Stay up to date with Giving What We Can's blog. Featuring the latest news about our community, how to donate effectively, charity evaluation, community events and more!

Blog

Giving What We Can's blog, featuring the latest news from our community.

Donate

Pledge

footerNavigation

About us

Contact us

Our team

Our values

Our members

Our events

Transparency

Our mistakes

Our impact

Donate to Giving What We Can

Careers

Leave feedback or make a complaint

About

Our best charities

Take a giving pledge

Get involved

Make a bequest

Videos, books, podcasts

FAQs

Learn more

Press kit

Media coverage

Case studies: People who pledge to give

Media

Footer Navigation

Make your donation go further this Giving Season

topNavigation

Our research team’s 2026 recommendations

How we choose which charities to recommend

Other places to donate

Create a fundraiser

Best charities

The 10% Pledge

The Trial Pledge

Pledging vs. donating

View all pledgers

Share your pledge to inspire others

Giving pledges

About our research

Browse our guides and resources

Connect with our community

Read our blog

Help others discover effective giving

Research and resources

Who we are & what we do

Our structure

Mistakes

Top Navigation

Alexandra Heller

Member profile: Catherine Low

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

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.

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

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.

How do you track your contributions vs. your income?

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 

" 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 

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.

Effective Altruism (EA) Funds is an alternative way for donors to donate effectively through philanthropic funds. Currently, these funds are managed by staff at the Open Philanthropy Project who have experience in finding promising donation opportunities and inside knowledge of where the funding gaps ares. We currently believe this is the best option for many donors as it allows them to benefit from the 

section 3. Strong track record for finding high-leverage giving opportunities

). We’ve also written a bit about why we believe this is likely to be 

more effective than donating to individual charities

You can read more about why we set up these funds in 

However we also discuss in the same article 

reasons why you might choose not to donate to EA Funds

. Donors that have different values to our current fund managers, do not trust the current fund managers or are more risk averse might prefer to donate to individual charities themselves. In line with the old version of the Giving What We Can Trust, donors can still set up donations to individual charities on the 

. For now, any donations to the old Trust which donors have allocated according to Giving What We Can’s recommendations will continue to GiveWell top charities because of the restrictions on where the Trust is allowed to grant.

There are a number of reasons why we find consolidating the Trust activities with CEA and moving everything to a new website desirable.

Given the popularity of the Trust and the fact that many Giving What We Can members donate to a wide range of organisations, not just those in global development, we thought it would be useful to donors to have one place where they could make all of their donations. The Trust's charitable objects, however, only allow for donations to organisations working on global poverty. CEA’s objects are broader and allow it to make grants to a wider range of organisations (including, for example, charities which benefit animals, or combat climate change).

2) Making it easier to measure our impact

We’re also working on functionality to link your donations up to a new version of My Giving. Tracking actual donations (rather than self reported ones) in one place makes it much easier for us to see what donations we are influencing and makes it easier for you to keep a record of your donations. Any donation information recorded in the current version of My Giving will be carried over to the new version when it’s ready.

3) New functionality and reduced administration costs

While the website is new and still a work in progress, once it is finished it will provide a lot more flexibility for users to make, edit and track donations. By consolidating all of the donations we process into one platform and one legal entity in this way, we are also able to concentrate our work on one website. This also means we’ll no longer have to duplicate financial and administration work between two different donation platforms, reducing the total administration costs.

Previously we had thought donors might prefer to give if the platform was a distinct legal entity from Giving What We Can, which is why the Trust was set up as a charity in its own right, separate from Giving What We Can. However, in practice few donors make the distinction between the Giving What We Can Trust and Giving What We Can, and so the separation has been confusing rather than useful. In addition, while the Giving What We Can Trust is a separate legal entity to the Centre for Effective Altruism, all the Trustees of the Trust are employees of the Centre for Effective Altruism and the latter legally controls the former, making the separation all the more confusing.

We’ll be sharing more updates with Giving What We Can Members and supporters as we finalise the process for moving donations and add new features to Effective Altruism (EA) Funds.

If you want to donate to some of the most effective individual charities out there you can do so by going to 

 on the Effective Altruism (EA) Funds website and selecting the charities you want to support.

Anyone with recurring donations to the Giving What We Can Trust will hear from us when we have confirmed our options for transferring these. In the meantime your donations are being processed as normal.

We hope this clarifies the current changes that are taking place with the Giving What We Can Trust. Of course, if you have any questions please feel free to email me (

Equally, if you have any feedback about the Effective Altruism (EA) Funds website please reach out to us.

Bernadette Young

Looking back at the career of Professor Alan Fenwick

Last week I was able to attend a lecture marking the retirement of Professor Alan Fenwick, Director of the Schistosomiasis Institute. It was a fascinating insight into both a remarkable endeavour and a remarkable man, which I want to share with the Giving What We Can community. A huge thank you to Alan for the lecture and for providing the images in this post for me to use.

Professor Fenwick treated us to a retrospective of a career spanning five decades, which took him from a Chemistry degree to spearheading the campaign to eradicate a terrible disease. 

When he joined the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine to do a PhD, it was with the aim of developing a molluscicide to kill the snails that are the intermediate hosts for the schistosome. This work took him to the field in Arusha, developing pesticides with the Tropical Pesticide Research Institute, and to Sudan with the Wellcome Trust, collaborating with teams working on malaria control. It was here (between mountwaain climbing, golf, writing pantos, playing cricket and Scottish dancing) in 1977 that they conducted trials of a new agent – Praziquantel. It was only 40 years ago that we first we had an effective treatment for schistosomiasis!

After leaving Sudan, Prof Fenwick became chief of party for a group charged with eliminating schistosomiasis as a health problem in Egypt. It is astonishing to see the prevalence of this disease plotted over time – from over 35% in 1983, and down by an order of magnitude to less than 2% at the end of his time there (and less than 0.5% in 2010). I think sometimes we lose sight of what a tremendous achievement it is to take a disease affecting literally 1 in 3 people and make it rare in the course of a lifetime.

At the end of his time in Egypt, Prof Fenwick acknowledges he probably could have retired. Instead, he turned his expertise, eminence and a lifetime of connections to do more good. He sought a grant from the Gates Foundation to work on schistosomiasis elsewhere. A modest request for $50 million was unfortunately turned down, but when a meagre $34 million was offered, Prof Fenwick “reluctantly agreed” and founded the 

Here we heard just what a unique and remarkable position he was in to do this work. He made contact with Dr Narcis Kabatereine, who many years ago had introduced himself at a meeting as “the Ugandan schistosomiasis control officer, with no budget”. I can’t do justice to the story of their search for the Minister of Health, whose agreement was critical to release the funding for treatment, but in telling the story, Prof Fenwick gave some demonstration of why he has been such a successful organizer and fundraiser, as well as evidence of the value of playing golf. Together with Dr Kabatereine, SCI developed a national program to eradicate schistosomiasis in Uganda, and Dr Kabatereine remains an adviser to SCI on African capacity building.

Prof Fenwick acknowledged the immense contribution of the pharmaceutical industry to global health and the control of neglected tropical diseases. Merck KGaA committed 20 million tablets of praziquantel per year in 2007: that donation has now reached 250 million tablets a year. GSK and Johnson & Johnson are likewise donating hundreds of millions of tablets a year. This is both an incredible gift, and a challenge. The safe and effective distribution of these treatments is an enormous undertaking.

About half of SCI’s work in distributing these treatments is funded by large government grants. Individual donors fund the remainder. It is here that our histories meet: Prof Fenwick describes a meeting with “some Oxford philosophers who were interested in cost effective giving”, and it wasn’t much later he was attending the launch of Giving What We Can in 2009. Since then, SCI has benefited from a ‘new wave of donors’, who cite GWWC, Givewell and The Life You Can Save as their sources. Good Ventures, the ENDFUND and some very generous individual donors have also made a huge difference to the operational capacity of SCI, as we can see in a map showing the earliest mass deworming operations (in blue), their next expansion (in red) and current coverage (red, blue and green). Bear in mind that in 2002, in Africa only Egypt had a schistosomiasis control programme.

Prof Fenwick is modest about his contributions, as evidenced by mention of his OBE – which he deprecatingly describes as recognition of “Other Buggers’ Efforts. But it’s clear he has led a charge to drastically change the impact of an actual scourge. It was clear from the pictures he posted throughout that the face of this work has changed over 50 years. The team taking over the reins, who will be the new champions of Neglected Tropical Diseases. Afterwards, I had a chance to talk to Dr Sarah Nogaro, a SCI programme manager working with both established distribution programme in Burundi, and new programmes in Madagascar. I left with a real sense of optimism: these are experts guiding local action, supporting locally led deworming. They have passion, and a huge commitment to the work they are doing.

A moment that stuck with me was Prof Fenwick’s remark, in acknowledging his mentors, that “everybody has somebody in their life without whom they would never get where they are going”. Mostly, we get to have that kind of impact on just a few people. But disease can stop people from getting anywhere. There are millions of people who, without the work of SCI and the funding of its supporters, would probably not have been treated for worms, and whose progress has been forever changed. What an utterly outstanding project to be a part of, and what an extraordinary man it is, who has given so much to that project.

We wish him every joy in a well-earned retirement.

Introducing Effective Altruism Funds

An explanation of EA Funds and why it may be a more effective donation option for many individuals.

 (which runs Giving What We Can) has launched 

. We think this could be a more effective option for many individual donors, so we are now recommending this to our members. We have also added it to our 

Effective Altruism Funds allows individuals to pool their donations with others from across the community to help individual give more effectively. Donors can contribute to four different funds that represent areas that are important (affect a lot of people or animals), tractable (have good evidence of what works best) and neglected (not enough people are supporting that area). Each Fund is managed by an expert (currently including staff from 

) who we believe has extensive knowledge of that area.

 managed by Elie Hassenfeld from GiveWell 

 managed by Lewis Bollard from the Open Philanthropy Project 

 managed by Nick Beckstead from the Open Philanthropy Project 

Given the success of Effective Altruism Funds so far we may expand the funds to cover other important and effective areas if there is sufficient interest. If you have an idea for a fund or a Fund Manager, please fill out 

What might Effective Altruism Funds be more effective than your alternatives?

Below are four arguments for why Effective Altruism Funds might be higher impact than the alternatives available to many donors.

1. Donations to EA Funds may be at least as good as the Open Philanthropy Project’s last dollar

Donations to Effective Altruism Funds could be at least as good as the Open Philanthropy Project’s last dollar in the following three ways:

a) Providing a funding stream for more unusual, risky or time-sensitive projects, particularly where the Open Philanthropy Project might have brand-risk concerns

While the Open Philanthropy Project’s program officers have considerable freedom in their grant making, there may be additional giving opportunities that are not a good fit for the Open Philanthropy Project. Effective Altruism Funds gives Fund Managers a pool of funding they can make grants from with more brand separation from Open Phil, possibly allowing them to take greater risks. Fund Managers might also encounter giving opportunities that are particularly time-sensitive, or very small, where the need to go through management is prohibitive.

b) Providing additional funding to organisations where the Open Philanthropy Project already provides a high proportion of total funding.

The Open Philanthropy Project currently tries to set an upper limit on the proportion of a charity’s budget they will provide so that no charity becomes overly dependent on money from them. If Effective Altruism Funds generates recurring donations from a large number of donors then the Fund Managers may be able to use this money to fully fund an organisation already identified because they will be using funding from a broad range of donors rather than just relying on funding from the Open Philanthropy Project. This would save the charity from spending additional time raising funds from many small donors individually while still providing a diverse range of funders. We are not confident that this does not leave charities still too reliant on the Open Philanthropy Project however so this reason in favour of the funds holds less weight and is something we will review.

c) Trading off against the Open Philanthropy Project is a very good worst-case-scenario

It could be that Fund Managers are unable to find any more promising opportunities, and donations through Effective Altruism Funds and so money from the funds just swapped with money that would have been donated by the Open Philanthropy Project anyway. However, this might not necessarily be a bad thing. If this happened it would mean that your donation is at least as good as the Open Philanthropy Project’s last dollar. As Carl explains:

In principle one could donate to the donor-advised fund (DAF) of Open Phil, directly increasing its ultimate donation capacity. At the moment, this doesn't seem to be set up, but one could instead donate to something that Open Phil is donating to (inframarginal), and request that it 'funge' you by reducing its own donation to that charity by the corresponding amount, increasing the reserves of Good Ventures and other Open Phil backers accordingly. So the marginal Open Phil/Good Ventures dollar sets a minimum standard for risk-neutral donors: if you don't expect to do better than Open Phil, just arrange to get 'funged'.

To determine whether trading off with Open Phil is better or worse than the alternative we need to know how good Open Phil’s last dollar would be.

Open Phil’s current view on the value of their last dollar is:

”... On balance, our very tentative, unstable guess is that the “last dollar” has higher expected value than gifts to GiveWell’s top charities today.”

Thus, it seems quite plausible (although uncertain) that trading off with the Open Philanthropy Project is higher impact than the current alternative of donating to GiveWell-recommended charities.

2. Donating via Effective Altruism Funds may provide more value through specialisation and comparative advantage

Effective Altruism Funds allows individual donors to pool their donations with others who share their worldview and values, then delegate some of the research and decision-making to people who are likely to be best at this. To make an effective donation, currently individual donors must try to answer all of the following questions, given their values:

Which interventions are likely to make progress in solving the problem?

Which charities executing those interventions are most effective?

Which charities have a funding gap that is unlikely to be filled elsewhere?

Time spent answering these questions is time not spent doing other worthwhile activities. Donating to Effective Altruism Funds means you can spend time deciding which cause areas you value (the main question where differences in world-view or personal values may lead to the biggest differences in donation targets) but delegate the other decisions to an expert.

This is particularly important as questions (3) and (4) require timely information and knowledge of other funders’ intentions. Program Officers at major foundations have a particular comparative advantage at answering (2) and (3) since they spend virtually all of their working time thinking about how to allocate money to achieve the most good in any given cause area. These people are also particularly well suited to answer (4) as they have up-to-the-minute information about the largest funder in the space.

3. Strong track record for finding high-leverage giving opportunities: the EA Giving Group DAF

The Long-Term Future and Effective Altruism Community funds are currently managed by Nick Beckstead, a Program Officer at the Open Philanthropy Project who has helped advise a large private donor on donation opportunities for several years. The fund Nick manages was an early funder of CSER, FLI, Charity Entrepreneurship and Founder’s Pledge.

We think this represents a strong track record although the Open Philanthropy Project’s recent involvement in these areas may make it harder to find unfunded, promising opportunities in these areas in the future.

4.Possible long-term benefits of Effective Altruism Funds

As well as the increasing the effectiveness of individuals’ donations in the short term, we believe that the existence of, and further development of Effective Altruism Funds, might have significant longer-term benefits including:

a) Exploration of new funding opportunities

 Long term Effective Altruism Funds might increase the incentives for researchers to explore new areas for potential donations. This would be both because the Effective Altruism Funds would cause money to be available for allocation based on the research and because in the future we hope to encourage new Fund Managers to create new funds with different focus areas than the current options.

b) Acting as a training ground for new Effective Altruism researchers

 A future version of Effective Altruism Funds might also have a lower barrier to entry than, say, getting a job as a Program Officer at the Open Philanthropy Project. This would allow more people to try out in-depth charity research to see if they should specialize in it. It also provides a clear feedback mechanism for this kind of research, namely, whether the Effective Altruism community chooses to donate to your fund.

, it might be possible in the future to use the Effective Altruism Funds infrastructure to initiate a number of interesting, related projects. Two examples are moral trades and coordinating donor lotteries.

There are likely other interesting experiments that can be conducted with the donation infrastructure required for Effective Altruism Funds if it grows in size.

Why not donate directly to top charities?

Blog

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

What’s so special about GiveDirectly’s basic income pilot?

Using aid to finance the refugee crisis: a worrying trend