BlogAugust Newsletter 2022
Blog post

August Newsletter 2022

Grace Adams
7 min read
26 Aug 2022

Hello and welcome to our August Newsletter!

August has been a big month for effective giving and Giving What We Can! We launched our new Longtermism Fund in partnership with Longview Philanthropy, GiveWell announced a change to its top charities and a new fund, and our co-founder William MacAskill released his new book, What We Owe The Future.

We’re seeking people to join our Ambassador Program; we’d love you to apply if you’d like to grow your advocacy for effective giving. A new tool to make volunteering with Giving What We Can easier has also been launched. Check out the tool to see what volunteering opportunities are available. They range from short tasks to longer engagements.

Apply to be an ambassador Volunteer with us

We also had our new Director of Research, Sjir Hoeijmakers, join our team this month. Sjir previously worked at Founders Pledge as a Senior Researcher. We’re excited for him to get started!

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The Longtermism Fund directs funding to highly effective organisations working to safeguard the long-term future of humanity. These organisations generally work to reduce the global catastrophic and existential risks that face humanity, though the fund also supports work that improves, promotes, and implements longtermist ideas.

You can read more about our reasoning behind starting this fund and donate to it now!

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Changes over at GiveWell and what this means for us

Earlier this month, GiveWell announced that it is changing the criteria for its top charities. As part of this change, it is raising its cost-effectiveness bar and lowering its risk tolerance.

The higher cost-effectiveness bar means that GiveDirectly is no longer listed as a GiveWell top charity,  and the change in confidence interval means that the deworming programs previously listed as GiveWell Top Charities are no longer listed. This does not, however, represent a change in GiveWell’s opinion of the cost effectiveness of these charities.

At Giving What We Can, we are updating our recommended charities in line with the changes from GiveWell, but still support GiveDirectly and the deworming programs from Evidence Action, The END Fund, Sightsavers and SCI Foundation on our donation platform.

Please read our update for further information about our response and to see responses from partner charities.

What We Owe The Future

William MacAskill’s new book was released in the US on the 16th of August and is being released in the UK on the 1st of September.

In his new book, What We Owe The Future, William makes the case for longtermism, the view that positively influencing the long-term future is a key moral priority of our time. See Giving What We Can researcher Michael Townsend’s review and summary of What We Owe The Future.

The Giving What We Can team is excited to see that the importance of safeguarding the long-term future is being shared with a wider audience. William has been interviewed on many prominent podcasts and media outlets including TIME magazine, The Tim Ferriss Show, The Ezra Klein Show, The Guardian and many more. These articles and podcasts are very accessible introductions to these ideas and super easy to share with friends, family, colleagues and anyone else you have in mind!

If you’d like to buy the book, you can do so on Amazon and most other places books are sold.

Until next time, keep doing good!

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

Newsletter audio summary

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Member Toby Stavely shared a great way to involve the whole family in giving decisions!

Attend An Event

Meetups

For both September meetups, we will be joined by Leah Edgerton, a freelance philanthropic advisor, who will talk a bit about what this entails, and is happy to answer any specific questions that people might have.

Americas/Oceania

Europe/Asia

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 different timezones each month.

Next Open Forum (Americas/Oceania)

New content from Giving What We Can

Blog

YouTube

Podcast

News & Updates

Effective altruism community

  • “Inside the Growing Movement to Do the Most Good Possible” - the cover story of Time magazine! This article about the effective altruism community features William MacAskill and was written by Naina Bajekal, an Executive Editor at Time who is a Giving What We Can pledger.
  • Kearny Capuano discusses how giving a personal TEDx talk at your university could engage and introduce more people to the principles behind effective altruism.
  • Julian Hazell shares why he believes direct work doesn’t substitute for – but rather complements – effective giving.
  • Centre for Effective Altruism has hired Shakeel Hashim as Head of Communications. This and other communications updates are discussed in a recent forum post about effectively responding to an uptick in effective altruism coverage/interest and coordinating long-term effective altruism communications strategies.
  • Will MacAskill announces the launch of his book and invites forum readers to ask him anything!

Evaluators, grantmakers and incubators

  • GiveWell announced changes to its top charity criteria and the creation of a new All Grants Fund giving opportunity.
  • GiveWell has launched GiveWell UK, a Charitable Incorporated Organisation in the United Kingdom and the official UK partner of GiveWell. Donors in the UK now have a tax-deductible option for giving directly to GiveWell, and GiveWell UK may claim Gift Aid on eligible donations.
  • GiveWell released its 2021 metrics report, highlighting a record $595 million in funds raised.
  • Giving What We Can and Longview Philanthropy announced the Longtermism Fund.
  • Animal Charity Evaluators’ top and standout charities shared updates on what they’ve been able to accomplish with ACE’s grant money.
  • Open Philanthropy is hiring for several roles, including a Recruiting Manager to lead its in-house recruiting team. It also put out a call for bilingual people interested in translating EA-related web content to languages other than English.
  • GiveWell is still hiring for several positions.

Cause areas

Animal welfare

  • Swiss citizens will vote in September on an initiative to ban factory farming in Switzerland. Sentience Politics, an EA-incubated organisation that EA Funds has supported, is one of the organisations responsible for launching the initiative.
  • Faunalytics is hosting a remote symposium on September 8th that will feature 10-minute presentations of original animal advocacy research related to farmed animals, companion animals, wild animals, and animals used in science. Register and get more information.

Global health and development

Long-term future

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

Useful Links

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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.