Conversations That Count

This Giving Season, we're spreading the norm of significant and effective giving together.

Welcome!

Personal recommendations are one of the strongest drivers behind the 🔸10% Pledge and 🔹 Trial Pledge . Each 🔸 10% pledger donates an average of $100,000 over their lifetime and as a pledger yourself, you're uniquely positioned to inspire your friends and family.

Together - we're inspiring a cultural norm of giving effectively and significantly.

On this page, we'll provide you with some resources for talking about pledging and effective giving with those you care about. We'll also provide you with templates on how you can write engaging social media posts about your pledge experience.

Talking about the 🔸 10% Pledge and 🔹 Trial Pledge

Talking about your pledge can be both exciting and scary. To help you, we'll share with you a couple of pointers that helped us and other pledgers have conversations about the pledge.

First off: keep any conversation a conversation. We also strongly believe a lot more people should take a pledge (😉) but "hard selling" or "shaming" someone "into it" never works. From a place of excitement and curiosity, lean towards asking and learning more about the other. Seek to understand what excites the other, so that you can connect pledging to their ambitions and worldview.

Once you've learned about someone's passions and worldview, you can share about what led you to pledging. Just share why and how you came to the 🔸 10% Pledge or 🔹 Trial Pledge. We've often found that sharing your personal doubts and how you overcame them, to be a great way to address some of the ambitions and doubts that you might have discovered in the first "listing and asking" part of the conversation.

Finally, the most important part, ask - without pressure - "Would you like to take a 🔸 10% Pledge or 🔹 Trial Pledge?". At first this can be scary, but really; it's fun! Ask it without expectation, or the expectation of a no. That's great! Ask more questions and address doubts, again not selling, but genuinely trying to understand. If it feels right, you can ask again if they are interested in pledging. If they say yes: great! Our suggestion is to help them set it up then and there. If they say no: great! This is the default and expected outcome of any conversation, and you've just had a "conversation that counts". You might have planted the seed that leads to a pledge in the future!

Have fun! And expect a lot of people to not want to or be ready to take the pledge ☺️. A 🔸 10% pledge leads to an average of $100,000 donations, of which $10,000 counterfactually. If it takes you 100 conversations of 30 minutes to inspire one 🔸 10% pledge, that's still $200 of counterfactual donations per hour 🤩!

Resources for you

How to talk about effective giving

Kick-off call recording (30 min, 11th Dec)

Introduction video (4 min, 5th Dec)

Step-by-step suggestions

Some Ways to Begin

Starting the conversation about pledging is often the hardest part. Here are some ways to prompt meaningful conversations, sent in from participants in Conversations that Count and GWWC staff.

  1. Share something that made you reflect
    "I recently watched this video…”
    • "About how rich I am in a global context. It made me really reflect about how much good I can do with my money. What do you think?" (YouTube)
    • "About what would happen if the top 1% richest in the world gave away 10% of their income for a year. What do you think about this?" (Instagram)
    • "From Ali Abdaal / Rutger Bregman / José González / Peter Singer. I really admire his work and didn’t know he had decided to take the 10% pledge. Have you heard of the pledge?"
  2. Make it personal
    "I've made a big decision and decided to give 10% of my income to highly effective charities. It's something I really care about, can I tell you why?"
  3. Share about values
    “I am hoping to have even more meaningful conversations with those I care about this Christmas. I would love to chat about something I value, giving of my income to help others who need it more.”
  4. Turn current events into action
    "With everything happening in the world right now (e.g. USAID cuts), I've been thinking more about how to actually help. Want to explore this together?"

During the Conversation

  1. Listen first: Start with a question and approach conversations with genuine curiosity about others' viewpoints on giving and pledging. Not only is this nice for them, but it gives you information to have a meaningful discussion.
  2. Ask open-ended questions: Encourage others to articulate their reasoning and confidence levels about views e.g. “Tell me more?” or “What do you mean by that?”
  3. Share personal experiences: Offer your own positive experiences with pledging as an example, not as a dismissal of their perspective. Share why you are excited to give effectively and to share about it.
  4. Be authentic: Your genuine enthusiasm and commitment can be more persuasive than any statistic.
  5. Actually make the ask: This is the most important part of the conversation. Ask the person you’re talking with if they’d “like to consider taking a pledge themselves”. If you’re not convinced of how important this is, see the slides and speaker notes from this talk.
  6. Follow up: Many people need multiple gentle conversations before pledging. Be persistent but respectful.

Remember, the goal is to have meaningful conversations and inspire thoughtful consideration, not to pressure others into immediate action. Be patient, allow time for reflection and don't expect immediate commitments, you’re asking them to consider something significant.

Common misconceptions and how to handle them

We’ve identified some common reasons people may be hesitant to pledge. Below you’ll find some ways to respond to various misconceptions. You can find more in-depth examples of ways to respond to common objections on our ‘5 things you've got wrong about the Giving What We Can Pledge' page.

  • "If you sign the pledge, you have to donate at least 10% of your income each year."
    • Your pledge is about donating 10% over your working life. Some years you may give more, some less. Your Pledge Dashboard helps you track your progress.
  • "Only the charities on the Giving What We Can Platform count towards your pledge."
    • The Giving What We Can Pledge is a public commitment to donate at least 10% of your lifetime income to the organisations you believe can most effectively use it to improve the lives of others.
  • "The pledge is a legal document."
    • It’s not a legal contract, but it is a serious moral promise. We invite people to sign only if they plan to follow through.
  • "There’s no plausibly good reason to sign the pledge if you’re already donating 10% or more."
    • One of the primary reasons the Giving What We Can Pledge was created was to help influence the social norms around giving. So while the pledge is a great tool for living up to your own values, signing it is also about being part of a global effort to change how people approach charitable giving.

Resources to share

Short & engaging:

Deeper dives:

For immediate action:

Social Media Templates

New templates

Canva templates: Template (diamond), Template (simple), LinkedIn banner

Old templates

Canva templates: Instagram post, Instagram story, LinkedIn 1:1, LinkedIn banner

How to keep track of pledges and conversations

After someone has pledged, they can add your name as the reason they were inspired. Those who mention you will then be manually added to your “score”.

If someone pledged but forgot to mention you, please reach out at amalie.farestvedt@givingwhatwecan.org and we’ll ensure it's added to your “score”.

You can also self report the amount of conversations that count you’ve had here.

Reward

Whilst the greatest reward is the impact itself – knowing you've inspired others to give more effectively, we want to thank advocates who help grow the effective giving community.

We'll send a Giving What We Can t-shirt to everyone who:

  • Inspires at least 1 person to take the 🔸10% Pledge
  • OR inspires at least 1 person to take the 🔹Trial Pledge
  • OR has at least 5 self-reported "conversations that count"

Total score

Last updated 10:36 UTC 13th January 2026.

  • 🔸10% Pledge: 4
  • 🔹Trial Pledge: 7
  • Conversations that Count (self-reported): 24