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Alexandra Heller

Member profile: Jo Duyvestyn

Jo Duyvestyn is a Research Assistant at the 

, a research program at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia. This not-for-profit aims to protect the global community from mosquito-borne diseases such as Zika, dengue, and chikungunya by introducing a bacteria that reduces the rate of viral replication in affected mosquitoes. After they are released into the wild, the mosquitoes with the bacteria reproduce with and replace the natural mosquito population.

While the bacteria appears to be effective, the World Mosquito Program doesn’t know exactly how it works. So Jo and her team are working to discover the mechanism behind the viral inhibition, and she’s happy with how her job aligns with her EA values.

Outside of work, Jo often uses ideas from 

 to put things in perspective. Reflecting on a particularly bad day, she writes: “My bike tire was flat, my drink bottle leaked in my bag, our house flooded in the weekend and is now very stinky… But on the bright side, I'm not blind, soon at least 10 other people won't be either [thanks to the work of organizations like 

], and I'm on track for the year with my Giving What We Can Pledge.”

I chatted with Jo to learn what drew her to take the Giving What We Can pledge, the issues she cares most about, and how she thinks about charitable giving.

I joined almost immediately after I learned about 

. I was doing some research into morality and ethics (which I had never delved into before) and I came across 

. That same day, I was talking to my boyfriend about it, and particularly about Giving What We Can because the idea stuck with me. I thought, “It makes so much sense, why doesn’t everyone do this?”

Having just started full-time work, I suddenly had this income that I never had before as a student, and though I was excited about that, it was clear to me I could live happily on less. I told him, “After I pay off my student loan, I’m going to take that pledge.” And almost at the same time, I realised that actually, that’s probably what everyone says — “After I do this, after I pay off the mortgage, after the kids are through school...” — so I pledged that same night. My involvement around EA grew from there.

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

I think inequality in the world is what motivates me, and is why I'm drawn towards global poverty charities. I just think it’s not right that we have all this money and others don’t and there’s no reason for it (maybe it’s a childish view of the world but maybe I just never accepted that grown-up mantra of "life is unfair, so get used to it"). I don’t understand how people can think it’s more important to have nice things than to be spending their time and money on reducing suffering that we all know exists. I know I'm not doing everything, that I could do more — and I’m learning to find my balance with that. But one of the things I struggle with is seeing people be so extravagant and wasteful when it comes to money, and not valuing it for what it could mean to someone else.

I like the idea of being more rational about my giving, and I’ve definitely done that since joining GWWC, though I think emotions still play into my cause area preference somewhat. In spite of all the very strong arguments and the knowledge that my brain can’t even comprehend all its biases, I still find it harder to care as much about suffering in the future knowing that there’s suffering now.

I guess the other thing that concerns me is that not everyone gets it, not everyone clicks to EA ideas like I did. As soon as I heard about EA, I said, “Oh, this makes so much sense, it’s so obvious.” I wish the whole world could think this way, or that I could understand the difference between people who don’t get EA and the ones that do.

How do you track your contributions vs. your income?

I make monthly recurring donations through 

, which is an organization here that lets us give tax-deductible donations to the top recommended GiveWell charities, and then I also make other donations. I started using MyGiving when it was on the Giving What We Can page, but now I’ve been keeping track of it myself.

My 10% comes directly out of my paycheck into a [bank account I've set aside for giving], and then I make donations from there. I do get motivated by talking to other Giving What We Can/EA members and discussing, “How close are you? Have you hit your 10%?”

. I give a large proportion there, letting them distribute funds as they see fit. I also give a percentage to CEA, and usually allocate a portion each year on things like Giving Games or as matching money for fundraisers that our local groups do.

I’ve occasionally thought about the savings I could have. There are a few articles online about giving now vs. giving later, but they pretty much say to give now. I’ve never really wished I had it for myself — psychologically I never see it as money that’s mine anyway and I know I couldn’t value it the same way as the people it ends up with. I guess also that giving part of my money away has made me more conscious of the money I do spend. I think I would have not been so aware of my spending without the giving. I don’t really buy new stuff anymore. It’s money that I never had so I don't ever see it as money that I need.

Do you ever talk to people outside of the EA community about EA?

I talked to my family first. They found it strange (maybe a little irresponsible, like shouldn’t I be saving for being a grown-up and getting a house or whatever?), but now my parents and my grandfather donate instead of giving me money and are really accepting, and I think they see the happiness I get from this community.

At the local EA group, we’ve had meetups about how to talk about EA. One of the things mentioned was, “You never really know the impact you have.” I've had people that I broached the subject with and felt they ignored it, but then the next year I got notified by 

 saying that those friends had donated nets for my birthday, or I got asked a question by someone about my advice on cause areas or where to donate. Despite the fact that I felt the conversation hadn’t had an impact, it had.

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

, I started researching more online, following blogs, reading 

, and though I can’t think of any pinpoint examples right now, I’m very certain they all impacted the way I think, like the framing of giving as an 

, I think because she has a really passionate and motivating way of really simply sharing all the key ideas of EA, an optimistic outlook.

I like podcast interviews, for example Sam Harris with 

). I don’t know how any of them specifically changed my behavior, but I know they all help coordinate or deepen my thoughts a little more.

, really helpful when I was new, and first wrapping my head around spending money when every $4 buys a malaria net. You just need to split your money into money for giving and money for yourself, and still let yourself have ice cream.

I think being a part of the EA community is really important in order to have people to talk to who have similar ideas. I’ve found the community has helped me shape some of my thoughts that weren’t fully articulated: when you talk to people, you can understand more about your own values. I found 

 events really valuable to attend the times I’ve been. I was a panelist last year and made good friends through that. I think that’s been pretty important for me to stay motivated with my pledge and keep up to date with EA stuff. Another thing that seems to come up, at least in our group, is being around other EAs is a way to not get frustrated by people who don’t get it. And I like being reminded that there’s emotional reasons that people are part of EA. There’s so much emphasis on the head part, and the rationality defines this movement, but we don’t need to be cold-hearted or robotic—what motivates people is the heart.

" series which profiles a selection of the Giving What We Can community. The Giving What We Can is a community 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 helping 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 

Member profile: Mathias Kirk Bonde

This profile is part of the "People of Giving What We Can" series by Alexandra Heller.

I’m a computer science student at Copenhagen University and work for IBM as a consultant.

I was introduced to Effective Altruism through 

 in eighth grade, about six or seven years ago. I interpreted it mostly as a wacky idea. “Helping other people, wouldn’t that be crazy?”, not giving it much further thought than that. Years later I began donating to AMF and by accident stumbled upon a Danish fundraiser on their webpage. That’s how I was introduced to the 

I decided to attend one of their events, and to my surprise I discovered there was an entire community of people who were keen on doing it seriously. I immediately felt at home. I spent the following year actively participating in their events and getting to know the international EA landscape. I took the pledge to signify for myself that I was serious about the community and wanted to dedicate myself fully to it.

There’s also a selfish motivation for doing it. Before joining the Effective Altruism movement, I would see all the suffering and injustice in the world, knowing that I was living in the wealthiest part of the world, had been given every opportunity one could ask for, and was doing nothing to help. “It’s just a drop in the ocean,” I would tell myself, riddled with guilt, because I deep down knew I wasn’t doing my part. When I started giving, that guilt completely disappeared. No TV or other purchase could make up for the peace I gained through giving.

I am currently donating most of it to the Effective Altruism Funds through the Giving What We Can 

 — that’s all the tracking that I need. I do my best to write in donations I make outside of EA Funds as well.

. I specifically decided that, while I can easily spend hours upon hours researching where to give, there are already people spending all their time on this. I put full trust into the people who have been managing them; I’ve met them at conferences and I sincerely believe they will do a better job than I will.

I value future and present life equally so I probably skew towards making sure that future humans exist in a world worth living in. But I also make sure I’m also giving to charities that are trying to do good now. If you stop caring about animal lives and global poverty, it’s going to be a hard sell to others that you’re doing the most good by donating your money to all these weird things that are not obviously important. I think it’s essential that we spend at least part of our donations on causes that anyone would find undoubtedly good.

Do you try to effect change in any other ways?

. We try to do outreach with the typical community-building stuff. If you convince even one person to join the cause, and she/he is as capable as yourself, you have effectively doubled your impact.

I am vegan, which is funny because I used to rather dislike vegans. But then I joined the Danish Effective Altruism community and basically every one of them were vegan. I thought, “There’s no way that every one of these people, whom I agree with on basically everything, happen to all be wrong on this.” The fact that animals suffer is hard to care about when you’re eating meat. You cannot eat meat and truly acknowledge the suffering you’re causing at the same time. It’s one or the other. Only months after quitting did my empathy for animals come to the surface.

Is there any change you most hope for in the world?

I’d really like to see a culture of niceness and giving in the West. In Danish society, it’s all too common to view oneself as the victim: “Maybe society is too capitalistic or maybe not capitalistic enough, but one thing is for certain—it’s definitely those other guys’ fault.” I’d like to see us adopt a mindset of cooperation and eagerness to help where we can rather than viewing ourselves as fighters against a perceived tyranny.

Have you ever talked to anyone about Giving What We Can?

Many times, but it’s not something I ever try to sell. It easily comes across as self-righteous. Instead it’s better to be a person who is successful and enjoying life; people will start wondering why. You can start by doing rather than telling. Telling people what they should do will not work. Pushing your values onto others only breeds resentment.

Looking apart from the typically recommended books, one book that I took much from is 

 by Ayn Rand. I think many people will find Ayn Rand’s idolization of the individual problematic. I mean, the villain is a guy who donates money to the poor and the hero is somebody who sabotages the construction of a low-income housing project. Not exactly EA stuff. But the book made it blatantly apparent to me how much time and energy I spent conforming to others’ worldviews. 

 helped me become my own person, rather than someone whose self-worth rests upon validation from others. If you have a nagging thought of “am I good enough?”, maybe this book is for you.

Stories of people suffering have also changed my perspective. It’s nice to say, “look, one million people die of this every year,” but I would never relate to it on a deeper level. Reading one person’s story of experiencing these terrible situations, that will inspire me to be a better person and help, while reading yet another set of statistics won’t inspire much action. Ideally statistics should be more meaningful than the story, but I’m not a perfectly rational person and I think pretending to be can lead you astray.

There’s no secret that the EA community is not that diverse, but there’s no reason it couldn’t be. Trying to put an emphasis on diversity could be really healthy. I don’t see why my parents couldn’t do Giving What We Can, yet they don’t. We could do a lot of good done by spreading it to people. You don’t have to be interested in the AI destruction of the world to be involved.

Member profile: Catherine Low

Catherine Low | People who give effectively

 in 2014, she thought, “There’s bound to be thousands of other Catherines out there who would make more of a difference if only they were to find EA.” So she began working to further the reach of EA, running 

. She also began teaching EA in her high school ethics classes. In 2018, she aspired to reach more students with the ideas of EA and left her teaching position to work on the 

 programme full time, delivering the programme to many schools in Canada and New Zealand.

I chatted with Catherine to discuss the Students for High-Impact Charity programme, how to talk to young people about effective altruism, and how she has stayed committed to giving despite changes to her income.

What inspired you to join Giving What We Can?

Rationally Speaking podcast episode with Peter Singer

. One of the podcast hosts and his wife decided to totally change their life based on reading Singer’s book. I just needed an example of someone doing that—that I can let an idea in a book change my life and that’s ok.

I feel like I care most deeply about animal suffering. To me it feels the most obvious moral crime that is occurring right now, so I feel quite motivated to try and help with that.

. I think their strategy for reducing animal suffering is really strong. I’ve also donated to the 

 because it looks like a very effective organization.

An Excel spreadsheet. I also do carbon offsetting separately, that’s not part of my 10%.

Has it ever felt challenging to give 10%?

At first it seemed a little weird: who just gives away thousands of dollars? But then it became normal. When I started to work on a nonprofit, it felt a bit harder, but I still felt overwhelmingly like I wanted to donate. It’s what I do now, and if a year went past and it was January and I hadn’t donated, it would feel wrong. I also looked at how to cut my expenses by more than 10%. I feel emotionally attached to donating now, I get warm fuzzies. If I have a really bad day, I donate to a charity because I felt really good about it. But I can’t do that every day because it would blow my donation budget. (laughs)

. We collect money and send it off to different charities. From that perspective, I just find it gleeful to see money coming into that bank account. When it’s time for the money to go out to the charities, I feel so good that it satisfies all my Scrooge-like tendencies. There are so many amazingly generous people giving each month, and it’s amazing to watch that.

You developed and taught workshops on effective altruism with Students for High-Impact Charity. What do those workshops look like?

The workshops cover ethical ideas and several different cause areas in an accessible and interactive way. Students then do a bit of cause prioritisation and discuss career ideas. There are lots of videos and discussions. The parts I enjoy teaching the most are the 

 activity, which can get pretty heated because the students get quite passionate when arguing for their favourite charity, and the section on how farmed animals are treated, because most of the students haven’t been exposed that much to factory farming images.

What do you find engages students most about effective altruism?

While I’d love to just talk about effective charities, talking about ineffective charities seems to be quite a shock for them — realizing that some organisations harm people. If they get duped into loving a charity that ends up being harmful, that’s quite effective in getting them engaged.

Do you have any suggestions for how to talk to young people about the ideas of altruism and ethics?

Bring up a lot of ideas and present arguments as “here’s an interesting argument” without making it clear what you think. Sometimes that can be hard, but try not to present it as truth—frame it as a philosophical discussion. Let them run with the ideas if they feel like it.

Can you share a story of a student you have worked with?

One of my students was going to be a doctor; she really wanted to help people. Through the course she realized that being a doctor in New Zealand wasn’t the most effective use of her career. She’s a good scientist and mathematician, so she’s now working on microbiology and hoping to work on big global health risks.

Where is the Students for High-Impact Charity programme now?

We tracked the students who took the programme and found that, while students during the course would say things like they wanted to stop eating animal products and change their career path, after a few months usually those changes wouldn’t really stick. Young people are influenced by everything around them, so while they might be influenced in the short term by the programme, long-term they might be influenced by other factors. So at the moment we’re winding down the programme.

Perhaps what’s needed is longer contact with the materials. If someone is interested in integrating the Students for High-Impact Charity materials into their curriculum, where could they find those?

, open. The resources are available there. And I can help anyone who wants to use those materials: just email me at 

Julia Wise

A new president of Giving What We Can

I’m writing to introduce myself as the new president of Giving What We Can. I take this role with gratitude to former presidents 

. Giving What We Can has been a very meaningful part of my life over the years, and I’m honored to be able to work on it in a fuller capacity.

As a refresher, GWWC was founded in 2009. In 2012, the Centre for Effective Altruism was founded as an umbrella organization for GWWC and its sister organization 80,000 Hours. In 2016, CEA 

 and one of the changes was that GWWC was incorporated as a project of CEA rather than operating as its own organization.

Since GWWC is a project of CEA, being the president means that I am the main person running this project. Sam Deere continues as Technical Director, Larissa Hesketh-Rowe as Marketing and Communications Specialist, and Jacob Hilton volunteering as Webmaster. Harri Besceli continues supporting local effective altruism groups, including Giving What We Can chapters. I continue to also serve as the Community Liaison at CEA, working to help the effective altruism community thrive. Michelle Hutchinson is now working to set up the Oxford Institute for Effective Altruism to strengthen effective altruism as an academic research field.

About me: I’ve known since I was young that I wanted giving to be an important part of my life, and I remember how relieved I was to discover Giving What We Can and finally meet other people thinking along the same lines. My husband and I took the Pledge together five years ago. We live near Boston, Massachusetts with our two young children. After working as a social worker in mental health, I joined CEA in 2015.

Some ways I’d like to develop GWWC over the coming months:

Updating information on the website to be more current

Updating the “How Rich Am I” calculator when the newest dataset comes out

Emphasizing the Pledge as something that is to be carefully considered and taken seriously, including directing people to 

 if they are not yet sure whether they want to make a long-term commitment

Meeting GWWC members in person at the upcoming 

Hosting office hours and talks at EA Global about what GWWC does and why; see my 

Thank you to all those who have made this community what it is! I’m excited to be moving forward with all of you. You can always reach me at 

 — please feel free to get in touch with any questions or suggestions.

Larissa Hesketh-Rowe

A successor to the Giving What We Can Trust

We’re in the process of moving the activities of the Giving What We Can Trust to a new platform to make it easier for donors to donate to a broader range of effective charities in one payment, track the donations they make and, for those in the UK and US, to donate tax deductibly in support of charities outside of the UK and US.

What is happening to the Giving What We Can Trust?

The Giving What We Can Trust was set up in 2013 to make it easier and more efficient for donors to support Giving What We Can’s recommended charities. It has proven to be a far more popular donation option than anticipated, and has received £4.5 million in donations from 3,500 donors. A huge thank you to everyone who has contributed to that.

In 2016, we at Giving What We Can merged our operations with our parent charity the Centre for Effective Altruism (CEA) in order to work more efficiently across the two organisations. We share accounting processes with the exception of the Trust and so both to improve the donor experience and reduce the administration costs on our end we’re now in the process of also moving the Trust’s functionality over to a new website and its legal and financial operations to CEA.

As of 6th April the charities that were supported by the Giving What We Can Trust were added to CEA’s new donation platform Effective Altruism (EA) Funds. Donors wishing to set up new donations to support these charities can do so in a similar way to before, by visiting 

 on our Effective Altruism Funds website. 

You can read more on Effective Altruism Funds below.

What does this mean for Trust donors with recurring donations?

We are currently seeking advice on transferring recurring donations that currently go to the Trust. The rules and procedures may vary depending upon what donation method a donor has used, so we will be reaching out individually to donors over the coming weeks to communicate how their donations will be affected and explain what options are available. Until then, recurring donations are continuing to be collected by the Trust and will be allocated as normal, according to the wishes of each donor.

The Giving What We Can Trust and Effective Altruism (EA) Funds

Those of you who have seen our previous update 

 will notice that EA Funds and the new version of the Giving What We Can Trust are both part of the same website. This website is something we had already begun working as a way to improve the donor experience for Trust users and make it easier for us to manage and track donations. When we had the idea for EA Funds it made sense to host it on the same site and further prioritise development of the website.

Blog

Member profile: Jo Duyvestyn

Member profile: Mathias Kirk Bonde

Member profile: Catherine Low

A new president of Giving What We Can

A successor to the Giving What We Can Trust

Looking back at the career of Professor Alan Fenwick

Introducing Effective Altruism Funds

Welcoming over 318 new members to the Giving What We Can community

How we talk about what donations will achieve

Spreading the word this July: Engaging friends with a Charity Giving Game