Transparency
Giving What We Can is committed to transparency in all our work, including our own operations.
On this page, we outline — among other things — how we’re funded, potential conflicts of interest, and our approach to staff pay.
About us
Giving What We Can is a nonprofit with the vision of a world free from preventable suffering or existential risk, where everyone is able to flourish. Towards that end, our mission is to make giving effectively and significantly a cultural norm.
Conceived by Toby Ord and William MacAskill (philosophers at the University of Oxford), Giving What We Can was officially launched in 2009 by Ord, Macaskill, and Bernadette Young, a physician in training at the time and wife to Ord.
Today, our team is managed by a CEO (Sjir Hoeijmakers) who is overseen by our Trustees and Boards of Directors.
As of May 2025, almost everyone in our team has signed the 🔸10% Pledge to give 10% of their income to high-impact programs throughout their lifetime. While this isn’t a requirement to join the team, it reflects our deep commitment to our mission.
How we’re funded
Giving What We Can is funded through a combination of direct donations from members and other individuals, as well as grants from philanthropic foundations. So far, our largest funder has been Open Philanthropy. Here's a more detailed breakdown of our current funding sources:
- Grants from philanthropic foundations. As of early 2025, ~50% of our funding comes from Open Philanthropy. We are not currently funded by any other philanthropic foundations.
- Donations from members and other individuals. As of early 2025, this accounts for ~30% of our funding and comes from direct donations to GWWC, along with donors opting in to support our work when using the donation platform, as illustrated below.
- Accrued interest on funds. As of early 2025, this accounts for ~20% of our income, and is mainly the result of GWWC holding funds until we are able to grant them out to our supported programs in our quarterly grantmaking cycle. This is part of what enables us to operate our donation platform and make grants globally at no costs to donors or recipient programs.
We don't take any fees from donors who use our platform or from organisations we choose to recommend. We're here to help donors do the most good through their giving.
We also have an excess funding policy: if GWWC at any point has more reserves than needed to fund our projected operational expenses for the next two years, we regrant the excess amount to other programs in line with our mission. This is to ensure we only accept donations GWWC is best placed to spend cost-effectively, and don't build up unnecessary financial reserves.
Being largely funded by a single philanthropic foundation provides some advantages compared to relying mainly on individual donors. For example, it means we can dedicate our time to providing the best information to donors on giving elsewhere, rather than needing to spend time fundraising for ourselves. Additionally, being evaluated by an expert with deep knowledge in our area helps ensure we are being held to a high standard.
Yet, having our funding being limited to one or a few key funders carries some risk, which is why we strive to further diversify our funding sources going forward.
Our credibility
We have a commitment to being transparent and open to feedback. Here are some examples of this commitment.
We acknowledge our mistakes
We maintain a page outlining our mistakes. While we believe we have made significant progress towards our mission, we have sometimes fallen short of the standards we have set for ourselves and believe it is important to publicly acknowledge these mistakes so that we can do better in future.
We share the research that underlies our giving recommendations
One of the core ways we help achieve our mission is by providing charity recommendations to help donors maximise their impact. We publish all the research informing these recommendations on our website.
We make it easy to provide feedback on any aspect of our work or leave a complaint
Here's how you can submit feedback or make a complaint.
We evaluate our impact
Our last impact evaluation was published in 2023, and we are committed to publishing these periodically.
We acknowledge potential conflicts of interest
We generally acknowledge potential conflicts of interest when and where relevant (e.g. in our research reports and on our website), and additionally highlight some of the most important ones here:
- Our giving recommendations are informed by our evaluations of charity evaluators and grantmakers. We share a funder — Open Philanthropy — with some of the evaluators we investigate. We outline this (and any other potential) conflict of interest in all our evaluations, and take steps to reduce them when possible.
- Our founders and board members have close relationships to many of the other organisations we work with or support via our donation platform. For example, our co-founder, Will MacAskill, also founded 80,000 Hours.
- Our CEO, Sjir Hoeijmakers:
- Formerly worked at Founders Pledge (one of the evaluators we've previously used to inform our recommendations and may use again in the future).
- Is on the Management Committee of the Founders Pledge Patient Philanthropy Fund (a fund our donation platform supports).
- Two team members based in Australia are employed by Effective Altruism Australia (which our donation platform supports) on a grant from Giving What We Can for the purpose of growing effective giving internationally under the Giving What We Can brand.
We have a policy and procedures for removing members
We have a member removal policy for cases where members are identified as clearly fake accounts, or are nominated for removal due to actions significantly contradicting GWWC's values, mission or code of conduct.
We are transparent about staff remuneration
We share how we approach pay and benefits and publish our salary calculator and policy, including our CEO's pay as an example.