August news: New effective giving initiatives in the US, Europe and India

Hi and welcome to our August newsletter!

My name is Lucas, and I’m writing to you this month as Grace is taking some well-deserved leave. We wish her a restful break!

Today, I'm excited to share some news about a project I've been working on as part of my role as Effective Giving Global Coordinator and Incubator here at Giving What We Can. For the past 15 months, I've been supporting the global effective giving ecosystem and helping develop new effective giving initiatives (EGIs). Today, I want to tell you about some exciting developments in this space.

In May 2024, we partnered with Ambitious Impact (AIM) to incubate five new EGIs across different countries. These initiatives focus on raising awareness and channelling donations to some of the most cost-effective charities worldwide. The new EGIs include Ellis Impact in New York City, Benefficienza in Italy, Mieux Donner in France and French-speaking Switzerland, Effectief Geven in Belgium, and Impactful Giving in India. You can find out more about these new EGIs here. If you live in any of these regions and would like to get in touch with your local EGI, you can reach out via their contact information or website.

You might wonder, "Why do we need more EGIs when we have GWWC?" Great question! While GWWC has been incredibly successful globally, we’ve recognized an opportunity to help create and support new specialised organisations that can cater to specific demographics, regions, or approaches to giving.

This expansion of the effective giving ecosystem is a crucial step towards our goal of making giving effectively and significantly a cultural norm, since it allows for a diversification of approaches and the ability to tailor messaging to different audiences; in short, by helping to incubate and support new EGIs, we're creating more entry points for people to discover the stunning impact that we can all have through evidence-based giving.

Together, we're building a global community committed to making sure that our giving does as much good as possible! Lots of more great news below –

With gratitude,

Lucas & the Giving What We Can team

P.S. Speaking of new entry points into effective giving, have you seen Ali Abdaal’s new video about why he’s taken both the 10% Pledge and the Company Pledge? We’re thrilled that Ali felt motivated to share these ideas with his extensive network! (By the way, we had nothing to do with this video; Ali’s thoughts are entirely his own.)

P.P.S. A huge thank you to everyone who filled out the recent survey we ran to improve our understanding of what helps or hinders people from giving to effective charities and/or pledging. We have had responses from over 300 pledgers and almost 250 non-pledgers and will be in touch over the coming months with the results!

Motivations for Pledging

Here are some of our favourite responses from people who took a pledge last month:

What motivated you to take a pledge with Giving What We Can?

• I wish to see the world become a better place and want to contribute to that cause in a society where the wealth gap is continuing to grow and things are becoming more and more divisive. Kraze Kode from India
• In challenging personal circumstances, upholding one’s values is both necessary from the standpoint of personal integrity and serves as a source of strength. Hawk Yang from Canada
• As I progress into my 20s and beyond, I want to cultivate generosity as a habit as well as a key value. Making a commitment to doing good now puts me on the path of doing more good later. Tyler Stark from the United States

Upcoming Events

GWWC Meetup (Online): Interview with founder of Fair Fryer Tristan Makking: Fair Priced Doughnuts for Effective Giving

You can join online for this interactive interview with fair pricing and effective giving entrepreneur Tristan Makking, hosted by Tjeerd Dijkstra from Amsterdam-Netherlands. Tristan is the founder of the Dutch doughnut vendor Fair Fryer. He doesn’t only put time and effort into doing good, he also charges fair prices and donates effectively to invest in the future of the planet. This meet-up will be an open and interactive interview – join and ask Tristan whatever you’d like!

Please join by accepting this calendar invite and you’ll receive the link for the video call.

Thursday, 5th September 24 at 8 - 9.15 pm (CEST)

GWWC Sydney – Profit for Good: Driving Social Impact with Entrepreneurship and Philanthropy

Join us for an inspiring evening featuring innovative entrepreneurs and thoughtful philanthropists who are reshaping the business landscape. You’ll gain practical insights on building impactful businesses, strategies for effective giving, and networking opportunities with like-minded professionals. Whether you're an entrepreneur, investor, or professional interested in maximising your positive impact, this event is not to be missed!

Tickets are limited and previous events sold out. RSVP here!

Wednesday, 18th September at 5:30 - 8 pm AEST

Giving Green: How to Drive Systemic Change Via High-Impact Climate Donations

Giving Green is hosting an event at New York Climate Week on high-impact climate giving, featuring panellists from organisations such as the Good Food Institute. Giving Green’s Founder and Executive Director, Dr Dan Stein, will lead a panel discussion with leading changemakers in climate about the most promising philanthropic strategies and where more capital is needed to accelerate them.

You can join the evening of drinks and conversation to learn what the latest research says about how and where to donate to spur the systemic change we need to slow global warming. Register here.

Thursday, 26 September at 5 - 8 pm EDT

News & Updates

GWWC

• Giving What We Can is seeking a Senior Community and Growth Manager to lead the expansion of effective giving in Canada! As the Senior Community and Growth Manager (and first hire for GWWC in Canada), you will play a pivotal role in embedding and growing GWWC’s presence across the country [Role Closed].
• Giving What We Can will complete its spin-out from Effective Ventures on August 31st. We have already spun out from Effective Ventures US and will finalise the UK transition by the end of August. Read more here.
• We published a guest post from Nina Friedrich of High Impact Professionals on our blog. Read the post: “Turning Privilege into Effective Donations”
• In our 6th consecutive year of running charity elections to educate and empower high school students, 12 school events were organised with 3,519 participating students! The charities on the ballot this year were the Malaria Consortium SMC programme, the Animal Charity Evaluators Recommended Charity Fund, and the Lead Exposure Elimination Project. Some of our favourite reflections from participants are showcased below:

Charity Elections Participants Share Their Reflections

It makes me realise how much I can do for the world.

I realised it's a lot more cost-effective to help out than people assume.

The charity election helped me realise that I need to do more research so I can help [more] people.

It helps me feel like I am a part of a change that will make things better in the long term.

Community

• YouTuber and bestselling author of Feel Good Productivity Ali Abdaal recently took the Company Pledge, after taking the pledge as an individual back in 2019. He posted the following video about why he took the pledge (both as an individual and for his company), and why he thinks others should learn about the pledge too!

Cause areas

Animal Welfare

• The Humane League UK has released its 'State of the Chicken Industry Report' for 2024, entitled: 'Who's Selling You Frankenchickens?' The report names companies in the UK that are profiting from the use of cruelly-bred Frankenchickens and also provides a handy tool to check which supermarkets sell Frankenchickens.
• Animal Charity Evaluators (ACE) awarded $1,394,955 to its 2023 Recommended Charities this year through the ACE Recommended Charity Fund – its second-largest disbursement ever! ACE recently posted an update about how those organisations have used their grants to help animals around the world.
• The Good Food Institute (GFI)’s Alt Protein Project (a student-led movement) has expanded, adding 21 new chapters from 11 countries!

Global Health and Wellbeing

• GiveDirectly announced that Nick Allardice, former CEO of Change.org, will be GiveDirectly’s new President & CEO! Interim President Samuel Mwale has returned to his position on GiveDirectly’s Kenya Board of Directors. Read more about this appointment and the organisation’s ambitious plans for continued scaling on GiveDirectly’s blog.
• Rational Animations released a great video based on Max Roser’s classic article "The world is awful. The world is much better. The world can be much better."
• Teaching at the Right Level (TaRL) Africa took part in the 2024 Nigeria Foundational Literacy and Numeracy Conference where both government and partner organizations gathered to discuss Kaduna’s recently published Learning Poverty Report and discuss the current Teacher Professional Development program and different teaching methodologies, culminating in a concrete action plan for government and partners.

Global Catastrophic Risk Reduction

• An article about the industry response to California’s AI Safety bill was published in The Nation, with the tagline: “AI’s top industrialists say they want regulation—until someone tries to regulate them. Garrison Lovely, the author of the article, also published this post with additional context from past reporting and a commentary on the veto letter sent by eight Democratic California Members of Congress.
• The Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security announced last month the launch of the Tackling Rumors and Understanding & Strengthening Trust (TRUST) in Public Health website, which aims to better prepare public health professionals to address rumours and misinformation during public health emergencies and “tackle some of the most important issues we face today in public health preparedness—lack of trust and the spread of misleading information.”

Evaluators, grantmakers and incubators (and other opportunities)

• Ambitious Impact (AIM) has opened applications to its 2025 programs. You can now apply to their Charity Entrepreneurship Incubation Program and AIM Founding to Give until September 15th. To answer questions about each program, they'll hold two webinars:
  • Charity Entrepreneurship Incubation: Top Charity Ideas, 22nd August at 4 pm GMT+1) – register here.
  • AIM Founding to Give, 29th August at 4 pm GMT+1) – register here.
• AIM also announced the new incubated effective giving initiatives we wrote about in the introduction of this newsletter.
• Founders Pledge published a blog post and a video about “How philanthropy can drive systematic climate risk reduction,” explaining how systematic risk reduction, across political, technological and other risks, is a key unifying theme of the climate work you can support through the FP Climate Fund.
• Applications are open for the fall session of the Impact Accelerator Program with High Impact Professionals. The 6-week program begins October 28th and the deadline to apply is September 5th.
• The co-founders of Maternal Health Initiative (MHI) published this essay on why they decided to shut down MHI rather than continue investing in the project. They discovered their approach was not as effective as they had originally thought when they launched MHI through the Charity Entrepreneurship Incubation Program. We recommend reading this exploration of a potentially highly impactful shift in entrepreneurial culture!

We usually feature posts from our broader community of pledgers, but this month we wanted to share this significant milestone from Grace, Head of Marketing at GWWC! Check out her original post here.

Have any feedback on our newsletter or communications? Share your thoughts here.

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 Slack.
• Find more ways to get involved with Giving What We Can and effective giving.

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