SoGive's tools for setting philanthropy strategy

By Sanjay, SoGive @ 2025-11-16T10:02 (+21)

These materials may be helpful for donors who are setting their philanthropy strategy. 

  1. This online philanthropy strategy tool asks you a few questions to help you select worldviews to include in your giving.
  2. Template philanthropy strategy document, which you can populate -- ideally after using the tool.

It would be great to see people using these tools and providing feedback on them. You can provide feedback by messaging me (Sanjay) on this forum (or any other way, if you already have my contact details).

A huge thanks to Spencer E (who left SoGive to work at GWWC) and the other SoGive staff members who've been instrumental in laying the groundwork for this.

It may be a useful exercise for donors who are sympathetic to worldview diversification. 

The questions asked by the survey, and the analysis done

Questions asked

The survey focuses on the two areas that we at SoGive consider to be the most material.

(1) cause/worldview selection

(2) timing of donations (aka give now/give later); and the associated investment considerations

For each of the questions, the survey includes a summary of the considerations that we consider to be most relevant, to help the user make better decisions.

(1) Worldview selection 

The survey asks the user two trade-off questions 

1a) How many chicken lives improved are equivalent to one life saved

1b) how many future lives enabled are equivalent to one child's life saved today

(2) Timing of donations

2a) The survey asks users to choose between (a) a more patient approach such as a capital preserving endowment or a patient philanthropy approach which aims to grow the capital and (b) spending down the funds within a finite time period.

2b) If somebody asks users whether they want to take a strategic approach to investment (ie selecting assets which might provide strong return, considering the level of impacts they can have through their investment decision making)

Analysis and results section 

Based on the responses to the moral weights, the survey recommends a weighting between long-termism, animals and global health & well-being.

Finding a suitable set of weightings is a nuanced affair that requires judgement. Ultimately if you were to simply "shut up and calculate", you wouldn't employ a worldview diversification approach at all, but rather put 100% of your donations into one bucket.

The actual figures we employed constituted a compromise between the numbers that we considered to be "theoretically correct" and a dose of pragmatism. For example, under most people's moral weights, their philanthropy should be heavily focused on supporting animals by for example, ending factory farming. However, after many years of experience of working directly with donors and surveying a wide range of donors about their moral weights, we understand that most people are not ready to bite that bullet straight away. 

The matrix to determine this in this spreadsheet.

Given these nuances, the tool encourages major donors to seek further support in determining a set of weightings which strikes the right balance between getting a high level of impact and not being rejected by the donor. 

Having explored the give now/give later considerations and flagged the potential importance of the investment strategy, the tool does not labour these questions much in the analysis section. Rather, it encourages donors to document their thinking in a philanthropy strategy document.

Some omissions to be aware of if the tool is used by people in this community 

This tool is mostly geared towards people who are early in their philanthropy journey. It may well still be useful for those who are more seasoned. 

But a shortcoming is that it omits some areas which may be high impact.

Examples include: 

This reflects our experience that donors who are early on their philanthropy journey typically reject these cause areas as being too weird.