Giving What We Can
Effective Giving Research & Advocacy
Giving What We Can — the nonprofit organisation behind this website and donation platform — is a community of effective givers. We provide the support, community, and information donors need to do the most good with their charitable donations.
What problem is Giving What We Can working on?
There are millions of charities to choose from when donating. And the choice matters — because lives are on the line. Depending on the charity you pick, you could do a little good, or a lot of good (or in some cases, even do harm). How can people know that their donations will have the impact they want?
Giving What We Can was one of the first in a growing network of like-minded organisations focused on effective altruism — the project of using evidence and reason to figure out how to best contribute to helping others, and taking action on that basis.
What does Giving What We Can do?
Giving What We Can (GWWC) inspires donations to the world’s most effective organisations by creating a culture in which people are encouraged to give more, and give more effectively. We do this through:
- Our research and resources, such as our recommended charities and high-impact cause areas to work on.
- Cultivating a community of effective givers through events, newsletters, and our giving pledges.
- Hosting this donation platform to help donors support high-impact charities.
We’re a nonprofit funded by philanthropic donations, and all of our programmes are free.
What evidence is there of Giving What We Can’s effectiveness?
As of 2022, our community members have donated more than $300 million USD to effective organisations, and more than 8,000 people in more than 90 countries have pledged to give a significant portion of their income to effective charities — amounting to more than $3 billion USD in pledged donations.
In our latest impact report, we estimated that an average Giving What We Can Pledge results in about $73,000 USD of donations to effective charities (counterfactually adjusted and time-discounted).
Please note that GWWC does not evaluate individual charities. Our recommendations are based on the research of third-party, impact-focused charity evaluators our research team has found to be particularly well-suited to help donors do the most good per dollar, according to their recent evaluator investigations. Our other supported programs are those that align with our charitable purpose — they are working on a high-impact problem and take a reasonably promising approach (based on publicly-available information).
At Giving What We Can, we focus on the effectiveness of an organisation's work -- what the organisation is actually doing and whether their programs are making a big difference. Some others in the charity recommendation space focus instead on the ratio of admin costs to program spending, part of what we’ve termed the “overhead myth.” See why overhead isn’t the full story and learn more about our approach to charity evaluation.