 10 years (after signing the Further Pledge) and now I really enjoy being part of the effective altruism community. Many of my close, best friends, and my colleagues are people that I’ve met through EA — and that all traces back to that first meeting about 80,000 Hours, and hearing about and signing the Further Pledge.
- Habiba Islam, member since 2011
Learn more about our members.
Our connections with effective altruism
Giving What We Can was one of the first organisations created with what would later be called 'effective altruism' in mind.
Giving What We Can is a project of the Effective Ventures Foundation (England and Wales registered charity number 1149828 and registered company number 07962181) with a registered 501(c)(3) Exempt Organization in the USA (Centre for Effective Altruism USA Inc., EIN 47-1988398).
Effective Ventures Foundation was previously called the Centre for Effective Altruism. Learn more about why the name was changed.
Learn more about effective altruism as a cause area, including other organisations that are associated with the movement.
Improve the world with us
If you want to help us help make the world better for all its inhabitants, for generations to come, you can: