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Eric Arellano 

10% Pledger Eric Arellano discusses the challenge — and necessity —  of balancing impact with personal goals.

Recalibrating for sustainable giving

 after an unexpected move from Mexico to New York, due to cost of living and other factors). This year, I'm giving 10%.

In this blog, I share the existential crises that led me to recalibrate how much I donate. I conclude with how I found a more sustainable framework by shifting from the principle of "each starfish matters" to "help the starfish I can."

Disclaimer: I recognize my immense privilege to make these decisions. I am not trying to compare; each person's situation is unique. Rather, I am sharing in the hope that this is insightful to others.

 past two years, one of my six guiding principles has been the phrase "each starfish matters." While I know I can't throw back every starfish, I remain convinced there are 

 for an individual donor to impact problems like factory farming and global poverty.

Indeed, it has been uplifting to see how far strategic donations can go. For example, $1000 USD can 

cover a full year of expenses for a household living in extreme poverty

. My donations the past few years have brought me meaning, reduced my eco-anxiety and my sense of futility around factory farming, and meaningfully made the world kinder.

Moral Saints, disillusion, and career anxiety

Despite believing my donations were impactful, three factors converged in the past year to make me adjust my giving:

An existential crisis from re-evaluating my decision not to have kids.

I had originally decided not to have kids in large part because of the effect on my career and my personal impact. Surrogacy as a gay person costs $100k+, raising a kid in the U.S. now costs on average 

, and raising kids would mean I would have less time for my career.

However, last year, I decided to challenge my assumptions around money and impact. After giving myself permission to do so, I felt intense baby fever.

While navigating my confusion, I encountered Susan Wolf's essay 

, in which she argues that a life primarily optimized for impact leaves little room for the experiences that make life worth living. For example, she questions lines of thinking like: “time and money spent going to the theatre could have gone towards anti-malaria bed nets.” Was this me with not having kids?

I eventually concluded that I should not let impact be the reason I deny myself kids. Rather, I should build the life I want, then let impact follow. I deserve to pursue my dreams for my own inherent dignity. Likewise, excessive self-denial is a recipe for burnout.

 Feeling disillusioned about the state of the world.

The U.S. 2024 election shook my worldview: 2016 was not a fluke, and the majority of voting Americans want a world contrary to my values.

Overshoot: How the World Surrendered to Climate Breakdown

: the Paris Agreement plan is to exceed 1.5°C, then use future technology like carbon removal to get us back down to a safer number, even though that technology does not exist!

While I know that stopping even a tenth of a degree of global warming dramatically impacts our future, the election and trajectory of climate change challenged my sense of agency.

In my personal life, I discovered some people important to me remain much more homophobic than I had thought. Their rejection made me recalibrate how much people change.

Artificial intelligence and the risk of automation spooked me: maybe my career as a software engineer was more at risk than I thought? Regardless of AI, having to relocate to the U.S. unexpectedly made me internalize that any job is impermanent.

While I am now less worried about AI—and I trust in my resilience—I value financial security more than before.

These factors converged to shift my experience of giving from joy to obligation. Earlier, donations felt like an incredible opportunity to improve the world at little cost to me. Later, donations started to feel like a barrier to my own dreams and security, within the context of a world that often refuses to sacrifice.

I felt deeply conflicted when donations started feeling less joyful:

"Now is the most critical decade to address climate change!"

"This is values drift: the very thing I was worried about!"

I finally felt clarity when shifting from "each starfish matters" to "help the starfish I can." Each starfish does matter! But I should also honor that I am human and have limits. I can make a meaningful difference without assuming the full burden of the world.

This reframe of "help the starfish I can" led me to:

Identify my dream career: pro-bono software engineering projects for nonprofits, based on how much I've loved the past four years of volunteering.

Even though donating 10% slows down my financial goals, it’s worth it for the good it does. Regular giving also provides me an antidote to disillusionment; even though much is indeed out of my control, my contributions matter to the individuals  they reach.

While I still plan to live a relatively frugal life, I’m increasing my expenses by around 25% to pursue a part-time master's degree and to move closer to work and friends. I'm also saving for partial 

 with the goal to have more freedom to pursue the things that feel important — whether that's working full time on pro-bono projects, working part-time so I can volunteer more, or being able to spend more time with my kids, if I decide to have them. Meanwhile, I'm using my new free time for two new volunteer projects.

With these changes, donations have shifted back from feeling like an obligation to bringing me joy. Giving myself permission—as a 28-year-old—to balance my own life goals with making a difference in the world gives me more confidence I can sustain both for decades to come.

Eric Arellano is a software engineer at IBM Quantum focused on ending factory farming and mitigating climate change through effective giving and volunteering. Eric first became interested in impact when, at 13 years old, their youth pastor challenged them not to wait to be adults to improve the world. This led Eric to found a nonprofit that raised $30,000 for clean water wells in Ghana. Eric's happy place is farmed animal sanctuaries, showing that a kinder world is possible.

GWWC Team

Giving What We Can announces its plans for 2025 and beyond. 

Announcing our 2025 strategy

We are excited to share a summary of our 2025 strategy, which builds on our work in 2024 and provides a vision through 2027 and beyond!

 (GWWC) is working towards a world without preventable suffering or existential risk, where everyone is able to flourish. We do this by making giving effectively and significantly a cultural norm.

 we have made our pledges – and in particular the 🔸

 We know the 🔸10% Pledge is a powerful institution, as we’ve seen almost 10,000 people take it and give nearly $50M USD to high-impact charities annually. We believe it could become a norm among at least the richest 1% — and likely a much wider segment of the population — which would cumulatively direct an enormous quantity of financial resources towards tackling the world’s most pressing problems.

We initiated this focus on pledges in early 2024, and are doubling down on it in 2025. In line with this, we are 

 we were previously running and which are not consistent with our new strategy.

 (BHAG) of 1 million pledgers donating $3B USD to high-impact charities annually, which we will start working towards in 2025.

1 million pledgers donating $3B USD to high-impact charities annually would be roughly equivalent to ~100x GWWC’s current scale, and could be achieved by 1% of the world’s richest 1% pledging and giving effectively. Achieving this would imply the equivalent of nearly 

Over the coming years, we expect to test various growth pathways and interventions that could get us to our BHAG, including digital marketing, partnerships with aligned organisations, community advocacy, media/PR, and direct outreach to potential pledgers. We think it’s likely that multiple of them will be needed to achieve our ambitious goal and that they will complement and strengthen each other if implemented well. Hence, rather than selecting only one or two interventions and doubling down, over the next few years we will iteratively build GWWC’s capacity to excel at various growth interventions to convert new audiences.

By the end of 2027, we aim to have built a portfolio of mutually reinforcing scalable pledge growth engines, and to have doubled our current pledge community.

Laying the foundations for scalable growth

To build such a portfolio, GWWC needs highly capable growth and operational divisions. In 2025, we will lay these foundations.

This includes recruiting top-tier Chief Operating and Chief Growth Officers with experience scaling similar products and organisations; preparing our operational, governance and grantmaking systems for scale; and improving our understanding of pledge funnels and target audiences.

We will also test various new pledge growth interventions, improving and expanding on our existing portfolio.

Last but not least, we will put in place tracking and guardrails to ensure we “scale responsibly”: maintaining the quality of the pledge in terms of pledgers giving effectively and significantly, and staying true to effective giving principles and our 

 last year, but we’re only at the start of our journey: with our renewed pledge focus and BHAG, we’re looking to grow our annual impact 100-fold and make significant progress towards a world without preventable suffering or existential risk, where everyone is able to flourish.

Why 1M pledgers rather than just an amount raised? 

We could have chosen a $3B USD donated effectively as our sole BHAG, but we have intentionally included the 1M pledger number since our mission is to make effective giving a 

 (with expected associated longer-term benefits), and to not solely to raise a lot of money for high-impact charities in the short term or among a small group of people.

Who are we counting as a “pledger” towards our 1M goal? 

In this case, we are defining “pledger” as someone who has taken 

this includes anyone who has taken the 10% Pledge, Trial Pledge, Further Pledge, Company Pledge, or any other pledge(s) we might launch. Currently, our 10% Pledge makes up >80% of our pledges and pledge donations, and our hypothesis is that it’s the most promising path to scaling our impact, but this is something we intend to keep questioning.

 Very roughly, we define these as “among the highest-impact donation options by some plausible worldview”. Importantly, this leaves room to include highly effective donation options that are outside GWWC’s recommendations and/or aren’t in line with the worldviews of the GWWC team. As part of our regular impact evaluation, the GWWC research team determines the bar for what qualifies here and reports on associated estimates.

Announcing our 2025 strategy 

Here are the 10 initiatives we've decided to shelve and how you might carry them forward. 

GWWC is retiring 10 initiatives 

In our recent strategy retreat, the GWWC Leadership Team recognised that by spreading our limited resources across too many projects, we are unable to deliver the level of excellence and impact that our mission demands.

True to our value of being mission accountable, we've therefore made the difficult but necessary decision to discontinue a total of 10 initiatives. By focusing our energy on fewer, more strategically aligned initiatives, we think we’ll be more likely to ultimately achieve our Big Hairy Audacious Goal of 1 million pledgers donating $3B USD to high-impact charities annually. (

We’d like to be transparent about the choices we made, both to hold ourselves accountable and so other organisations can take the gaps we leave into account when planning their work. As such, this post aims to:

Inform the broader community about changes to projects & highlight opportunities to carry these projects forward

Provide timelines for project transitions

Explain our rationale for discontinuing certain initiatives

Effective Altruism Australia funding partnership

Effective Giving Meta evaluation and grantmaking

Each of these is detailed in the sections below, with timelines and transition plans where applicable.

We still believe in the impact potential of many of these projects. Our decision doesn’t necessarily reflect their lack of value, but rather our need to focus at this juncture of GWWC's development.

Thus, we are actively looking for organisations and individuals interested in taking on some of these projects.

 If that’s you, please do reach out: see each project's section for specific contact details.

Thank you for your continued support as we work toward a world where giving significantly and effectively is a cultural norm!

Giving What We Can Canada is one of GWWC’s 

—a legal entity through which GWWC operates. It was established to enable Canadians to contribute to high-impact causes through 

 while receiving tax benefits available to Canadian donors.

 has evolved to focus on pledge-based global and US/UK (our largest “markets”) engagement rather than other country-specific operations. We do not anticipate conducting localised effective giving community building beyond the US and UK in the near future, which has led to our decision to either wind down, hand over or make dormant the Canadian entity (see below).

While facilitating tax-efficient donations to high-impact programmes remains important to us, we also recognise that pledgers and other effective givers can donate tax-efficiently outside of the GWWC platform through 

other effective giving fundraising organisations

, or directly to registered Canadian charities delivering high-impact programmes, such as the 

Project standing prior to discontinuation

GWWC Canada is in the advanced stages of its application for registered charity status in Canada. This status was intended to enable Giving What We Can Canada to provide tax deductions for Canadians donating to high-impact causes through our platform—a significant value proposition given Canada's favourable tax treatment for charitable donations and the gap in the market, as few high-impact charities are registered as Canadian charities.

Beyond facilitating tax-efficient high-impact donations, GWWC Canada was working towards localised outreach to promote effective giving throughout Canada. We conducted recruitment processes for Canadian leadership positions on two occasions, including for a 

 as part of our broader localisation efforts that were initiated in 2023, but ended up deciding not to make any offers at those points.

As the GWWC Canada board evaluates next steps in Q2 and Q3 of 2025, we recognise that there remains a valuable opportunity for impact in the Canadian effective giving landscape. The entity's advanced progress toward charitable status and its established operational framework represent significant assets for promoting effective giving in Canada.

To this end, the Canadian board members are actively soliciting interest from potential donors and volunteers who wish to either oversee or run a potential successor organisation, which, while not connected to Giving What We Can, would fulfil a similar space in the Canadian effective giving landscape. This represents an opportunity to build upon the foundation that has been established here and to enable Canadians to contribute effectively to high-impact causes worldwide.

Alternatively, the board is considering either winding down the entity or exploring whether the entity could be legally and transparently made dormant at low cost until either GWWC or another mission-aligned actor is willing to take it forward.

For questions about GWWC Canada or the transition, or to express interest in involvement with a potential successor organisation, please contact us at 

We extend our sincere gratitude to the Canadian board members—

—for their significant investment in spearheading this project. While Giving What We Can Canada will not materialise as initially intended, a significant amount of work went into creating the infrastructure for the organisation.

Effective Altruism Australia (EAA) is one of GWWC’s 

 — a legal entity through which GWWC operates — and it also has its own programmes that are independent of GWWC. Our funding partnership with EAA enables Australian donors to 

 to a limited number of programmes and causes (in line with Australian legal restrictions) on GWWC’s 

 has evolved to focus on pledge-based global and US/UK (our largest “markets”) engagement rather than other country-specific operations. We do not anticipate conducting localised effective giving community building beyond the US and UK in the near future, which has led to our decision to wind down the funding partnership with EAA.

, even after the funding partnership ends.

We have licensed Giving What We Can’s branding to EAA, closely collaborated with them on fundraising in Australia, and were considering further localised effective giving community building. This was part of the localisation efforts we initiated in 2023, with the aim of making effective giving more accessible to donors across a range of countries.

June 30th, 2025 (End of tax year in Australia): GWWC stops receiving tax-deductible donations from Australian donors for certain programmes and causes, and our website is updated to reflect this

After the funding partnership ends, we recommend Australian donors who want to donate tax deductibly to global health or climate focused programmes to do so directly 

. Pledgers can of course still report these donations by logging into their Pledge Dashboard. 

For questions about the Effective Altruism Australia funding partnership or the transition, please contact us at 

Giving What We Can community groups host local gatherings where members connect to discuss effective giving, share experiences, and support each other's philanthropic journeys. These groups organise discussions, giving games, and social events to build community among people committed to effective giving. GWWC supports these communities with resources and networking opportunities that connect effective givers across different locations.

We have limited capacity to support group leaders, and think we can preserve many of the benefits these groups offer by encouraging group leaders to rebrand to “Effective Giving Groups” instead of “GWWC Groups”. This provides existing community leaders full autonomy without the need for approvals or to stick to our structures and also helps mitigate the organisational risk of operating official “GWWC” groups without being able to devote enough resources to properly oversee them. Also, while groups are valuable for existing pledgers, they haven’t been a major driver of growth.

We were operating groups in several major cities and supporting each with a $250 annual grant.

March 31st, 2025: Giving What We Can discontinues support for GWWC Groups

We have encouraged all the current Community Leads to continue supporting thriving local communities for effective givers—just without the GWWC branding.

Effective Giving Groups directory on our website.

Individual groups’ activities will depend on the location and decision of individual leaders.

We also encourage community members interested in connecting with others to join our 

For questions about Giving What We Can Community Groups or the transition to Effective Giving Groups, please contact James at 

Giving Games are workshops where participants learn about effective giving by collaboratively deciding how to donate a small sum (typically $10-20 per participant) to charity. GWWC has been providing resources, facilitation guides, sponsorship, and direct support for running these workshops for a number of years.

While we think Giving Games are a great way to increase awareness of effective giving concepts, this initiative takes up significant resources and is only tangentially related to our core strategy of growing the Pledge. We are re-homing the programme to live in the CEA Groups Resources Centre, so it’s likely to continue in some capacity (see “Plan for Discontinuation” for more info).

 to people and organisations interested in running a giving game.

February 28, 2025: Last day for requesting facilitation support via GWWC

April 2025: Giving Game materials will be updated in preparation for handover to CEA

End of April 2025: Complete handover to CEA

From April onwards, GWWC will be handing over the 

 for Giving Games to CEA. We are still liaising with CEA about whether they will be able to offer sponsorship or tailored support. We will update this post once we have confirmation.

For questions about Giving Games or the transition, please contact 

The Charity Elections programme introduces high school students to effective giving concepts, inspires meaningful discussions, and empowers young people to reflect on complex world issues and realise their potential to make a difference. The programme is designed to cultivate a culture of giving and giving effectively, expand moral circles, promote compassion, and raise the profile of outstanding causes among future givers.

In a charity election, high school students research, discuss, and reflect on three charities before voting to decide which will receive up to $2,000 in sponsored funds. A self-contained slideshow allows teachers to easily run the event, either across a set of classes or the whole school.

By the end of this academic year, the programme will have reached approximately 15,000 student votes (across 45 school events in seven countries) since the programme’s creation in 2018.

More information about Charity Elections here

While we believe Charity Elections is a valuable programme for introducing young people to effective giving principles and encouraging thoughtful philanthropy in schools, supporting this programme takes up significant resources and is only tangentially related to our core strategy of growing the Pledge. We are actively supporting the programme to seek a new fiscal sponsor, with the hope it can continue.

The Charity Elections programme was created in 2018 with support from The Life You Can Save (TLYCS) and has been incubated by Giving What We Can (GWWC) since 2021. As a result of implementing charity elections, students have 

 to reflect on the impact of their school campaigns.

Grace Adams

These stories of people directly affected by the aid freeze need to be told.

March News: Some powerful stories to cut through the noise

The New York Times recently published a fantastic, yet heartbreaking piece titled 

Musk Said No One Has Died Since Aid Was Cut. That Isn’t True.

I think it really cuts to the core of how devastating the impacts of the foreign development cuts are – right now, and worsening each day.

Peter Donne, a 10-year-old infected with HIV from his mother during childbirth, died in late February because he couldn’t get his medicine after the PEPFAR outreach program ended.

Achol Deng, age 8, was also kept alive because of US assistance with HIV prevention and treatment. In January, she lost the ID card that enabled her to get medicines and couldn’t get a new one. She’s now deceased.

“You never forget the sight of children starving to death,” writes Nicholas Kristof, who wrote the piece after nine days in East Africa, where he met with some of the people and villages who are directly affected.

Along with Peter & Achol’s story, he tells so many others — a 35-year-old single mom and her 5-year-old son, a 2-year-old crying from hunger and getting only water in response, an 18-year-old soon-to-be-mom who no longer has a clinic where she can give birth.

Blog

Recalibrating for sustainable giving

Announcing our 2025 strategy

GWWC is retiring 10 initiatives

March News: Some powerful stories to cut through the noise

What's the antidote to hypernationalism?

February newsletter: US aid freeze – how to help & where to donate

Adapting the Pledge to Your Goals & Values

Trump's WHO Withdrawal - Head in the Sand, or Time to Act?

January newsletter: Some incredible projects we funded together

December news: Wrapping Up 2024