We've finished up the 2020 giving season with our biggest year on record!
Welcome to our 1,787 new pledges (1,008 of The Pledge, 779 of Try Giving) and thank you to all of you who've continued to use your income to help improve the lives of others
We hit some incredible milestones in 2020: 5,000 members of The Pledge, $200M in reported donations, and $2B pledged in total.
So far our members donated more than $16 million in 2020 alone!
If you've not yet reported your 2020 donations, we encourage you to do so.
Reporting using the pledge dashboard gives you a convenient way to track whether you're fulfilling your pledge. It also helps us understand how much and where our members are giving. Your personal donation records are private, but seeing everyone's donations in aggregate gives us a better sense of how much this community has accomplished!
Highlights from 2020
Our 1,787 new members came from a wide range of sources, including 80,000 Hours, various podcasts, and referrals by friends and family (a great example of how vital member advocacy is).
Our top viewed resources included the How Rich Am I Calculator, Giving Recommendations, and the classic essay Famine, Affluence and Morality by Peter Singer.
Our top new blog posts included the video message to our 5,000 members, the member profile of Arvind Raghavan, and the announcement of our Company Pledge.
A significant number of members shared their stories which in turn inspired others to take a pledge (here are some ideas for how you can also advocate for effective giving).
A BIG thanks to all of you who took new pledges, donated to effective charities, shared your effective giving stories, attended our events, and made an effort to learn more about effective giving. It has been so inspiring and heartwarming to see so many of you taking significant steps to make the world a better place.
🙌 👏 🎉
Upcoming Events
- February 6: GWWC Meetup (Americas/Oceania)
- February 7: GWWC Meetup (Europe/Asia)
- February 17: Effective Giving Open Forum (Europe/Americas)
- March 20-21: EA Global: Reconnect
- October 29-31: EA Global: London 2021
News & Updates
Community
- Olympian Marcus Daniell takes the Giving What We Can Pledge and founds High Impact Athletes.
- Juan Magasich explores why he decides to donate each and every month.
- Ben Chugg writes about 2020 and how we are at an unprecedented time in history where we can do something about the abundance of suffering around us.
- John Yan shares why he took the Giving What We Can pledge.
- Learn Effective Altruism is a new podcast series by 80,000 Hours.
- Company Pledge member Ida Josefiina has launched SANE, a digital community and email newsletter exploring the different forces shaping our societies and future.
- Stanford EA wrote how it's grown their group during the pandemic, and gave advice for growing your group too.
- The Centre for Effective Altruism has released their 2020 Q4 update, strategy as of 2021, as well as a post about things CEA is not doing.
- The Centre for Effective Altruism (CEA) is accepting expressions of interest from community members who may want to organize an in-person EA Global x (EAGx) conference in the second half of 2021.
Giving
- Our Giving Recommendations page has been updated for 2021 with inclusions from various charity evaluators, funds, and regranting organisations.
- Vox has released a Guide to Charitable Giving email series that helps readers do the most good with their donations.
- Elon Musk's philanthropy faces scrutiny now as he becomes the richest person on Earth, and Vox's Kelsey Piper and Sigal Samuel suggest how he could donate some of that wealth. His tweet sparked discussion of effective philanthropy with responses from us, Peter Singer (of The Life You Can Save), and Dustin Moskovitz (of Open Philanthropy).
Causes
Global Health & Development
- France is launching a development innovation fund chaired by Esther Duflo.
- Evidence Action launched an accelerator, aiming to scale up new interventions.
- GiveWell released a report on a new standout charity: Precision Agriculture for Development.
- Family Empowerment Media (incubated by Charity Entrepreneurship) posted about their plans to improve lives through family planning initiatives.
Animal Welfare
- Animal Charity Evaluators has released a comparison chart of its top recommended and standout charities.
- Companies are pledging to sell more plant-based meat and dairy.
- In '7 Big Wins For Farmed Animal Welfare In 2020' Lewis Bollard tells the good news stories you might have missed about farmed animal welfare in 2020.
- Leah Edgerton and Manja Gärtner were interviewed on the Hear This Idea Podcast about animal charity evaluation.
Long-Term Future
- Global Challenges have released a poll tracking attitudes to global catastrophic risks and international cooperation.
- Martin Rees believes the 21st century will be a crucial test of humanity's ability to manage a wide range of existential threats.
- There are new efforts to develop improving institutional decision-making as a cause area within and beyond the effective altruism movement.
- Owen Cotton-Barratt reflects on what longtermism recommend doing in all sorts of everyday situations.
- Founders Pledge makes the case for longtermism and provides supporting donation recommendations.
- Two critiques on strong longtermism were published on the EA Forum by Vaden Masrani and Ben Chugg (each with many responses in the comments).
Climate Change
- Our World in Data shows how without cheap, safe, low-carbon energy sources at scale we are stuck between high greenhouse gas emissions and energy poverty.
- Ann Garth argues that effective altruism should focus more on climate change.
- Founders Pledge Climate Change Fund is now available on EA Funds.
- Alex posted a critique of the new climate change charity evaluator Giving Green on the EA Forum, Giving Green wrote a response, and Johannes Ackva wrote further critiques.
Share Our Ideas
A great way to multiply your impact is to simply tell people about effective giving. Here are just a few ways you can help advocate for effective giving:
- Update your profile picture on Facebook to include our photo frame
- Link to us from your website, social media, blog, email signature
- Run an event or give a talk about effective giving (e.g. at work or school, religious or community group, book or social club).
Useful Links
- Review our giving recommendations.
- Report your donations with your pledge dashboard.
- Join other members in the Giving What We Can Community Facebook group.
- Find more ways to get involved with Giving What We Can and effective altruism.
- Discuss effective giving and effective altruism on the EA Forum.
For more news and articles, you can follow us on Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn, or subscribe to the EA Newsletter.
Do you have questions about the pledge, Giving What We Can, or effective altruism in general? Check out our FAQ page, or contact us directly.
This is the online edition of our January 2020 email newsletter (subscribe here).