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Duncan Hamra

Duncan Hamra has taken the 10% Pledge and gives 33% of his household income to charity. He talks about what motivated him to take the pledge and the ways he and wife effect change. 

Member Profile: Duncan Hamra 

We recently spoke with Duncan Hamra, a Startup Founder from Williamsburg, Virginia (USA). Duncan and his wife Ingrid McGuckin (pictured above) donate 33% of their household income and are working on a new project to reorganize the traditional Sunday church service so that everyone has a voice and donations go directly to highly effective charities!

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

I'm a happy husband and can't wait to be a dad. I co-founded a small software company with 20 employees and 2800 customers (more on that in a bit!)

Things I'm excited about:
→ Podcasts (On Being, 99% Invisible, MBMBaM, etc).
→ New ways of doing church (By incorporating new technologies, psychology, formats, etc.)
→ Tiny living and van life (my wife and I are currently living in a converted van!)

Did you want to tell us more about that software company you founded?

Yes! This was actually a key part of my effective giving journey. My best friend and I launched a software company called Memberstack during college, and ultimately decided to raise venture funding because of the advice we read on 80,000 Hours — that even a very small/very difficult opportunity might be worth it if the payoff was quite high!

Memberstack enables web developers to turn websites into web apps with memberships and user accounts. We have 2,800 customers from first-time business owners to teams at Slack, Reddit, and American Airlines.

We’ve been in business for about 5 years now. While I can't say I've been able to donate millions of dollars (yet), my wife and I are able to collectively donate 33% of our income to highly effective charities! Today, I'm working 20 hours a week for my company and 20 hours on a new project called Flipped Church.

We are reorganizing the traditional Sunday church service so that everyone has a voice, and donations go directly to highly effective charities.

We got the name from the “flipped classroom.” In a flipped classroom, students are provided with materials to be studied at home. In-person class time is devoted to asking questions, working in groups, and practicing what’s been learned. We appreciate how much respect this model has for the students, and wanted to bring it to the church setting.

Wow! Can you tell us more about how you’re doing that?

Instead of listening to the same person lecture each week, participants watch, read, or listen to a short conversation starter at home. Then gathering time becomes conversation time. We hope to create fun and intentional spaces where folks can learn from each other and practice vital skills like gratitude, kindness, patience, humility, etc. We are an interfaith organisation with an initial focus on helping Christian communities (since that’s the tradition we grew up in) to experiment with new formats.

Instead of asking folks to tithe to cover a church mortgage or staff salaries, we spend a few minutes each week discussing the potential good that can come from donating directly to highly effective charities. We’re able to cover our own costs by meeting in public spaces and splitting the leadership responsibilities.

We’ve only had a few events so far, so we’re still very much in the learning phase. If you want to follow along for updates, you can subscribe on our website, 

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

Preventing unnecessary death and suffering from treatable illness. I hate being sick, even though I have access to medical care. So I really feel for folks who are suffering without that same level of support. Donating is a concrete and attainable way to help prevent this kind of suffering.

On that note, which organisations do you give to (and why)?

We give 95% to GiveWell's Top Charities Fund and about 5% to DonorSee. We’ve read through most of GiveWell’s website and are blown away by their attention to detail, humility, and high standards. DonorSee was cofounded by a friend we trust and they do a great job of helping donors to see and feel their impact. It’s not highly effective, but it’s still meaningful for recipients and rewarding for us.

Yup! My wife and I want to buy a house and are waiting a few extra years so we can continue to donate and be able to buy in cash. It's tempting to stop the donating so we don't have to wait.  But we try to sit with the question "how much do we really need?" which helps us to feel more free to let go of the resources we don’t need and share them with others.

Do you try to effect change in any other way?

Yes, mainly through the Flipped Church project we discussed earlier. Two of our goals are raising money for effective charities and helping people to communicate more effectively. Quoting directly from our website, “these [Flipped Church] gatherings give us space and structure to practice the fundamentals of being in community with each other.”

No matter what problems we decide to solve as a society, we are not likely to get far without civil conversations. And communication skills are vital regardless of your personal circumstances — doesn’t matter how much money you have or where you live; you still have to be able to communicate effectively!

What effective giving tips would you like to share?

I know I’ve mentioned this once already, but the question “how much is enough?” is really helpful for me. I’d recommend taking time on a regular basis to sit with it —  everything gets easier once you know your answer to the question of how much you really need. If you want to be happier with less, educate yourself about global poverty and watch some talks on gratitude.

I would like to see the majority of church goers 

 to highly effective charities. I’d also like to see more spaces where everyday people can gather to talk about things like effective giving.

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

I enjoyed Peter Singer’s Ted talk and the 2011 documentary “

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

I think it’s helpful to have multiple conversations over multiple sittings. The ideas of EG felt pretty shocking/counter-cultural to me at first.

Before learning about EG, my biggest financial question was “How can I maximize my savings and investments?” After learning about EG, that’s still one of my questions, but I’ve had to make room for new (related) questions like “How do I maximise my impact?” and “How do I find joy in less, so that I can give away more?”

It took me several years to incorporate those new questions, so I expect the same will be true for my conversation partners.

Duncan Hamra, a Startup Founder from Williamsburg, Virginia (USA) discusses donating 33% of his household income and shares his work on a new project to reorganize the traditional Sunday church service so that everyone has a voice and donations go directly to highly effective charities!

Member Profile: Duncan Hamra

Alana Horowitz Friedman

We cover why we're renaming our primary pledge

The Giving What We Can Pledge is now the 

We're renaming the Giving What We Can Pledge

TL;DR

 better part of a year, Giving What We Can has been thinking more deliberately about how our brand choices could accelerate or hinder progress towards our mission of making giving effectively and significantly a cultural norm. One topic that has consistently surfaced is the name of our primary pledge.

While we think the “Giving What We Can Pledge” accurately captures the spirit we want to cultivate and the message we want to portray – that many people can afford to give more significantly – we’ve also identified some issues. We’ve noticed people referring to the Giving What We Can Pledge by all sorts of names (the income pledge, the lifetime pledge, the pledge, the giving all we can pledge, and the give what you can pledge, to name just a few) which leads to confusion and reduces “stickiness.” On that note, we’ve noticed people confusing the Giving What We Can Pledge with other similarly named pledges (like the Giving Pledge for billionaires, for example). We’ve also realised that having our organisation name in the title of the pledge can make it difficult for other organisations to easily promote it.

Above: An internal slide from our name-change deliberations

 considered several alternate names, had many healthy debates within our team, and surveyed over 30 key stakeholders from across the world and the effective giving ecosystem. The result? We are delighted to announce that the Giving What We Can Pledge is now the 🔸10% Pledge!

As we announced at EAG London, we’re aiming to reach 10,000 active 10% pledgers in 2024 and we have ambitions to grow to 100,000 and eventually, to 1 million pledgers and beyond.

To achieve these ambitious goals, we need a name and a brand that can achieve saturation. We think the 10% Pledge could get us there because:

It’s easy to say, remember, and understand

It can be hosted by partner organisations (more on this below!)

It has the potential for “stickiness” and increasing awareness, especially with the addition of the 🔸orange diamond symbol!

10% Pledge 2.  Our vision of the diamond logo at work

If you’ve taken the 🔸10% Pledge (formerly known as the Giving What We Can Pledge), we’d be grateful if you could add the 🔸“small orange diamond” emoji to your name on your social media accounts. 

(If you’ve taken the Trial Pledge, you can instead add a small blue diamond 🔹 emoji.)


Above: An example of adding the diamond and 🔸10% Pledge line in bio!

We’re hoping that seeing several 🔸’s across social media will cause people to be curious about what this signifies and lead them to learn more. 

It would be ideal to also add a statement like “🔸10% Pledge #XXXX with @GivingWhatWeCan” or “I’ve taken The 🔸@10percentpledge) to give to effective charities” to your bio (as pictured above) so those who do want to learn more can easily find out about it! 

(Note: You can look up your pledge number on 

And if you want to help the diamond emoji be even more visible for launch week, consider posting with the phrase "I've taken the 🔸#10PercentPledge because..." It would be exciting to see social media light up with these types of posts!

More broadly, whether or not you’ve taken a pledge, you can sign up to help us reach 10,000 pledgers. If you’re keen, fill out 

 to let us know in which ways you might be able to help out!

Several effective giving aligned organisations have expressed interest in raising awareness about the Pledge to their audiences. We’ve heard from some of these organisations that it would be helpful if they could provide a way for their audiences to take the Pledge without introducing Giving What We Can as a new brand, which could be confusing for users, especially if they have to be directed to the Giving What We Can site to sign the Pledge!

The 🔸10% Pledge rename allows us to more easily work with partners to integrate pledge signing (for both the 🔸10% Pledge and Trial Pledge) into their website. Partners will either have a custom co-branded pledge flow, or be able to host our pledges directly on their website using an API. When someone signs a pledge with a partner organisation, both Giving What We Can and the partner organisation will be notified of the new pledger and be able to send follow-up communications.

We’re excited to announce that we have already launched partnerships with 

 with several more planned in the coming weeks and months. You can see an active list of our current partners on our updated 

Everything except for the name of our primary pledge and the launch of our new partnerships! We will continue to operate in the same way as before and with the same mission. We are NOT renaming the organisation (which will remain Giving What We Can) and we are NOT renaming our other pledges (which will remain the Trial Pledge, the Further Pledge and the Company Pledge).

Additionally, the 🔸10% Pledge, formerly known as the Giving What We Can Pledge, still works in the exact same way. You can still pledge 

, and you can also pledge to give the greater of 10% of income or a custom percentage of wealth.

If you have any unanswered questions about this change or want to share your ideas for how we can grow pledgers now and into the future, you can reach us at 

Finally, we’d like to thank Alex Savard, who initiated a large part of the renaming proposal while he was an employee at Giving What We Can.

We’re renaming the Giving What We Can Pledge

A survey of Australians attitudes on effective giving reveals that Australians believe charities should be held accountable for their impact.

The general population cares more about effective giving than you might think: Results from a 2024 study in Australia

What happened when over 1000 Australiians were surveyed about their attitudes on charity? The vast majority (79%!) thought that 

The survey was done amidst the cost of living crisis, which 8 out of 10 respondents say has caused them to reduce their charitable giving.

In fact, the cost of living crisis may make it more important than ever for donors to seek impact and transparency. As Giving What We Can’s executive director Luke Freeman put it in a recent 

, “While people may not have more to give this financial year, they can make their donations go much further.”

 87% of respondents said they would be willing to switch their donations to a highly-effective charity

. This could provide a counter narrative to 

previous research showing that donors are resistant to switching their donations based on evidence

, though it could instead simply indicate a difference between donor intention and behaviour. 

The high percentage of respondents willing to switch their donations is even more striking when viewed in light of the fact that on average, respondents thought the best programs were only 1.44x better than average. Thus, people report a willingness to change their donation decisions even to get just a 

 bit more impact. (In reality, we estimate that 

many donors could achieve 100x more impact

 by changing their donation decisions, depending on their starting point, of course.)

Demand for information about charity efficacy was also surprisingly high, with a whopping 

93% of respondents indicating they would consult a reliable source of information that compared the effectiveness of different charities and use this to guide their donation decisions!

 In contrast, only 3 in 10 respondents were confident their last donation had a lot of impact.

While "effectiveness" may mean different things to different people, it would seem donors 

 interested in maximising the impact of their donations; they just might not know how and where to do so.

 (with many more interesting findings!) as well as the 

Christoph Hartmann

Member Profile: Christoph Hartmann

We recently spoke with Christoph Hartmann from Amsterdam, who shared how effective giving unites his nerd and hippie tendencies, and explained why taking the pledge has made donating much easier for him! He also told us that he sees the pledge as part of a portfolio of ways he tries to effect change in the world: through his resources, his work, his voice, and his actions.

Nerd: After studying Cognitive Science, I did a PhD in computational neuroscience, worked at the business consulting firm BCG, and then switched to a social scale-up, where I am now the CTO. No matter what I do, I can’t stop analysing, thinking things through, finding patterns. When writing code, I am one of the few people who enjoys fixing bugs - it’s like solving a new mini puzzle every few minutes and then getting a dopamine hit when you get it right.

Hippie: I have a very deep-rooted belief that if we would all just empathise more with each other, a lot of problems would solve themselves. I’m talking about empathy with strangers, empathy with animals, empathy with nature. Combine that with my questioning of norms (fueled by the analytical tendencies mentioned above!) and you get typical hippie behaviour: I did my share of psychedelics, have been vegetarian for a long time, lived polyamorously for the last decade, spent my holidays at local burning man festivals, and right now am living in intentional communities and thinking about starting one.

I get very excited when my hippie-self and my nerd-self find projects to collaborate on, and effective giving is one of them.

Tell us about your effective giving journey.

During a lazy summer between high-school and university, I happened upon Peter Singer’s 

, which immediately resonated with me for its no-nonsense, practical view on ethics. At the time, it convinced me to become vegetarian and to note that once I made money, I should give some of it to charity.

When I finally did make money during my PhD, I was overwhelmed with all the donation choices and day-to-day trade offs: Should I get that Starbucks coffee or donate the money? Should I buy fairtrade or rather the cheaper product and donate the difference? Was the extra cost of organic food worth the marginally better life that these animals lived? I figured I couldn’t be the only one struggling with this, so I found a meetup on Effective Altruism, went down an effective giving rabbit hole, and emerged taking the Giving What We Can pledge!

Why do you give? (What motivated you to give originally and what keeps you motivated now?)

I live a good life and want to share this. I was lucky to be born in a great family in Europe and recognise that others were less lucky. Money is so unevenly distributed that I can easily part with 10% of my salary here in Amsterdam without really feeling the difference while that same money can have a massive impact on people and animals who were born in less fortunate circumstances. In short, I have an opportunity to help.

Why did you take the Giving What We Can pledge?

I’ll cover the practical reasons first: I took the 

because it helps me make donating a habit. It sets a clear guideline for giving so I don’t have to think about it. I also thought it would be good to start the pledge during a relatively low salary time so I won’t notice the impact once I make more. Finally, it holds my future self accountable. If I hadn't taken the pledge, it would be easy for me to slowly start donating less as life changes.

One of my main reasons for taking the pledge, though, is to set an example: I see the pledge as a way to pull donations more into the open. If we could normalise talking about donations, we could have better discussions on donation opportunities and create social norms that encourage generosity. So I view taking a public pledge and talking about it in this post as steps in that direction — pulling these discussions more into the open!

Initially, I was most passionate about global health and inequality, simply because the wealth and life satisfaction differences around the world are so obvious. However, once I realised how little funding goes into animal welfare relative to the sheer number of factory farmed animals, I also started donating to charities active in that area. I also feel very strongly about cultivating empathy in our society but have found no convincing charities in that area yet.

Which organizations do you give to (and why)?

Give Directly for its simplicity; EA Funds’ Animal Welfare Fund because I find the animal welfare funding landscape difficult to navigate and trust the fund managers to allocate my money to high-impact opportunities.

Yes — mainly because of the administrative hassles involved. It can feel like doing taxes to me. Reading up on the latest charities and evaluations, comparing effectiveness, deciding how much to donate to which places — I don’t get a lot of joy from all that, but once it’s done, I get a lot of mental peace that’s less in the moment and more continuous. This year, as an experiment, I’m planning to make it more fun by turning it into a social activity with friends who also donate!

Do you have any interesting stories related to your giving?

I am paying for the WiFi of an orphanage in a very low-income neighbourhood in Kenya because I know the person running it. I don’t know if it’s effective — I also don’t count it towards my pledge commitment —  but I do get a lot of joy from it. Growing up, the internet was my gateway to the world, perfect to help appease my never-ending curiosity. I love to be able to gift this to others.

Do you have any examples of times where you decided to not spend money on something your peers would have?

When I first learned about effective giving, I questioned every purchase, wondering if I should be donating that money instead. Then I took the pledge, set my donations as recurring bank transfers, and now I know that I have a certain amount allocated to donations, and don’t have to worry about the rest. I find this much more productive and sustainable, and I’m probably also donating more now than if I had continued to make those decisions every time.

I’ve never not been able to purchase something I wanted because of my donation budget, but being a hippie with the income of a nerd, I also make more money than most of my friends.

Yes, I think broadly I can effect change through my money (the pledge), my work, my voice, and my actions:

, an organisation building tech for health insurances in Kenya. I hope that this will allow more people to get health insurance, thereby reducing the risk of falling into poverty.

My voice: I’ve written a few letters to politicians and I join protests sometimes, but of all the categories mentioned here, I am the least happy with my advocacy. I’m always looking for ways I could have more impact with my voice and this blog post is a small step in that direction!

My actions: I think most everyday, individual actions (like eating organically, using less heat, etc.) are much less impactful than other categories of effecting change, so I don’t focus my energy there as much. However,I ate vegetarian for many years, I try to avoid unnecessary flights, and I vote for parties that I believe are most value-aligned with me.

Take a pledge, make the donations automated, and review once a year. One less thing to worry about! Oh, and talk about it! I would love to see more talk about donations. I am posting my donation choices once a year on LinkedIn.

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

Do it early in your career; it’s a lot less painful and you don’t have to sacrifice as much. And you can always stop — there is no pledge police!

A more empathetic, loving, understanding society. I think that could solve a lot of problems. I am working on some ideas that could help with that.

 probably had the biggest impact on my giving.

On the more detailed aspects of giving, I found the articles on 

And then for the country-specific tax optimisation, I found local organisations like 

I talk about my donations very rarely, a LinkedIn 

 once a year, and every now and then I talk to a friend when the topic comes up. While I’d like to have donation discussions more often, I’m vocal enough about my giving that people know where to find me when they want to talk through donation decisions themselves. In other words, I don’t actively try to convince people to donate but I am happy to share my experience if they have questions.

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

 is great: A tool to keep track of how much I should donate and it even syncs with some of the charities I donate to! Much better than the excel spreadsheet I used to have. It sounds silly but I feel more joy donating when using the dashboard :)

" 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.

We share and correct some common misconceptions about the Giving What We Can pledge. 

5 things you've got wrong about the Giving What We Can Pledge

How well do you know the details of the Giving What We Can Pledge? A surprising number of people we’ve spoken to — including many who know a lot about effective giving — shared some or all of these pledge misconceptions.

Misconception #1: If you sign the pledge, you have to donate at least 10% of your income 

 is a public commitment to donate at least 10% of your

 to the organisations that can most effectively use it to improve the lives of others. Giving 10% of your income each year is a good rule of thumb for most people, as it helps them stay on track with their lifetime pledge. However, there are certainly cases where it doesn’t make sense to give annually. Provided you continue reporting your income

on your personal pledge dashboard, the “Overall Progress” bar will show you where you are with respect to fulfilling your lifetime pledge.This way, you can continue to progress towards your lifetime pledge even if you need to skip a year.

While we recommend giving annually for most people

, here are two examples of cases where it might make sense to skip, bunch, or otherwise donate on a non-annual basis:

In some cases, donating every few years instead of every year is better from a tax benefit perspective. For example, if you live in the U.S., you often have to donate quite a lot in order to receive tax benefits for a particular year. Thus, some U.S. pledgers “bunch” their donations by saving the amount they would have donated and then donating a much larger sum every 2-3 years.

Not all years are equal from a finance perspective. Perhaps you were hit with a bunch of medical expenses this year, or you made a down payment on a house. While many pledgers are able to fulfill these commitments and continue donating, for some, it may make sense to skip a year and then “catch up” over the next few. Provided you remain serious about fulfilling your pledge, and are able to increase your percentage in the next few years to make up for the skip, this is perfectly reasonable and still very much in keeping with your lifetime income pledge!

Misconception #2: Only the charities on the Giving What We Can Platform count towards your pledge

 is a public commitment to donate at least 10% of your lifetime income to the 

organisations that can most effectively use it to improve the lives of others.

This means you can donate to any organisation you’d like, as long as you have good reason to believe it qualifies as a highly-effective organisation. (We do suggest familiarising yourself with the concepts of

Blog

Member Profile: Duncan Hamra

We’re renaming the Giving What We Can Pledge

The general population cares more about effective giving than you might think: Results from a 2024 study in Australia

Member Profile: Christoph Hartmann

5 things you've got wrong about the Giving What We Can Pledge

80-year-old Bob Layne thought others should know about effective giving. So he made it happen.

March Newsletter 2024

Discover How "Rich" You Really Are: A Glimpse into Global Income and Charity

February Newsletter 2024

January 2024 Newsletter