We’re a global community giving part of our income to where it matters most
Who are we?
We are a resource hub, global community, and force for change
You might know the 🔸10% PledgeWe’re best known for the 🔸10% Pledge, through which over 10,000 people have committed to donating at least 10% of their income to the world’s most effective charities, helping make giving what we can the norm, not the exception.
We also draw on thousands of hours of research to help everyday people make an extraordinary difference through effective giving — helping donors identify the highest-impact problems and the most effective organizations working to solve them. So far, our community has donated over $500 million USD.
Team
Giving What We Can is working to create a world where everyone can flourish
We have a team of dedicated staff and incredible volunteers, many in our core international team (which spans three continents) have signed the 🔸10% Pledge to give 10% of their income to effective charities throughout their lifetime. This is not a requirement to join the team, but rather reflects a deep commitment to our mission.
Independently funded
We're independently funded and don't take fees. We don't take any fees from donors who use our platform or from organisations we choose to recommend. In short, we're here to help you do the most good through your giving.
Anchored by mission & vision
At the core of our work is a deep commitment to our mission of creating a world where giving effectively and significantly is a norm. We're here because we care — deeply and passionately — about building a better world. Read more about our mission and vision below.
Every decision can change lives
With limited resources, the stakes are always high. We opt for a strategy of crafting the simplest, yet effective solutions, and running small, cost-effective trials to gain meaningful feedback. We hold ourselves accountable to interrogating our actions, ensuring that what we do is impactful.
Structure
Giving What We Can is established as a registered charity in the US, UK and The Netherlands. This allows us to support a wide range of high-impact programs via our platform in a tax-effective way for our pledgers and donors.
LegalResearch
Our research team evaluates the research of impact-focused evaluators in the effective giving space to identify the best opportunities we know of for donors who are looking to maximise the impact of their next charitable dollar. We also conduct internal impact evaluations to inform our strategy and ensure we’re meeting our high cost-effectiveness standards.
Values
We uphold the following values in all our operations. We have a strong commitment to transparency and we acknowledge our mistakes.
Most of us have more ability to improve lives than we realise. If you live in a high-income country, even an ordinary income can place you among the wealthiest people globally — and by donating thoughtfully, your money can go dramatically further than you might expect.
Some charities are able to create many times more impact with the same dollar, meaning small changes in where and how you give can help far more people. Giving What We Can exists to help people turn that opportunity into meaningful action through effective, evidence-based giving.
Our members
11,152 people committed to change
“It's a rare community, a really special community of people dedicated to trying to make a difference, which is just hard to come across.”
Ollie Base, member since 2017
We’re a community committed to creating meaningful impact by donating to highly effective charities
Community
We’re building a global community of effective givers
The Pledge
News & Updates
We share effective giving news and updates through our newsletter – including what motivates people to take the 🔸10% Pledge, a curated list of articles about topics like animal welfare, climate change, global poverty, and preventing global catastrophic risks, and exciting developments from some of the charities we recommend.
View blogCommunity Connections
Join our GWWC Community Slack where you can meet like-minded people, ask questions, and share thoughts! We also facilitate connections through our Chat to a Pledger option, and maintain a list of in-person effective giving groups.
Our mission
We carry out our mission in three main ways
Education & Outreach
Explore the vast differences in charity effectiveness and the incredible power of strategic philanthropy — with guidance on where donations can do the most good.
The Pledge
Public giving pledges that challenge conventional norms and empower people, especially in high-income countries, to turn their resources into meaningful change.
Donation Platform
A donation platform that makes it easy to give tax-deductibly to high-impact programs across a wide range of causes and geographies.
Founded in 2009 by Oxford philosophers Toby Ord
and Will MacAskill
, GWWC exists to make effective, significant giving the cultural norm, not just increase donations, but drive meaningful cultural change.
Our co-founder, Toby Ord, personally sending letters to people who signed the 🔸10% Pledge.
Inspired by the ideas of ethicists such as Peter Singer, Ord decided in 2009 to commit a large portion of his income to effective charities. Shortly after, he launched Giving What We Can with his wife Bernadette Young and co-founder Will MacAskill to encourage others to do the same. Read more about our history, or watch the video below!
Improve the world with us
Join our monthly newsletter to get the latest effective giving news. No spam—just news.
An ambitious vision that we think is worth pursuing.
As Ord, MacAskill, and Young concluded when they launched Giving What We Can after being inspired by ethicists such as Peter Singer, a tremendous amount of good can be done by carefully combining the head and the heart — using evidence and reason to figure out how to best help others.
Every step towards our goal of creating a culture where people are inspired to give both significantly and effectively has strong positive direct and indirect effects — and if we succeed, we believe the world will be a vastly different (and better) place.
Giving Pillars
We’re changing the norms around charitable giving
We believe giving should be...
Effective
We empower people to make more informed decisions about where to donate — so they can have a bigger impact.
Normal
We imagine a world where it’s normal for those who can afford it to share some of their resources with others.
Public
We encourage people to talk about their giving. Giving publicly helps create a social norm by inspiring others.
Resource hub
Resources and tools to help you give wisely and make a bigger impact with your donations
Charity shouldn’t be a black box! Our curated guides and resources cover all the tips and research you need to give strategically — whether you’re looking for the best charities to donate to, the truth about charity overhead, what to consider when choosing a charity, or how to make your giving easier and more intentional (hint: giving pledges!)
Effective altruism
Our connections with effective altruism
Giving What We Can was one of the first organisations to embody ‘effective altruism’ — taking seriously the principle that thinking carefully about how to help often leads to more good than acting solely on impulse or intuition.
However, while effective altruism now encompasses a wide variety of projects and priorities (see #4), Giving What We Can is focused on effective giving — the idea that it’s important to combine head and heart when donating to charity, and that philanthropy, when done with an impact-focused mindset, can have much more of an impact than we might think.
Pledge donation distribution
by cause area (2025)