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Fernando Martin-Gullans

Member Profile: Fernando Martin-Gullans

Fernando Martin-Gullans with Artists of Houston Ballet in Stanton Welch's In Good Company. Photo by Lawrence Elizabeth Knox (2021). Courtesy of Houston Ballet.



We recently spoke with Fernando Martin-Gullans, a professional ballet dancer from Houston, Texas. He shared how he was inspired to take the GWWC pledge after reflecting on what his "ideal self" would be like and told us about his visions for a better world. 

Tell us about yourself.  What keeps you busy and what makes you tick?

I'm currently a professional ballet dancer, so I spend a good portion of my week rehearsing, training, and performing. Besides that, I really enjoy reading and learning more about different topics, such as effective altruism, philosophy, economics, and history.

Tell us about your effective giving journey.

I stumbled across effective altruism (EA) after listening to a Sam Harris podcast episode with Toby Ord in the summer of 2019, in which they discussed 'existential risks' and briefly touched on the logic behind  EA. The idea seemed incredibly intuitive to me and felt like something I had been looking for for a long time. Hearing about EA on the podcast got me into reading more about ethics, particularly the works of Peter Singer, and led me to question a lot of the life decisions I had made up to that point — namely, the pursuit of financial wealth and independence above most else. Since then, I have taken the GWWC pledge, become an ethical vegan, and am now looking to transition careers into something more EA-aligned.

I am so privileged to have been born — through sheer luck — to loving, highly-educated parents in a developed nation, and I feel a responsibility to give back to those who have not been so lucky.

Why did you take the Giving What We Can pledge?

I took the Giving What We Can pledge because it’s what my “ideal self” would do. I think it’s useful to cultivate a vision of what your ideal self would be like — how they would act, how they would look, and how they would impact the world around them. When I thought deeply about this version of myself, there was not a doubt in my mind that he would dedicate a substantial amount of his time and resources towards having the most positive impact he could on the world.

What are the issues in the world that you care most deeply about?

There are several issues which I feel quite strongly about, such as ending factory farming, ending global poverty, eliminating preventable diseases, expanding the moral circle, improving epistemic processes, legal justice reform, improving political processes, and avoiding x-risks and s-risks (existential and suffering risks).

I think one of the greatest things about the pledge is that it is proportionate to your income. Therefore, if you find yourself having less income to give, you can give proportionally less. I, for example, am about to leave a financially secure job to pursue a more speculative venture, and my income will diminish to almost nothing in the short term. As a consequence, my pledged amount for this year will also decrease significantly. That's okay!

What suggestions do you have for other people considering the pledge?

1. Start where you are: no amount is too small. (Any effective giving is better than no effective giving.)

2. Increase your giving mindfully and sustainably; while it can be tempting to want to give more and more, one has to consider the long-term effects this might have. Sometimes giving a little less, but more sustainably, can have greater positive impacts in the long run. There have been years when I’ve been able to give as much as 30% and others where I give as little as the suggested minimum of 10%.

I would love to see a world in which tremendous suffering is a relic of the past: factory farming does not exist; all people have access to clean water, food, a roof over their head, and an education; we eradicate preventable diseases and continue to make headway on those currently thought to be incurable (including aging); we possess better epistemics and exercise greater reasoning; we expand our moral circle to include all sentient beings; we establish laws and governments which preserve and protect our interests and well-being; and we live forth in excellence far into the distant future.

Have any books, documentaries, articles, or studies significantly changed the way you see giving?

 by Will MacAskill is a great place to start if you want to learn more about how to have the greatest positive impact with your life. Beyond this, I would recommend most of Peter Singer’s works — specifically his book 

Have you found anything to be helpful in talking to people about effective giving?

I have found that starting with a truly basic statement that most people agree with, such as '”saving two lives is better than saving one life, all other things being equal” can be instrumental in getting people to understand some of the basics of the thinking behind effective giving.

I’ve also found that talking to others who are 

 motivated by effective giving has been extremely helpful to 

! It sounds simple, but joining a community of people who are all aligned in their desire to do good has been instrumental in empowering me to take on greater challenges in an attempt to make the world a better place. I highly recommend attending the EA monthly meetups, yearly events, etc.!

Are there any other concrete ways that Giving What We Can has helped you?

I feel a far greater sense of contribution and purpose having taken the GWWC pledge.

Shoutout to Luke and Grace and all the great work that they do!



" series, which profiles a selection of the Giving What We Can community. The Giving What We Can community is comprised of people from all walks of life, with different perspectives and motivations for giving – all united by their desire to make a significant commitment to use their income to effectively help others. 

-Read more 

 to help inspire others to give more, and more effectively.

For more information about Giving What We Can, we recommend you check out our 

Fernando Martin-Gullans, a professional ballet dancer from Houston, Texas., shares how cultivating a vision of what his "ideal self" would be like inspired him to take the GWWC pledge and tells us about the kind of world he'd like to see. 

Grace Adams

Announcement: Renaming of legal entity to Effective Ventures Foundation

Our parent organisation is in the process of changing its name to Effective Ventures Foundation (EV Foundation). This will mean that Giving What We Can will become a project of EV Foundation.

There will be no operational impact of this change but you may notice that the legal name of our entity is Effective Ventures Foundation when making donations through Giving What We Can.

We will continue to operate as Giving What We Can and our brand and mission will not change.

Why the change to Effective Ventures Foundation?

This change reflects the growing number of organisations and projects that were being operationally supported under the Centre for Effective Altruism.

The Centre for Effective Altruism will remain an active, separate organisation within EV Foundation and will continue to run projects like the EA Forum, EA Global conferences and virtual programs.

EV Foundation supports several organisations operationally including, Giving What We Can, 80,000 Hours, Longview Philanthropy, the Forethought Foundation and more.

Effective Ventures Foundation is now the name of the legal entity in the UK that used to be called The Centre for Effective Altruism.

The process to change the name of the US legal entity is still underway and will remain the Centre for Effective Altruism for the time being.


legal structure of Effective Ventures Foundation

What does this mean for how Giving What We Can operates and processes donations?

The renaming of our parent organisation does not reflect a change in how Giving What We Can operates.

There will be no changes to how your donations will be processed or how Giving What We Can is operated.

We intend to update all of our assets including our website in the coming weeks to ensure that the new name of our legal entity is reflected accurately.

If you have any further questions about how this may impact you, please contact us at community@givingwhatwecan.org

Rutger Bregman on Effective Giving: Interview with Effektiv Spenden

 in Germany recently interviewed bestselling author and Giving What We Can member, 

This interview is full of great quotes and insight from Rutger and is well worth reading in full.

Below are some highlights from the interview:

“Basti: So how did this decision to donate so generously come about?

Rutger: Well, actually, I think it all started with the realization that we, in rich countries, are very rich. Most people in rich countries have no idea just how rich they are. But, historically speaking and globally speaking, they’re very, very rich…we all know about inequality, but we usually think about it from a national perspective. Well, you know, the biggest inequality is international.”

“We all remember the Occupy Wall Street slogan about “We are the 99%”. And that may be true on a national level, but on a global level, we’re more like the 1%. And I think that gives us an enormous responsibility to do good.”

On the amazing opportunity we have to do good:

“So when we try to do good, we should ask ourselves, how do we use our limited time and resources? And because we live in such a crazy world with so much low hanging fruit, any individual from a very rich country can do an enormous amount of good. And by the way, the way I look at this is both from a perspective of obligation, I think we have a moral obligation to do this, to donate at least 10% of our income. But it’s also from a perspective of excitement. It’s just really awesome. It’s probably one of the most significant things we can do in our lives, right? Many of us have these boring jobs, right? We write reports that no one’s ever going to read. We send emails to people we don’t like, and then suddenly we realize that we’re in a situation where you actually can save other people’s lives. It is extraordinary!”

“But the thing is, the people I admire in history, they haven’t just been talking about how we need to change the system or whatever, but they’ve always also been doing it. I think it’s incredibly important to actually practice what you preach. There’s now this discussion going on amongst progressives and people on the left like, “Oh, we shouldn’t talk about individual change because that’s neo-liberal. We should all talk about system change”, but obviously we need to do both.”

"Of course, it’s also about the individual, because he knew that he would be much more convincing if he actually did what he preached. Because human behavior is contagious. We’re not individuals, we’re not lone atoms, but we influence each other all the time by our behavior. It’s just contagious. I think that giving can be like that as well. That’s why I think it’s important to be public about your giving, not to show off and you need to be a little bit careful there. But that’s also why I signed the Giving What We Can pledge to say. Look, people, if you like my work, this is what I find really important. And it has made a big difference in my life to donate at least 10% of my income to highly effective causes. And I think that actually, you know, as a best seller author, you can go a little bit higher than 10%, but 10% is a good place to start."

"Sometimes people can get the impression that, “Oh, so you know what all the effective causes out there, right? And you are very dogmatic about that.” That’s not the case at all. Effective altruism is a question. It’s not an answer. It’s all about continuously asking yourself the question, is this the best use of my time, resources and money? That’s what it’s really about. And I think intellectual humility is a really important value, and I think that’s also quite present in the movement."

Rutger donates to GiveWell’s recommended charities and also donates to the Effective Altruism Funds. You can donate to these charities and funds through 

 to donate to highly effective charities.

Photo of Rutger Bregman taken by Maartje ter Horst

Alana Horowitz Friedman

Counterfactual thinking is a useful tool that can help us make better decisions. In short, it is paying attention to that which won’t or didn’t happen as the result of our choices.

What Is Counterfactual Thinking? 

What is counterfactual thinking and why should you care about it?

Asking the right "what would happen if..." questions at the right times can help us make better decisions and maximise our impact. 

, the writers explore two possible realities: in one, the protagonist runs down the stairs to the train platform just in time to squeeze in through the sliding doors before they close; in the other, she narrowly misses her train, the sliding doors slamming shut in front of her.

This seemingly small change sets off two completely different storylines, both of which the audience gets to witness. Since it's a '90s film, the focus of the movie isn’t on the alternate realities so much as the romantic outcome: while it first seems like the protagonist will only find her soulmate in the case where she makes her train, it turns out that true love conquers time, space, and 

the different potential outcomes of making a different decision or taking a different action

(In this case, the counterfactual action was whether she caught the train.)

Of course, if life was a '90s film, perhaps we wouldn't have to worry so much about counterfactuals. We'd somehow end up in the 

reality no matter our actions, dancing to Ace of Bass and living it up poolside with the knowledge that a happily-ever-after was fated for all, one way or another.

is a useful tool that can help us make better decisions when contemplating aspects of life that are more within our control than whether we make or miss a train. For example, if you've ever asked yourself "what would have happened if..." questions like the ones below, you were likely exploring the counterfactuals of your choices.

I had stayed in that relationship instead of leaving?

I had accepted that high-profile position even though it required me to relocate?

 scenarios like these, most of us likely don’t use counterfactual thinking as much — or as strategically — as we could. And to be clear, this isn’t limited to exploring your own actions and it also doesn’t have to be done retroactively. By better understanding what it is and why it’s useful, we can add this important tool to our arsenal of methods for doing the most good we can.

Let’s begin by defining the term a bit more carefully.

We can understand the concept by splitting the word into two parts: 

 (the reality of what has occurred/will occur). For example, let’s say I decide to go swimming. A counterfactual of that choice is 

I can also break that down further. In the counterfactual world where I decide 

 to go swimming, I might stay indoors all afternoon (one possible counterfactual to going swimming) or I might go hiking (a second possible counterfactual to going swimming).

Let’s also mention a situation that doesn’t have to do with 

choices. A counterfactual to Candidate A winning an election, for example, might be that Candidate B wins, that Candidate C wins, or even that a political revolution occurs and the election becomes irrelevant.

In short, a counterfactual of a situation can be thought of as 

a possible alternative to what happened/will happen that runs counter to what actually occurred/will occur

Counterfactual thinking and effective altruism

 asks the question, “how can we do the 

 good?” and answering this requires some counterfactual thinking. That’s because, to attempt to estimate how to do the 

 good, we have to determine whether the outcomes of alternative actions might be better than those we’re currently considering.

Imagine that you know about an organisation that is focused on doing good — for example,  your local animal shelter or soup kitchen. You may feel inclined to support that organisation, and that’s a natural reaction. After all, when we know a particular action (in this case, donating money to an organisation you care about) is likely doing some good, continuing to do it probably seems like common sense.

But to have a better shot at maximising our impact, we really shouldn’t stop there. Counterfactual thinking reminds us not to 

 ask “is this action doing good?” but to ask “does this action do 

 good than something else I could be doing?” For some examples of how this can play out, check out our 

We can see this way of thinking in several core aspects of effective altruism, including:

Testing interventions before funding or pioneering them

When possible, interventions can be tested by examining the differences between groups that don’t receive any intervention (“control groups”) and those that do. This, in essence, explores the counterfactual of what would happen 

 the intervention, helping determine a) if progress occurs and b) whether there is a causal link between any observed progress and the intervention being tested. In other words, if we implement a program and notice some improvements, how confident can we be that those improvements happened 

Comparing related interventions helps explore whether the outcome of an alternative intervention (a counterfactual to the one you might be considering) is more impactful. To use the example above, we might ask: is donating to my local animal shelter or to an organisation like The Humane League (which focuses on farm animals) better at reducing animal suffering? According to 

, for every $1000 donated to Humane League corporate campaigns, approximately 100,000 farm animal lives are improved. In contrast, only around two cats or dogs can be rescued with a $1000 donation to a typical animal shelter rescue campaign.

Considering neglectedness and replaceability

The concepts of neglectedness and replaceability help us maximise our personal impact by focusing on causes and careers that truly need us. Determining what those are necessitates exploring a potential counterfactual of 

 taking a particular action — that someone else might do it anyway!

Let’s look at each of these in more detail.

, Will MacAskill (a co-founder of effective altruism and Giving What We Can) tells the story of 

, a charity that pioneered water pumps that also acted as merry-go-rounds. The idea was — on the surface — genius. The spinning of the pump (caused by children playing on the merry-go-round) would provide clean water for communities in lower-income countries, eliminating the hard work of pumping water manually while simultaneously providing entertainment for the children!

(Stock photo; for a more accurate image of a PlayPump, see the video below.)



It wasn’t until 1,800 PlayPumps had been installed, the charity had won a World Bank Development Marketplace Award, and several celebrities had jumped behind the cause, that independent reviews revealed some major issues. The pumps required constant force to work, which meant children didn’t really enjoy playing on them, so in many cases, the village women ended up having to manually push them instead. Worse, PlayPumps were harder to push and provided 

One of the lessons here is that good intentions and intuitions are often not enough to determine whether an intervention will be effective. That’s why 

testing interventions against a counterfactual 

is so important to effective altruism. Instead of assuming a predicted outcome will occur, an organisation can use randomised controlled trials to test their intuitions using a control group, which represents the counterfactual of what would have happened 

 the intervention (more on this below). If PlayPumps had been tested, it’s likely the well-intentioned founder would have poured his energy and resources into something that really made things better, instead of (arguably) worse.

Learn more about the PlayPumps story and what it teaches us about charitable giving in this great video from A Happier World.

Testing Interventions: Correlation is not causation!

what would happen without the intervention?”

 not only helps eliminate programs that may do more harm than good; it also helps explore a very tricky, and sometimes overlooked part of evaluating programs: 

If we observe progress after a particular event or action, it can be tempting to jump to the conclusion that this event/action 

 the progress to happen. However, it’s possible that this progress would still have happened 

 the suspected trigger. Even when progress seems to be related to a particular action — for example, a friend changing their mind on an issue after hearing your arguments — the connection between your arguments and their position change could be as spurious 

as the apparent correlation between swimming pool drownings and Nicholas Cage films!

 Perhaps it was a different experience altogether that swayed your friend from their position, and your conversation had very little effect.

In the case of evaluating programs that aim to do good, counterfactual thinking reminds us to be wary of putting too much weight on the progress we might see after an intervention is implemented, since observation alone is likely not enough to determine if the progress we’re seeing would have happened anyway. 

 (RCTs), however, provide a much stronger basis for determining cause. The charity evaluator GiveWell explains that since RCTs allow direct comparison between a treatment group (in which the intervention is implemented) and a control group (in which no intervention is implemented), “

it is generally presumed that any sufficiently large differences that emerge between the treatment and control groups were caused by the program


While many donors are content to fund any cause that’s doing good, those interested in effective giving believe we can maximise our impact by comparing charities and programs to find and fund those that do 

 good. Since there are so many problems in the world, and so much suffering, it stands to reason that — similar to triaging at an emergency room — we’d want to put our energies where they’ll have the biggest impact. Donors who prefer this approach are, in essence, considering the counterfactuals of their choices. For example, they might think something like: it’s true that by donating to most organisations, I will likely be doing 

 good. But what would happen if I made a different choice? Are there alternative choices that would allow me to do 

 page explores this topic in more depth.)

Evaluating neglectedness and replaceability

There’s another useful counterfactual to consider when making decisions: namely, that someone else may take the action you’re considering even if you don’t take it yourself. In other words, what are the 

We can better understand this by discussing one of the 

key criteria effective altruists use for determining which cause areas to work on

It’s tempting to get involved in the causes we hear about the most — the latest disaster dominating the media or the societal issues that most frequently come up in conversation. This results, though, in some causes having a “funding overhang,” meaning that there is more funding available than can be efficiently used — the infrastructure for 

resources.  In other words, an organisation is not as equipped to efficiently translate the influx of funding into tangible progress and cost-effective programs right away, increasing the chances that your money is waiting in a backlog instead of making an immediate difference. In this case, continuing to flood the cause with funds is likely not as useful (though it still may do good in 

) while sending physical goods, in some cases, can even do harm.

 is, in essence, exploring the counterfactual: 

what would others do if I didn’t work on/fund this particular cause?

 This can help us increase our impact by focusing on causes that aren’t getting much attention, and as such, may be more in need of resources.

Counterfactual thinking can also be used in the context of career decisions — to determine what would happen if you didn’t take a particular role. Would someone else better suited to the role take it on instead, thereby creating more impact that you could have? The organisation 80,000 Hours, which explores how to choose an impactful career, 

warns that this concept, termed “replaceability,” can be taken too far

 help highlight the importance of fit when deciding where to place your energies.

Adding counterfactual thinking to your impact toolbox

Blog

Member Profile: Fernando Martin-Gullans

Announcement: Renaming of legal entity to Effective Ventures Foundation

Rutger Bregman on Effective Giving: Interview with Effektiv Spenden

What is counterfactual thinking and why should you care about it?

August Newsletter 2022

Update to our recommended Global Health and Development charities

Joey Savoie: Making it easier for great charities to exist

Using expected value when donating to charity — and day-to-day

What We Owe The Future: A review and summary of what I learned

Simran Dhaliwal: Funding projects to save future generations at Longview Philanthropy