Our pledge
9,363 members of Giving What We Can have made a public pledge to give a meaningful portion of their income to effective charities.
The Pledge to Give
"I recognise that I can use part of my income to do a significant amount of good. Since I can live well enough on a smaller income, I pledge that from __ until __ I shall give __ to whichever organisations can most effectively use it to improve the lives of others, now and in the years to come. I make this pledge freely, openly, and sincerely."
If this opportunity inspires you, we invite you to join our community of people who have taken a pledge to donate a meaningful portion of their incomes to improving the lives of others.
What is The Pledge?
The Giving What We Can Pledge is a public commitment to give a percentage of your income or wealth to organisations that can most effectively help others. You choose the charities and report and track your giving on your personal pledge dashboard. We’ll show you your giving history, connect you with others who have pledged to give what they can to make a concrete difference in the world, and report on our impact as a global community of people committed to creating a better world.
Use our pledge recommendation tool to help you consider what pledge might be right for you.
Our Pledges
The Giving What We Can Pledge
Donate at least 10% of income until retirement. Choose to factor in your wealth if that makes sense for you.
This optional component of the Giving What We Can Pledge involves choosing to give the greater of 10% of income or a custom percentage of wealth each year.
The Trial Pledge
Donate any percentage of your income (or wealth). You choose how much, and how long you want to give for. We recommend setting a time when you’ll re-evaluate taking the full Giving What We Can Pledge.
The Further Pledge
Donate everything above a fixed baseline of what you can comfortably live on.
The Company Pledge
Donate 10% of company profits.
All of our pledges mean a commitment to giving effectively.
What does it mean to give effectively?
The best charities can be significantly (even 100x!) more impactful than average. Since we have limited resources, and the scale of the world’s problems is vast, it makes sense to find and donate to the organisations where our dollar can go furthest. Donating $1 to one of the very best charities is like donating $100 to an average one – we can simply do more with less.
Learn more about effective giving
Why pledge?
Hear from our members about why they pledged and what advice they have for you if you’re considering pledging!
Why Akhil was motivated to pledge
“I think it’s incredibly valuable to make a commitment to something that you think is important. I think that arguably there might be times in my life…where I might not be able to make this 10% commitment every year but having that as my goal and aspiration every year was something that I thought was really important to do.”
Catherine’s thoughts on joining the Giving What We Can community
“I found it really fulfilling to be part of a community, of a whole bunch of people trying to do the most good with their resources…It feels like being part of an amazing mission and that’s so much more fulfilling. So that community is really important for me.”
We find a pledge helps for three main reasons:
- Commitment: Making public commitments helps us live up to our values and stick with the goals we may otherwise let slide.
- Community: Joining a community provides us with support and advice that helps us to follow through with our commitments to help others.
- Culture: Taking a public pledge helps inspire others to follow our example. Together we can forge a world in which giving effectively and significantly is a cultural norm.