Note that just because a staff member has not written a section for this document does not necessarily mean they are not donating this year. See, for example, Still Donating Half by Julia Wise. Also, some staff might comment later with their final allocations.
Staff are listed in alphabetical order.
Agnes Stenlund
I’ll allocate around 90% of my donations to animal welfare this year—likely through a fund, but will think some more about it.
I plan to donate around 10%, a bit more than in the last couple of years (I scaled back slightly when interest rates and inflation went up, to keep a buffer for unexpected expenses and to give myself room for riskier career moves).
For the small tax-deductible portion available in Sweden (I think it’s the smallest in Europe and limited to global health organisations), I plan to direct that towards AMF.
Alex Rahl-Kaplan
Status: I’m pretty uncertain about a lot of things – I’d probably like to talk to more professionals soon. I don’t know if I necessarily endorse my “donation strategy;” in fact, I think I’m pretty confused about what the best thing to do is. By the way, feel free to message me with comments/advice (though I may be delayed in responding – sorry!).
How much: I’m donating to meet my pledge over the past few years (I had saved some previous years both because I wanted to maximize tax benefits and because I was a bit less sure about my next career steps at the time).
Where: I’m mostly donating to my Donor-Advised Fund this year. I’m uncertain about a few empirical things and some personal value judgements, so I’m waiting until I can clarify this (both slowly over time and through focused sprints). In the meantime, my contributions are committed and invested.
- Some high-level uncertainties:
- How do I think technology might shape society and the economy, and what can my donations do to mitigate my highest priority risks? What do I consider my highest priority risks?
- Where do I think my values bottom out? How much does welfarist hedonism encapsulate my values? Where do I have the wrong beliefs about what my values are, and where do I behave incongruently given my values?
- A little bit of how I am thinking about this:
- Some 80,000 Hours’ podcast episodes have been informative, but I still want to reflect more when I have some more time.
- Rethink Priorities’ tools and sequences have really informed my recent thinking. The Moral Weights Project, CURVE sequence, and Moral Parliament Tool have been interesting to explore, and I’d like to revisit them before making major decisions.
Amy Labenz
I took the GWWC pledge in 2016.
This year I’m directing the majority of my pledge-related giving to CEA via salary sacrifice. I will probably donate more before the end of the year and am leaning towards LTFF again, but I am not sure.
My husband Nathan also selected a few AI-related organizations where we directed donations or value-driven investments.
We also give some money to friends when they are fundraising, Earnie’s school, etc., which I enjoy doing but don’t really think about as part of my pledge. This also isn’t very much money. As with last year, we are also sponsoring someone to study in the United States. I don’t really think of this as counting towards my pledge, but I’m happy I’m doing it.
Angelina Li
I’ve been a GWWC pledger since 2016. Starting last year, I decided to pay more attention to my donations again after not prioritizing them as much in 2022. I donated ~17.5% of my pre-tax income last year to a mix of animal + GCR orgs, and I think I'll manage ~15-20% this year.
For the first time, I'm combining my donations with my partner (who’s also a pledger), and for tax reasons, we’re bunching our donations & putting money into a shared donor advised fund before the end of the calendar year. This means we’ll decide on an amount to donate now, but will wait until early next year to decide where it goes. We have previously donated to a slightly different mix of cause areas, so we are still figuring out how to approach this.
Arthur Malone
After pursuing many low-probability impact bets and volunteer opportunities, 2023 was the first year in my life that I technically earned an income above the US poverty-line. I’d internally committed to signing the 10% Pledge whenever that became the case, and did so in November. I donated the proportionate amount for 2023 after signing, but I'll defer my 2024 donations to 2025 to maximize tax benefits (2024 earnings earmarked for donations have been kept in a separate account and will be donated in January).
My cause prioritization weighs GCR-risk most highly, and meta-EA second to that, but I believe that my work at CEA is sufficiently focused on those areas that I use my donations as a hedge. I intend for my 2025 donations to follow the following split:
- 30% to GiveDirectly: I recognize that my work in EA has many speculative elements, so choosing to donate via the most direct welfare-improving path is symbolic and personally satisfying
- 45% to GWWC’s Global Health and Wellbeing Fund: I believe in the power of social reinforcement and normalization of donation, so I think donating via the GWWC portal can help provide evidence to inform others.
- 10% reserved for high-impact opportunities that I believe I have specific knowledge about that would have me weight them higher than other people/organizations in the EA ecosystem
- 5% to GWWC’s Effective Animal Advocacy Fund
- 5% to GFI
- 5% to GWWC
Catherine Low
Last year I didn’t donate, intending to spend my 2023 donation budget in 2024.
In April this year, I donated 2023’s 11% to EA Aotearoa New Zealand’s Effective Giving project (which allows Kiwi donors to a wide range of EA-aligned charities - now across many cause areas). It does feel a bit odd or self serving to be doing this because I co-founded this initiative (although it is WAY better now than it was when I was working on it), which means I'm very likely to be biased. My reasoning was:
- EAIF, which had provided funding for the previous few years (so grateful!) had changed their focus in such a way that they weren't supporting effective giving organisations as much anymore. AIM and GWWC had created a program to support new effective giving organisations. However, as an established organisation, the NZ project wasn't eligible for the program. So, it looked like it might be falling through the cracks.
- I have very good knowledge of the project’s impact and fully trust the expertise and judgement of the person running it.
- I’m now a tax resident of NZ again, so I get 33% of this donation back
I was also planning to donate my whole 2024 budget to the same org, but they've since received other substantial donations, so I’m still keeping my eye out for other opportunities, especially where my knowledge of the space makes it much easier for me to be able to assess or donate than institutional donors.
For much of this year, I have also been taking a lower salary than offered by CEA - recently going up from 10 - 17% salary sacrifice as the offered pay rate has increased. I treat my 10% GWWC pledge as in addition to this, in part because I like donating, and in part, because I might not have donated to CEA if I didn’t work there (I think CEA is a great org, but there are lots of other great orgs to choose), so it doesn’t quite fit the initial intention of my pledge.
Charlotte Darnell
TLDR: I signed the trial pledge this year and decided to direct my giving to the Animal Welfare Fund (70%) and to Family Empowerment Media (30%).
I felt a bit nervous writing this because I have thought far less about where to donate than I endorse, but donating rather than procrastinating seems right to me. I've previously tried to hedge (career: more x-risk, diet: vegan, donations: global health). This year I'm leaning more animal welfare.I've felt hesitant to give to funds before especially if I don't feel excited about some grants they've made, but I feel excited about the animal welfare fund at the moment.
The Humane League's recent fundraising call caught my attention - it was really compelling, and I nearly donated my pledge there. But I suspected they'd meet their target through other donors because it was so compelling (which they did), and I realized I should probably try harder to use my donations for things that are less of a compelling sell. I can imagine plenty of coordination problems and downsides, but I think fund managers are better positioned than I am to evaluate these kind of tradeoffs, identify promising opportunities, and navigate coordination problems.
Outside my pledge, I make some smaller donations locally, like helping people experiencing homelessness. I've also contributed to some 'GoFundMe' campaigns for individuals fleeing Gaza, working on the principle that direct cash transfers can be very effective. That said, I feel extremely uncertain about the most impactful way to help in this crisis and would welcome suggestions.
Emma Richter
I took the 10% pledge in 2022 to donate 10% of my income over my working lifetime.
This year and giving season, I’m primarily donating to animal welfare charities and global health and development charities (with a budget set aside for donating to other things as I’m inclined to or feel like, for things like the donation election or charities in my hometown).
This year, in particular, I’ve deferred to other people’s assessments of which charities are particularly effective in which cause areas.
Jordan Pieters
I took the 10% pledge as a student but have not yet consistently donated 10% of my income. This is probably the first year I’ll end up getting close to that. My cause prioritisation is a constant work in progress, but I’m currently leaning quite heavily towards animal welfare. I’m particularly concerned about invertebrate and wild animal welfare and given that Good Ventures has ceased funding these areas, I’ll likely distribute my donations between some combination of SWP, WAI and Arthopoda Foundation. I may also consider the EA Animal Welfare Fund since I trust the leadership and grantmakers and I think the case for giving to funds is quite strong.
JP Addison
🔶 I’ve continued to salary sacrifice for my donations this year. I continue to believe the overhead advantages are very significant. An extra 50%[1] truly counterfactual in donations is compelling to me. I also feel happy that I’m putting my money where my mouth is and support the program that I ask our funders to support.
- [1] According to last-year!me, given some assumptions.
My aspiration is that we as a community will increase funding to levels that mean I should go back to donating to niche causes.
Niko Bjork
I’m currently donating 5% of my post-tax income, primarily to orgs in the global health and wellbeing space as a lot of my work at CEA supports longtermist causes. My monthly donations are currently split as follows:
- 40%: Give Directly (Rory Stewart’s talk at EAG London 2024 helped me better understand how awesome GiveDirectly’s work is)
- 20%: AIM Incubated Charities Fund
- 20%: Lead Exposure Elimination Project
- 20%: Common Ground Meditation Center, a local, non-EA charity.
Ollie Base
I took the 10% pledge back in 2017.
I donate monthly instead of waiting for larger donation opportunities. I don’t think this is the most effective way to donate (see e.g. Trevor’s tweet thread), but I’ve historically found it stressful to figure out what to do at the end of the year, and at least once procrastinated for several months about making donations and lost track of what I wanted to give. I am an imperfect EA on this front and I embrace that.
For most of the year, my monthly donations were split as follows:
- 45% EA Infrastructure
- 35% Long-term Future
- 10% Animal Welfare Fund
- 10% Global Health & Development Fund
For the last couple of months, I switched to 75% Wild Animal Initiative (largely because of this post) and 25% EA Infrastructure Fund.
I recently formed the view that people interested in supporting community-building work should donate to whoever helped them, so I’m now also exploring whether I can donate to my university group (EA Warwick).
Note: I don’t think that much about my donations, since I think I produce much more impact via my work at CEA.
Sam Robinson
I donated 10% since I started earning an income at 16. I wasn't by any stretch a 16-year-old EA: I wanted to work in the city long-term and actively thought ill of vegans (I'm glad to say neither of these is still the case!). However, it just seemed kind of obvious that I can afford to donate a little of what I earn and that others need it more. I then officially took the full GWWC pledge in 2023.
For a while now, I've been saving my donations, and I think it is unlikely that I'll end up sending them off before the turn of the calendar year. I currently have around £7,000 in a separate account, accruing interest while I wait for a unique opportunity. It seems very plausible that working at CEA and interacting with lots of people who care an unusual amount of cost-effectiveness, I will soon find myself in a position where I have inside knowledge that others don't that will allow me to counterfactually have an outsized impact. For example, when I learnt of the THL matched funding appeal, I contacted the organiser to inform them I'd be happy to donate if they didn't meet their target: they did, so I didn't donate. I'm excited to (hopefully soon) find one of these opportunities and provide a big counterfactual contribution!
- I'm not married to this method of donating, and I would love someone to try to advocate for a different course of action if they feel strongly!
Sarah Cheng
If you count voluntarily taking a reduced salary as something like a donation to CEA, I did that this year. My budgeted salary increased at some point this year, and I took that opportunity to decrease my take-home pay further. I haven’t taken the 10% Pledge (and I’m somewhat unlikely to), but I believe this would cover that amount.
I have some recurring donations set up, so I don’t need to think about them:
- I don’t usually make time during the year to re-evaluate my donations, so I tend to rely on EA Funds a fair amount. Most of my donations there go to LTFF and AWF.
- I think I like insects an unusual amount, and insect welfare must be quite hard to fundraise for, so I support the Insect Institute and Arthropoda Foundation.
I’ve probably missed some donations from this list, and I will probably donate more before the end of the year.
Shelby McIntyre
Last year, I gave away 5% of my income via the Giving What We Can platform, of which 32% went to GiveWell, 31% to the EA Animal Welfare Fund, 32% to the Long-Term Future Fund, and 5% to the EA Infrastructure Fund.
I have started working in Effective Altruism as of this year, and now that my day-to-day work mostly focuses on longtermism, I do not plan to donate money to longtermist funds. I expect my distribution will be 45% to GiveWell, 45% to the EA Animal Welfare Fund, and 10% to the EA Infrastructure Fund.
I also recently took a 10% GWWC trial pledge. I’ve been donating to EA charities since 2017, and I’m not entirely sure why it took me so long to jump from 5% to 10%, but it feels really good to be doing it!
Two side notes:
- I helped a friend and her partner who needed several thousand dollars of cash to deal with a personal problem. We agreed that instead of paying that money back to me, they’ll pay it forward to a highly effective charity. (They’re not very familiar with effective altruism, so the agreement is that I’ll send them some information about effective giving, they’ll do the research, and then we’ll agree on a charity.) I’m not sure whether this should count as my donation or theirs, e.g. for the purpose of the 10% pledge.
- Historically, I have also given small amounts (like $50-$200) to non-EA charities that are wide in scale and that have done something for me personally (e.g. Khan Academy). I’m no longer doing this because I feel like I have paid back what I’ve gotten from those organizations, but I’m mentioning this here in the interest of sharing my thought processing.
Toby Tremlett
I've been doing a trial pledge this year, after doing it unofficially the year before. I'm not sure how close I am to signing a full pledge - it's an aspiration for me, but it'd feel inauthentic if I hadn't worked out my budgets properly first.
I gave £2000 (£2500 with GiftAid) to the last-minute call for funding for the Humane League’s legal campaign in the UK. I'm really happy about this one, especially because it looks like the campaign kind of succeeded. Being able to see these last minute calls for funding when they pop up is one of my favourite unexpected benefits of spending so much time on the Forum. Also, I'm really proud to be part of a community which filled this particular funding gap within a week of it being posted on the Forum.
To put my money where my mouth is (and because I believe my case for donating to the donation election), I gave $500 to the EA Forum's Donation Election Fund. I didn't give more partly because it wouldn't be Giftaided - we'll see if there is some way to get around that issue next year.
The rest of my pledge amount will probably go to a fund. At the moment, I’m likely to give to the EA Animal Welfare Fund, but I’ll think about it more before the end of the year.