The frontpage currently has a banner up where people can leave a heart with a comment when they have finished their donations. The comments will be cross-posted here.
However, you can also post on this thread any time, especially with longer explanations of where you have given this year, and why.
Giving What We Can tells me that I have donated $27,846 this year, which together with my donations from last year brings me to a total of ~78k donated, comfortably ahead of my pledge of 10% (which would amount to ~12k). I donated less than last year due to a move and a few personal reasons but aspire to bring my donations up again to something closer to 50% of my income.
Here's where my donations went[1]:
Shoutout to the team at @Giving What We Can for providing these neat graphics, I've found this a) super motivating and b) very time-saving compared to how I tracked my donations last year!
I work on AI Governance (and support a number of field- and community building projects) so most of my donations go to GHD. I have since added a recurring donation to the Humane League and am considering adding more animal welfare charities to my donation portfolio. "Others" is mostly AW charities atm.
Donated modest amounts this year to the Against Malaria Foundation, GiveDirectly, and The Humane League.
The amounts were quite modest this year, as I have been too busy taking care of the baby to earn much in the way of income this year.
I've previously given to AMF and GD as my go to charities, but after the Debate Week, decided to add THL, as I was influenced by the persuasiveness of the arguments made by the Animal Welfare side.
This year have donated:
Glad to finish up with a slight increase vs last year.
Organizations:
Thanks all for working hard on the important stuff...
Giving What We Can, Good Food Institute
Hive, Fish Welfare Initiative, FarmKind
This year I started montlhly donations to ACE recommended charities fund and Anima International + made some individual donations to THL, Hive and others. I'll be switching to Rethink Priorities in the new year.
Lovely to hear that you are considering RP for your donations next year. I work there in the development team.
What convinced you that RP might be a good option for your donations, if you want to share?
During the EA forum voting week I did some research into the orgs that were listed and I was impressed by RP's detailed doc on what they'd use the funding for; I hadn't been aware of the work you're doing in the field of animal welfare. I care for invertebrate welfare as both the scale and neglectedness of the problem are enormous, so the projects listed got me excited.
Keep up the great work!
Good Food Institute and ACE Recommended Charities! This is my first time ever donating but I've set up a monthly donation to these—feels very good to be able do something concrete toward solving these problems that I care about.
Gave ~50% of my income to my DAF. I will probably disburse it mostly to AI Safety things which make sense on <= 5 year AGI timelines.
$3500 to Animal Charity Evaluators
$1000 to GiveWell
$500 to Direct Action Everywhere
$ 480 to GiveDirectly
At the risk of being a bit of a downer during a Celebration, I'd like to create a little room to acknowledge people who haven't felt in a position to give as much as they had hoped / expected / planned for due to life circumstances. I'm unfortunately in that camp this year.[1] So I would like to express empathy with anyone who is in the same boat and feeling sad and/or guilty about it. If we are giving what we can (not in the capitalized sense), sometimes we aren't in a position to give as much and have to radically accept that.
This is due to two separate family-of-origin situations that are consuming a lot of my financial and other resources to mitigate. One of them -- involving a terminally-ill parent -- is also why I've been less active on-Forum as of late.
Center on long term risk
This year I donated to the Arthropoda Foundation!
CE Incubated Charities Fund & RP
I donated to:
Where they're approximately ordered by the amount donated.
€30,000 to The Humane League via Effektiv Spenden (my company set up a campaign page: https://effektiv-spenden.org/knitters-for-animals
Just finished- it turns out I had less left on my 10% trial pledge than I thought, so I gave a bit extra.
Most went to the Humane League UK appeal earlier this year, I gave $500 to the EA Forum Donation Election, and I just gave £400 to the EA Animal Welfare Fund.
PS- Are donations tax deductible in the UK (Besides giftaid)? I've been operating on the assumption that they aren't, but if they were, I could give more.
I think the short answer is 'depends what you mean?'. Longer answer:
Thank you! That's really helpful. I also just saw Will's post, which has also been useful.
Here’s a summary of UK tax treatment of charitable donations. As I understand it, donations are sometime deductible, and sometimes eligible for gift aid, but never both.
GWWC has a somewhat complicated treatment of gift aid; you can count gift aid towards your pledge, but
Probably Good, 80k, ACE, GiveWell, Charity Entrepreneurship
Humane League (UK)
This year I increased my giving to roughly 20% of my income, because this is the limit for tax-deductibility in Germany.
I divided the donation budget rougly as follows:
- 40% to Humane League UK for the Frankenchickens legal case
- 30% to Longterm future via Effektiv Spenden's fund
- 20% to Animal welfare via Effektiv Spenden's animal welfare fund
- 10% to Arthropoda foundation
AMF, Givedirectly, SWP, Aquatic Life Institute, Arthropoda Foundation
I split 20% of my salary (roughly) equally between Giving What We Can, Family Empowerment Media, and the Effective Altruism Animal Welfare Fund.
Longview Emerging Challenges Fund, LessWrong, Wild Animal Initiative
I donate 10% in the form of a salary sacrifice to Hive. In addition, I regularly donate ~10% spread across other Meta Organizations and Expert-managed funds in the animal space (roughly in order): EA AWF, AAC, Rethink Priorities, and the ACE Movement Grant. I have also made some smaller donations throughout the year to opportunities that I find promising and hope to look further into next year, namely AI for Animals, Animetrics and the Profit for Good Initiative.
I donated the majority of my yearly donations to a campaign for AMF I did through Ayuda Efectiva for my wedding. The goal was to promote effective donations in my family and friends. I also donated a small amount to the EA Forum election because I think it is good for democratic reasons to allow the community to decide where to allocate some funds.
Most of my donations were forgone payments for hiring rounds at organizations I consider among the most promising at reducing risks from AI (e.g. Horizon and MIRI).
EA Animal Welfare Fund
AI: MATS, CAIS, IAPS
Animal welfare: EA Animal Welfare Fund, THL, Animals Aotearoa
I donated most to the animal welfare fund of 'doneer effectief' and some to their global health and wellbeing fund.
This year, I’m giving 20% of my income—double my 🔸10% Pledge.
I believe that growing the total amount of money directed toward high-impact charities is a crucial bottleneck. As part of this, I’m giving 20% of my donation budget to Giving What We Can. In my view, our multiplier at GWWC is exceptionally high, and I’ve written more about why I think effective giving organizations could do with more support here. While I’d love to give to other effective giving organizations, my role as Effective Giving Global Coordinator and Incubator means that I see value in avoiding any appearance of bias that could complicate my work.
Another clear decision for me this year is giving 20% to AIM’s Incubated Charities Fund. I’ve had the privilege of working closely with AIM, and I’ve been consistently impressed by the rigor and ambition of their work. Their track record is very strong and I think that they are likely to continue incubating exceptionally high impact charities.
For the rest of my giving, I’ve leaned on recommendations from Giving What We Can’s evaluator reports, filtered through my own values and priorities:
Outside of my 10% pledge, I’ll give to Giving Green’s Grantmaking Fund to offset my annual carbon footprint and to a variety of animal welfare charities, inspired by FarmKind’s Compassion Calculator, to offset the harm caused by my (minimal) animal product consumption as a vegetarian.
Sentience Institute (research on digital minds)
The Humane League, EA Animal Welfare Fund, GiveWell. Amounts were small but I have something planned for next year...
givewell, all grants fund
Effective Altruism Poland
GiveWell
LTFF, LessWrong.
AMF
New Incentives
https://flightfromperfection.com/postrat-philanthropy.html
To start EA Purdue
EA Australia and LTFF. Reflections at https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/7FufeFhDE7Fp9i3fr/five-years-of-donating
Animal society
Best donation year so far (both in absolute and relative terms). Proudly EA!
Qualia Research Institute, plus some pro bono time for a project at the intersection of law and AI.
MSI Reproductive Choices.
Because through family planning it can shift births from sub-Saharan Africa to circumstances with lower child mortality, probably saving the life of a kid under 5 years old for less than $1,000.
I love this tiny hearts on pink banner aesthetic. Especially in the middle of winter where I'm at.
I'm on a pause with donations for some personal and financial reasons, but if I was on the fence or was procrastinating, this absolutely would have pushed me to do so.
I saw the donation celebration banner and I felt a bit disappointed that I didn't donate this year and wouldn't be able to put myself on it until I realized I could just look up Charity Box and send them ¥100 in a few minutes so I did just that
I haven't quite finished donating because waiting on a final input on whether rand actually needs funding but I expect my final donations to look more or less like below. I don't really believe in spreading this amount of funding on the object level but it's more fun and allows me to tell my friends that I think these issues are all important. I gave about 10% of my income.
RAND- earmarked for emerging risks
Chicago growth project (YIMBY/good governance PAC)
ARI
Horizon
rethink
ACE
Givewell unrestricted
I probably won't be donating again for at least a year or two because I left my trading job to start a startup—happy new year.
GW top charities
For harmony
This year I donated my time, next year probably my money as well?
I donated to a donor lottery, as described at How I saved 1 human life (in expectation) without overthinking it
To Central Texas Food Bank.
To AMF, as part of this yearly fundraiser I run https://www.againstmalaria.com/FundraiserGroup.aspx?FundraiserID=9191
This year I donated monthly
1. Through GiEffektivt to their top recommended charities
2. to Nähtamatud Loomad
I also "donated" about 300-400 hours of my time to EA community building.
This year, I gave to (listed in approximate chronological order):
1. The Armed Forces of Ukraine (via United24, the Ukrainian government's official fundraising platform).
2. Nähtamatud Loomad
3. EA Estonia
I signed the Giving What We Can Trial Pledge in mid-December. To fulfil my donation pledge for the year (a small amount, since I signed when there were only two weeks left in the year), I donated to:
4. Animal Charity Evaluators Recommended Charity Fund.
I’m still using donation multipliers to increase the amount of funds given/directed to orgs: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/BFbNymbn4ukmKWHrX/donation-multiplier-stacking-directing-1-27x-to-6-6x-more
So I’m lined up to give $950 to the Evidence Action donation match campaign https://supporters.evidenceaction.org/page/2024match?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=giving_season
And I’m doing it on a new credit card with a $200 cash back bonus.
Then my remaining holiday donation of $550 will be split between the GiveWell All Grants Fund & the Giving Multiplier matching fund (https://givingmultiplier.org/matching) But I’m holding off until January to make this one on the off chance tax deductions will be more viable next year.
GiveDirectly
First (half) year of being introduced to EA, super exciting to finally know that my donations have an impact :).
Hence I started this year very low with about 2% of my pre-tax income monthly to a local animal shelter, not knowing about EA.
Since August, I started my 10% pledge and donate to the German "center" Effektiv Spenden with an even spread for their three funds for global health, climate change and animal welfare, and a very small part to the platform directly.
On top of that I gave away 50% of bonuses I will receive beginning of next year for tax purposes early, that's 4200€ evenly spread between Against Malaria Foundation, Hellen Keller Int. and GiveDirectly. Global Health still has the strongest pull for me and I personally feel the strongest connection to GiveDirectly for how unique it is and how transparent their process is. Really makes you feel your impact and I like the idea of also improving lives dramatically instead of "just" keeping people alive under bad conditions, if that makes any sense. Some perspective for people on top of just getting by, if you will.
That being said, I will definitely think more about what causes to donate to. Especially democracy initiatives are something I am increasingly considering with the current situation in Europe, but maybe that will be on top of my 10% since I really don't know how effective that is and I might be a bit more ego-centric here wanting to do this locally.
Another "pain point" I will think about more is animal welfare - I read from many vegans that donating to it when not being vegan is hypocritical and I really get their point. Since I don't see myself becoming vegan in the near future, I might also drop that support since I'm apparently not really behind the cause. But I will have to think about this a bit more. Maybe combining it with Climate Change by supporting The Good Food Institute or something like that, I'm really not sure.
Lots of things to think about next year.
Could you provide some examples of people who have said that this is hypocritical? I’ve never seen anyone in the EA community say this, and if they did, they’d be wrong. There are plenty of non-vegan EAs who donate to animal welfare.
I haven't engaged with this topic much with relations to EA, this was more in a vegan context several years ago so that I don't have specific sources in mind off the top of my head. But it's typically in the direction of "It's like someone holding slaves while donating money against slavery"; or arguing that there is no such thing as merciful killing, so that just improving conditions is meaningless if we still hold them in cages and breed them just to eat/exploit them. Like kicking dogs for fun and then doing things to "kick less dogs" instead of stopping altogether, etc.
So it's still stuck in my head as a hypocritical action from me, redirecting money from other causes to one I don't even personally live up to. I can imagine seeing more nuanced takes in an EA context, hence I want to read up on this more.
Hey Christoph, I think it would be a real shame if you let not helping some amount of animals through diet change stop you from helping any animals at all - especially when you can actually help far more animals though donating than you can through diet change. Making being vegan the price of admission to being a part of the solution to factory farming is a sure fire way to ensure that we never solve this problem. Far more helpful is to allow everyone to do what they’re willing to do to solve it, regardless of their diet.
I don’t think the animals who would experience drastically less suffering because of your donations care whether you’re being hypocritical in the eyes of some. Those animals, and I, think that you and the world are far better off if you eat meat and donate to help animals than if you just eat meat ❤️
By the way, we’ve made a tool just for people like you, to figure out how much you’d need to donate to do as much good for animals as going vegan (https://www.farmkind.giving/compassion-calculator). If you want to do the same amount of net good as doing vegan, you can offset your meat consumption twofold
Very happy to talk this topic through with you some more if you’re interested as I’d hate to lose you as animal donor for this reason
As a non-vegan, I noticed myself becoming at least somewhat more aware of my dietary consumption choices after pulling the trigger on my first animal-welfare donation (and likely because of doing so). I don't have a great explanation of why, but it might be worth seeing if you experience the same effect.
Aclu, habitat for humanity