5 things you’ve got wrong about the Giving What We Can Pledge

By Alana HF, Giving What We Can @ 2024-05-15T18:00 (+135)

This is a linkpost to https://www.givingwhatwecan.org/en/blog/5-things-you-ve-got-wrong-about-the-giving-what-we-can-pledge

How well do you know the details of the Giving What We Can Pledge? A surprising number of people we’ve spoken to — including many who know a lot about effective giving — shared some or all of these pledge misconceptions. 

Note: This post was edited on 17 May to correct imprecise and potentially misleading language in Misconception #4 and respond to some of the feedback received on this point. Thank you to the commenters for pointing this out. Misconception #5 was edited on 29 May to clarify that there are also provisions for students and others not earning an income.

Misconception #1: If you sign the pledge, you have to donate at least 10% of your income each year.

The Giving What We Can Pledge is a public commitment to donate at least 10% of your lifetime income to the organisations that can most effectively use it to improve the lives of others. Giving 10% of your income each year is a good rule of thumb for most people, as it helps them stay on track with their lifetime pledge. However, there are certainly cases where it doesn’t make sense to give annually. Provided you continue reporting your income[1] on your personal pledge dashboard, the “Overall Progress” bar will show you where you are with respect to fulfilling your lifetime pledge. This way, you can continue to progress towards your lifetime pledge even if you need to skip a year.

While we recommend giving annually for most people, here are two examples of cases where it might make sense to skip, bunch, or otherwise donate on a non-annual basis:

Misconception #2: Only the charities on the Giving What We Can Platform count towards your pledge

The Giving What We Can Pledge is a public commitment to donate at least 10% of your lifetime income to the organisations that can most effectively use it to improve the lives of others. 

This means you can donate to any organisation you’d like, as long as you have good reason to believe it qualifies as a highly-effective organisation. (We do suggest familiarising yourself with the concepts of effective giving, our high-impact causes page, and our charity recommendations and donation platform when deciding where to give, because the effectiveness part of the pledge is a key aspect of its impact.)

It’s also a more seamless experience to choose from the charities on our platform, because you won’t have to do any reporting; you’ll merely choose where to donate, set up recurring payments, and then these payments will automatically show up on your pledge dashboard and be counted towards your pledge. That said, you can absolutely donate to an organisation outside of our platform; you’ll just need to report it on the pledge dashboard yourself if you want to see your progress. 

Misconception #3: The pledge is a legal document

We’ve used the word “pledge” to signify a serious commitment. However, this type of pledge is different from  “pledge” as defined by the IRS or in a similar legal context. The Giving What We Can pledge is not legally binding. It is, rather, a serious commitment made to yourself and displayed publicly that you will donate at least 10% of income to the organisations you believe can most effectively use it to improve the lives of others. As such, you can:

While we see the pledge as a serious commitment, we hear from some that they are scared to take it because they don’t know what the future holds. We think, depending on the level of uncertainty you have, it’s usually better to pledge and give yourself the option of resigning if you need to than to never pledge at all. If your level of uncertainty is relatively high, we would recommend a trial pledge, which you can do for a set amount of time and then renew or increase if appropriate. 

Misconception #4: There’s no plausibly good reason to sign the pledge if you’re already donating 10% or more

(Note: This isn’t to imply that anyone who doesn’t find reasoning similar to the below compelling holds a “misconception.” Rather, it’s intended to express that an argument can be made for the value of signing a pledge even if you are already donating.)

One of the primary reasons the Giving What We Can Pledge was created was to help influence the social norms around charitable giving, with the goal of making it common and expected for people in high-income countries to give a portion of their resources to help those in need. So while the pledge is a great tool for living up to your own values and holding yourself accountable, signing it is about much more than this: it’s about being part of a global effort to fundamentally change how people in high-income countries approach charitable giving.

We go over some of this in our How change happens video (an oldie but a goodie!) Here, we discuss the power of social proof in setting norms and influencing behaviour. Signing the pledge contributes to the goal of widespread adoption — the longer the list of names, the more normal pledging becomes. And even before we get to the “norm setting” vision, we’ll be inspiring others to give more significantly and more effectively, helping to get to a better world. 

The sceptics among us might think: that all sounds plausible in theory, but practically, how much good would adding my name really do? Well, that depends. Let’s say only one other person in your network hears that you took the pledge and is inspired to do the same. That could drastically increase the impact of your pledge, especially if this person wouldn’t have otherwise heard about the pledge and wasn’t already donating. (And this isn’t all that unlikely considering that awareness of the pledge in the general population is quite low.) If two people in your network were inspired to pledge based on your decision, that would be even more impactful.[2] While one or two people might not seem like a lot, if you consider how much good 10% of even a modest income could do over someone’s lifetime, it should begin to feel more valuable. For example, around $200 a month donated to one of GiveWell’s top charities would be enough to prevent someone’s death…every two years. So if you got two extra people to donate this amount over the course of their lifetime (who wouldn’t have otherwise donated)[3] that’s a lot of suffering and death prevented — not to mention anyone they might inspire to pledge down the line!

Perhaps you're also sceptical that anyone in your network is going to follow suit. Maybe you aren’t really planning to talk about the pledge, add it to your email signature, or post about it on social media. Or maybe you are planning to do these things but you don’t think they’ll make a difference. 

Whatever the case, even if you don’t directly inspire anyone else to take the pledge, you’ll still be adding to the total number of pledgers and contributing to that goal of widespread adoption discussed above.[4] In other words, down the line, your action (combined with the action of other similarly on-the-fence donors who didn’t see any value in pledging) could collectively greatly increase the number of people involved in this global effort to change the norms around charitable giving.[5] And this could significantly move the needle: for example, imagine you come across something that seems interesting and compelling but only fifty people have done it. Now, imagine you come across something that seems interesting and compelling and 50,000 people have done it. In which case would you be more likely to sign up? 

But what about the marginal value of adding my name, you say? Well, I’d argue that — looked at from today’s vantage point — the marginal value of an extra name may be low, if you don’t expect anyone to follow suit. But looked at from some vantage point in the future, each of those names that contributed to reaching 50,000 or more pledgers played an extremely important role. This means that the marginal value of your signature will be higher the earlier you are in that list.

Put another way, widespread adoption is a slow process, but being a first follower (the first person to jump on board, or in the case of the pledge, one of the first 10,000 or even 20,000 to jump on board) is one of the best ways to help achieve it. After all, it’s much easier — and much less impressive — to do something that nearly everyone is doing. So if you care about the marginal value of your contribution, it’s best to jump on board as early as possible. 

And if you’re not convinced by the above, that’s okay. I see your marginal value…and I raise you a counterfactual. In other words, what’s the marginal value of not adding your name if you’re already donating? (See misconception #3 if you’re concerned about constraining your future self forever; see misconceptions #1 and #5 if you're concerned about flexibility.)

So maybe it’s time for a reframe: if you already donate 10% or more, perhaps there’s no good reason not to sign the pledge. After all, you’re already doing the hard part. And there may very well be quite a bit of value in making it official.

Misconception #5: There’s only one pledge 

The Giving What We Can pledge actually has several options:

Outside of the standard Giving What We Can Pledge, there are also other pledge options that you may or may not be aware of:

  1. ^

    Reporting is always optional but it helps you track your progress!

  2. ^

    Measuring impact is complex, and there could be many factors at play here, including that many other agents could also have contributed to their decision to pledge. For this reason, we won't aim to quantify just how impactful this would be.

  3. ^

    While this could vary across countries and income brackets, the average person in the US gives around 2-3% of their income to charity so 10% or more would be a significant increase.

  4. ^

    Think about the importance of early adopters when attempting to penetrate a new market and/or how nudging people in one direction can – after long periods where it feels like nothing is happening – suddenly result in a social cascade or dramatic public opinion change. (Public opinion on same-sex marriage is one example.)

  5. ^

    We're aware that we haven't quantified this yet but it is something we plan to look into in the future. If you have any suggestions for how we might approach quantifying the "social proof" value of one extra name, we'd be interested in hearing those!

Brad West @ 2024-05-15T21:54 (+42)

It is really great to know that the pledge allows pledgers to use their judgment as to what organizations qualify as highly-effective organizations. In light of this, I may make a 20% pledge.

NickLaing @ 2024-05-16T14:00 (+13)

Completely agree that's why I hadn't been filling in the online form after making a pledge 6 months ago - I thought it had to be to over of your orgs to qualify. I donate to my own org and some other highly effective small orgs here in Uganda. Am going to sign on in the next week and actually fill it out now!

Rebecca Herbst @ 2024-05-20T20:16 (+23)

One of the misconceptions I had about the GWWC pledge has to do with the use of a donor-advised fund (DAF). It was always my thought that the pledge was designed to help people give meaningful sums of money sooner rather than later (e.g. donate 10% per year vs. just waiting till you die to make a large lump sum donation). I've now met a few people that have taken the pledge but have contributed most or all of their charitable giving to a Donor-Advised Fund as part of their pledge. And furthermore, they have yet to make any grants from their DAFs as they believe in the the prospect of Investing to Give. I haven't quite fully formed my personal opinion of this yet, but I wonder how GWWC views these scenarios? Contributing to a DAF, of course, is a commitment in that those contributions are irrevocable and must ultimately go to charity. But with that said, in the unlikely scenario all pledge takers were contributing money to a DAF and not granting any funds in the near future, then this to me feels counterintuitive to the pledge itself. Any thoughts?

GraceAdams @ 2024-05-22T06:25 (+7)

Hi Rebecca! As always, grateful for your support of people in the community and helping them get their finances sorted!

We do encourage people to give regularly as part of the pledge, and would generally encourage people who are using DAFs as part of their giving strategy to disburse funds from it regularly so that they are actively contributing to doing good in the world now, rather than later. I do think that it’s possible for people to strongly believe that waiting for a particular moment in time might be the best use of their funds, i.e. development or approval of a particular technology like a vaccine which could be consistent with The Pledge. People with different worldviews and reasoning might feel very differently about this so we generally leave some room for interpretation (In fact, there's a whole forum topic on donation timing with many years of discussion on this). My personal view is that people should give regularly, and allowing “donation debt” to build up for more than a couple of years is not ideal.

Might also be relevant for people to read our FAQ on why give now rather than later? as well!

Jeff Kaufman @ 2024-05-16T11:09 (+21)

there are certainly cases where it doesn’t make sense to give annually

Does GWWC have recommendations on how to handle inflation? For example, if I earn $X and then wait a couple years during which we have 10% cumulative inflation, do I now donate 10% of 1.1 * $X? Or (in my case) if I gave more than my pledged amount for multiple years while earning to give, building up a 'surplus', and am considering giving less than my pledged amount for a bit while I work a lower paying direct job, should I account for that my donations were of more valuable dollars? Should we handle this asymmetrically (yes for #1 and no for #2) to stay conservative and above reproach? Does the dashboard tracker account for inflation?

(I think the "correct" way to handle it is to do all the calculations in constant dollars, adjusting for inflation, but since this could look to the general public like motivated reasoning for giving less in case #2 perhaps GWWC thinks we shouldn't do it?)

Lorenzo Buonanno @ 2024-05-21T07:00 (+12)

First, the easy one:

Does the dashboard tracker account for inflation?

At the moment it does not. It does account for variable exchange rates (e.g. if you report your income in GBP but donate in USD, it considers the exchange rate on the day of the donation to calculate the percentage of income that was donated), so we could use the same system to account for inflation/discount rates.

 

I think the "correct" way to handle it is to do all the calculations in constant dollars, adjusting for inflation

This would be a reasonable approach. I think another reasonable approach might be to consider interest rates instead of inflation: if someone donated $1,000 in 2010 that they would have otherwise invested, they have given much more than $1,000 of their 2023 wealth (even adjusting for inflation).

In general, I really like this sentence from our FAQ on how members calculate income

The goal of this advice is to help members stick to their plan of taking significant action to benefit others. All guidelines about how to calculate income should be thought of as serving that goal.

In practice, it's very hard to give exact guidance on what "10%" means in every case [1], so we usually recommend people follow the "spirit" of the pledge and give what they would consider as 10% of their lifetime income. (Which in many cases could be inflation-adjusted)

I'm not sure if adding an option for considering discount rates in the pledge dashboard would help members give more or give better, but if there's enough user interest we can definitely consider it.

  1. ^

    This usually comes up for things like tax deductions/rebates and salary sacrifices. E.g. when only some of your donations are deductible, or when you set your own salary

David T @ 2024-05-17T18:45 (+2)

Strongly agree. A discount rate calculator with accompanying explanations emphasizing that - where practical - giving away money now is better because of inflation and compounding returns on saving lives or solving problems (and uncertainty about whether you'll stick to your pledge!) but let people trade that off against the reality they'd have a lot more disposable income after paying significant interest on loans/mortgages or realistic near term career progression

(obviously discount rate calculation isn't for everyone and isn't something I'd put on the main page, but for some people it's illuminating)

Alana HF @ 2024-05-17T15:50 (+17)

Thank you for all the feedback! I agree that the statement “would double your impact" was imprecise and as such, potentially misleading. While this statement was not intended to be taken as a literal (mathematical) doubling, but rather get at the idea that two new pledges is a rough doubling of one new pledge, this could have been made clearer. A more accurate phrasing would have been “could be seen as a rough doubling of one’s impact, assuming this person wouldn’t have otherwise heard about the pledge and wasn’t already donating” (assumptions I made but did not clarify well). Taking all of the feedback into account, I would be tempted to change the phrasing to the above and add the following footnote: 

Of course, impact is complex to measure, and it's possible these people might have been inspired to donate through other channels later on (and/or) that there were other agents or factors inspiring them in the first place. Additionally, we don't know if the people you might inspire to pledge are earning more or less than you or how likely it is that they will follow through on their pledge. So this isn't intended to imply a literal doubling, but rather an approximation of the potential value you could get by adding your name. Given that pledge awareness is extremely low in the general population, and the average amount people donate is around 2-3% of income, bringing awareness of the pledge to someone in the general population who would have been otherwise unlikely to hear about it and wasn't already donating -- if it resulted in that person signing the pledge -- could (in at least some cases) be seen as a doubling of your pledge’s impact. 

However, after further internal discussion we've decided to remove the "doubling" phrase entirely since we agree this is incorrect if looked at from a mathematical impact-calculating perspective, and we apologise for the imprecise language here. I've edited the post accordingly.

To respond to some of the points raised in the comments (note that these are my own views; I am not necessarily speaking for other GWWC team members):

 Owen --

“Conflation of "counterfactual money to high-impact charities" with "your impact"

Maybe even if it's counterfactually moved, you don't get to count all the impact from it as your impact, since to avoid double-counting and impact ponzi schemes it's maybe important to take a "share-of-the-pie" approach to thinking about your impact (here's my take on that general question), and presumably they get a lot of the credit for their giving”

I agree that the person pledging should get credit for their giving, but I don’t see this as contradictory to it potentially being a “doubling” of impact to inspire another person to pledge. Awareness of the pledge is extremely low outside of the EG/EA communities, so this statement comes from a place where we’re assuming it’s quite likely the person who was inspired would not otherwise have heard about the pledge or come to it on their own. They still get credit for 100% of their impact but it’s also the case that if you hadn’t inspired them to pledge, that impact likely wouldn’t have happened. I don’t see this as “double counting” because we aren’t trying to “sum” total impact but rather emphasise the potential for a pledger to have much more impact than just the value of their own donations. 

“Plus, maybe you do things which are importantly valuable that aren't about your pledge! It's at least a plausible reading (though it's ambiguous) that "double your impact" would be taken as "double your lifetime impact"

Absolutely! As this statement was made in the context of the value of pledge signing specifically, I did not think it was likely to be taken as doubling your impact more generally. However, this could have been better articulated by using the phrase “roughly doubling the impact of your pledge” which was the intended meaning.

 “As well as sharing credit for their donations with them, you maybe need to share credit for having nudged them to make the pledge with other folks (including but not limited to GWWC)”

Agree, and my response is similar to the point about sharing credit with them. I don’t think this negates the statement that a pledger could plausibly double their impact if a new pledger would not otherwise have been aware of the pledge.

 “As you say, their donations may not be counterfactual even in the short-term

Even if a good fraction of them are maybe from outside the community, that's still a fraction by which it reduces expected impact”

 Thank you for raising that. I do think I was speaking much too loosely (in part because, as Grace mentioned, it’s difficult to write for two audiences at once.) The statement did assume that the people who were inspired to pledge were from outside of the community, but I can see how this was unclear, especially given that I talk about inspiring people from inside the community (donors who were similarly sitting on the fence) later in the post.

 “Now, none of these points are blatant errors, or make me want to say "what were you thinking?!?". But I feel taken together the picture is that in fact there's a lot of complexity to the question of how impact should be counted in that case, and the text doesn't help the reader to understand that there's a lot of complexity or how to navigate thinking about it, but instead cheerfully presents the most favourable possible interpretation. It just has a bit of a vibe of slightly-underhand sales tactics, or something?”

 I agree that there is complexity here. This section of the post wasn’t intended to be an in-depth evaluation of how to count impact, but rather an argument for why there are plausibly good reasons to sign the pledge even if you already donate. As such, you are correct that it is presenting one possible interpretation/way to look at this. Though I had thought it was clear that I was presenting an argument, I definitely should have realised that the “misconception” framing could have made this feel like it was intended to be more of a factual statement andI agree with you that this was an oversight. (By the way, if you click on the survey, we don’t frame #4 as a misconception but rather ask if you were swayed or not swayed by the reasoning in the post.) I will mention that I'm a bit surprised to hear that you felt it had the vibe of underhand sales tactics, as this was absolutely not the intention. I hope the additional context above helps remove this impression!


Brad --

“Pledging may have some combination the effect of (a) actually increasing people's lifetime donations to effective charities and (b) causing people to advertise giving they already were going to do. To the extent that a pledge is b rather than a, getting someone to pledge the same amount as you is not double your impact.”

 Definitely agree with this. I should have made it clearer in the post that I was referring to inspiring people to take the pledge who wouldn’t otherwise have been donating. I do think b) would still increase your impact given some of the arguments about social cascades/norm setting, but certainly not double it, unless we limit the scope of “impact” to the impact of an extra name :)

 “Many of the people who you cause to become pledgers might have become pledgers later, thus you probably just accelerated their pledge, greatly decreasing your actual impact vs if you cause someone to pledge (and this pledge causes them to donate more rather than encompasses donation that would otherwise happen).”

I think this is actually fairly unlikely, especially if we are talking about people outside of the EG/EA community (which I agree should have been made clearer in the original post.) The awareness of the pledge is extremely low in the general public, so I think it’s highly unlikely (at least at this point in time) that someone in the general public would have found about it down the line anyway.

 “There's a possibility that you could anchor someone to donate less. Potentially someone could see your celebrated 10% pledge and view that as adequate, lowering their donations. Here, there is a risk of harm from the pledge.”

 While this is certainly a possibility, given that (while this varies by income level and country) the average person donates around 2-3% of their income, I think it’s much more likely that the pledge would increase someone’s donations rather than cause them to donate less.


Kirsten --

“A bit of feedback, since this is a sales piece and I do actually like Giving What We Can:

Saying that there's no good reason not to pledge if you're already donating 10% sits really poorly with me. It feels insulting that you've decided that my reasons aren't good enough and must be only based misunderstandings.

Even if my only reason not to pledge is that I've thought about it carefully and decided I don't want to, shouldn't that be enough?”

 Thank you for voicing this. The post was framed as 5 “misconceptions” to pull everything together, but (as I mentioned to Owen) if you look at the survey, you’ll see that we don’t view #4 as a misconception but rather a matter of opinion. The question instead asks if you agreed or disagreed with the statement and if you were swayed or not swayed by the reasoning in the post. We certainly aren’t trying to attack anyone’s reasons or pressure anyone into doing something they don’t feel is right for them; rather, we are trying to present an argument for taking the pledge if you are already donating. I went into this a bit more in my response to Owen – I hope that added context at least helps clarify that this was not intended as an attack or dismissal of anyone’s reasoning. I’ve also edited the language of the misconception to say “there is no plausibly good reason” and added a note clarifying that we don’t think it’s a “misconception” not to agree with the reasoning presented.


 

Elizabeth @ 2024-05-15T18:11 (+13)

Let’s say only one other person in your network hears that you took the pledge and is inspired to do the same. That would be doubling your impact. If two people in your network were inspired to pledge based on your decision, that would be tripling your impact

 

This math seems off on several levels. 

Sjir Hoeijmakers @ 2024-05-16T11:45 (+22)

Thanks Elizabeth, Owen, Brad and Kirsten for the constructive feedback! I agree that the post in its current form doesn't live up to the epistemic standards we aspire to at GWWC, for many of the reasons you mention. My apologies for this.

The research team usually reviews any public impact claims we make, but this post slipped through the cracks of our review process in part because the main topic (i.e. "misconceptions about the pledge") didn't immediately seem research-related. We'll tighten up the process to prevent this from happening in the future. I've now also reviewed and we'll edit the post on the points you mentioned + a few others. We'll post here once that's done.

Thanks again for holding us accountable!

Will Howard @ 2024-05-19T09:55 (+13)

I didn't find this paragraph to be off or particularly misleading fwiw.

It is roughly true (minus what they would have donated otherwise) when thinking in terms of counterfactual impact, and assuming you are an average pledger and would be inspiring other average pledgers (no expected difference in income or attrition, or effectiveness of charities donated to).

I think the caveats are sufficiently obvious that the reader could be expected to understand them on their own. For instance if you convince someone to donate $1000 it seems obvious that they should get most of the credit, but it still might be true that you were counterfactual in their decision.

David T @ 2024-05-20T07:10 (+6)

Agree. Rejecting the argument because it double counts feels a bit like the "shouldn't you be attributing some/most of the impact to the people that did the direct work" objection to estimates of how many lives your money can save.

I think everyone knows it's a counterfactual claim contingent on you actually being a major influence on that person and not karmic accounting that assigns yourself all the credit

That said, it's still a dubious approximation to say it 'doubles' your impact as it really depends on relative donation sizes of the people you persuade. That means it can be much more than double if you earn less than the people that listen to you, of course!

GraceAdams @ 2024-05-15T22:29 (+11)

Hi Elizabeth - it would be great if you could explain why? 

If you encourage a friend who wasn't otherwise giving effectively or significantly to pledge - and they do - this seems like a potential doubling of donations going to high impact charities. Maybe more or less if their salary is higher or lower but as a rule of thumb I think it seems like generally a fine thing to say.

Maybe you were thinking that donations might be less counterfactual if these people are already in the effective altruism community(?), but many people GWWC reaches are outside the community who might be less likely to be giving effectively or significantly and we try to tailor our content for the broadest audience we reach, especially our blog content. I'll get Alana to update that this is a link post of our blog post: https://www.givingwhatwecan.org/en/blog/5-things-you-ve-got-wrong-about-the-giving-what-we-can-pledge

Elizabeth @ 2024-05-16T02:56 (+38)

Assigns 100% of their future impact to you, not counting their own contribution and the other sources that caused this change. It's the same kind of simplification as "every blood donation saves 3 lives", when what they mean is "your blood will probably go to three people, each of whom will receive donations from many people."

Assumes perfect follow up. This isn't realistic for a median pledger, but we might expect people who were tipped into pledging by a single act by a single person to have worse follow-up than people who find it on their own. You could argue it isn't actually one action, there were lots of causes and that makes it stickier, but then you run into #1 even harder. 

Reifies signing the pledge as the moment everything changes, while vibing that this is a small deal you can stop when you feel like it. 

Assumes every pledger you recruit makes exactly the same amount. Part of me thinks this is a nit pick. You could assume people recruit people who on average earn similar salaries, or think it's just not worth doing the math on likely income of secondary recruitment. Another part thinks it's downstream of the same root cause as the other issues, and any real fix to those will fix this as well. 

The word "effective" is doing a lot of work. What if they have different tastes than I do? What if they think PlayPumps are a great idea? .

Treating the counterfactual as 0. 

As I write this out I'm realizing my objection isn't just the bad math. It's closer to treating pledge-takiers as the unit of measurement, with all pledges or at least all dollars donated being interchangeable. People who are recruited/inspired by a single person are likely to have different follow through and charitable targets than people inspired by many people over time, who are different than people driven to do this themselves. ?

Ben Millwood @ 2024-05-17T09:09 (+12)

I don't think it does assume perfect follow-up, it just assumes roughly the same follow-up from them as you. I hear you that maybe people you tip into taking the pledge are systematically different in a way that makes you doubt that as well, but I'm not actually convinced this difference is that substantial.

Similarly, I don't think different amounts of income feels like a big problem with this sentiment to me, as long as their income isn't systematically less (or more!) than yours. It feels like an imprecision, but if it's true on average it's not one I particularly resent.

(I think the rest of your points seem fine so overall I still agree with your bottom line.)

Elizabeth @ 2024-05-17T19:16 (+6)

My model is that at least one of the following must be true: you're one factor among many that caused the change, the change is not actually that big, or attrition will be much higher than standard pledge takers. 

Which is fine. Accepting the framing around influencing others[1]: you will be one of many factors, but your influence will extend past one person. But I think it's good to acknowledge the complexity. 

  1. ^

    I separately question whether the pledge is the best way to achieve this goal. Why lock in a decision for your entire life instead of, say, taking a lesson in how to talk about your donations in ways that make people feel energized instead of judged?

Owen Cotton-Barratt @ 2024-05-15T23:37 (+12)

I can't speak for Elizabeth, but I also find that that paragraph feels off, for reasons something like:

  1. Conflation of "counterfactual money to high-impact charities" with "your impact"
    • Maybe even if it's counterfactually moved, you don't get to count all the impact from it as your impact, since to avoid double-counting and impact ponzi schemes it's maybe important to take a "share-of-the-pie" approach to thinking about your impact (here's my take on that general question), and presumably they get a lot of the credit for their giving
    • Plus, maybe you do things which are importantly valuable that aren't about your pledge! It's at least a plausible reading (though it's ambiguous) that "double your impact" would be taken as "double your lifetime impact"
  2. As well as sharing credit for their donations with them, you maybe need to share credit for having nudged them to make the pledge with other folks (including but not limited to GWWC)
  3. As you say, their donations may not be counterfactual even in the short-term
    • Even if a good fraction of them are maybe from outside the community, that's still a fraction by which it reduces expected impact
    • Although on average I think it's likely very good, I'm sure in some cases the EA push towards a few charities that have been verified as highly effective actually does harm by pulling people to give to those over some other charities which were in fact even more effective (but illegibly so)
  4. Man, long-term counterfactuals are hard
    • Maybe GWWC/EA ends up growing a lot further, so that it reaches effective saturation among ~all relevant audiences
    • In that world, if someone was open to taking the GWWC pledge, they'd likely do it eventually, even if they are currently not at all connected to the community

Now, none of these points are blatant errors, or make me want to say "what were you thinking?!?". But I feel taken together the picture is that in fact there's a lot of complexity to the question of how impact should be counted in that case, and the text doesn't help the reader to understand that there's a lot of complexity or how to navigate thinking about it, but instead cheerfully presents the most favourable possible interpretation. It just has a bit of a vibe of slightly-underhand sales tactics, or something?

GraceAdams @ 2024-05-15T23:59 (+23)

Thanks Owen - I think those things are all reasonable - we might look to update this paragraph on the blog and update our messaging around this! It's always a challenge to write in a way that's engaging and legible to those outside the community, and also reflects all of the nuance expected in the community. We of course, always try to do our best, but sometimes we might miss the mark and we're always open to changing our minds!

Brad West @ 2024-05-15T23:21 (+4)

I could imagine a few things:

  1. Pledging may have some combination the effect of (a) actually increasing people's lifetime donations to effective charities and (b) causing people to advertise giving they already were going to do. To the extent that a pledge is b rather than a, getting someone to pledge the same amount as you is not double your impact.

  2. Many of the people who you cause to become pledgers might have become pledgers later, thus you probably just accelerated their pledge, greatly decreasing your actual impact vs if you cause someone to pledge (and this pledge causes them to donate more rather than encompasses donation that would otherwise happen).

  3. There's a possibility that you could anchor someone to donate less. Potentially someone could see your celebrated 10% pledge and view that as adequate, lowering their donations. Here, there is a risk of harm from the pledge.

All that said, I still think the pledge is an awesome way to promote and normalize effective giving.

GraceAdams @ 2024-05-16T00:00 (+2)

Thanks Brad - I think all of those are reasonable considerations! As mentioned in my response to Owen - we'll review this messaging based on this feedback! Thanks for sharing your reasoning!

Kirsten @ 2024-05-16T11:35 (+5)

I also really disliked this section. "Let’s say only one other person in your network hears that you took the pledge and is inspired to do the same."

I don't care if other people take the pledge! I only care if other people give, and give effectively.

If they'd be influenced to "take the pledge" because me taking the pledge, why wouldn't they be influenced donate a proportion of their income effectively by seeing me donate?

You can make the argument for why the pledge is more effective than just donating, but you haven't done it here.

Kirsten @ 2024-05-16T11:51 (+11)

A bit of feedback, since this is a sales piece and I do actually like Giving What We Can:

Saying that there's no good reason not to pledge if you're already donating 10% sits really poorly with me. It feels insulting that you've decided that my reasons aren't good enough and must be only based misunderstandings.

Even if my only reason not to pledge is that I've thought about it carefully and decided I don't want to, shouldn't that be enough?

Vaughn Papenhausen @ 2024-05-17T16:13 (+15)

Maybe I'm missing something, but I think the idea on that section is simply: "Some people think it only makes sense to pledge if you are not already donating 10%. But here's are some reasons to pledge even if you are already donating 10%, that you may not have thought of." It's not claiming those reasons are decisive, or that everyone, or even most people, who is already donating 10% should still take the pledge. The only misconception they're claiming is thinking that there is zero reason to take the pledge if you are already donating 10%.

Alana HF @ 2024-05-17T18:45 (+3)

Thanks, Vaughn! This was indeed the intended meaning, but given that many interpreted it differently, I think the writing in the post could have been clearer. Hopefully the edits help clarify :)

EffectiveAdvocate @ 2024-05-16T10:11 (+10)

I will take this post as an opportunity to ask a quick question about the company pledge: I got the feeling that it has been placed a little on the back burner. Or at least, I have never seen it promoted and only found out it existed when I was looking at the list of pledge takers. Is this still a product that is actively receiving attention? If not, why not?

GraceAdams @ 2024-05-17T01:43 (+3)

We do occasionally promote the Company Pledge in our newsletter and on our social media, especially on LinkedIn where businesses are most likely to see it! Mostly - we are just constrained in our efforts to promote our work more generally!

We are getting new Company Pledges every so often, and are really excited to have new Companies join! We’ve had Bullet Journal (a popular journaling system and product) join recently - and another great business in the works!

We may decide to step up on promoting the Company Pledge but seeing there are other great pledges for companies like Founders Pledge we put most of our emphasis on individual pledges where we think we have a competitive advantage.

Always helpful for us to know that you haven’t seen any promotion of the Company Pledge, so we can calibrate on what is getting through and what’s not!

EffectiveAdvocate @ 2024-05-17T16:35 (+2)

Thank you! And Bullet Journal seems like a great new addition, congratulations! 

SummaryBot @ 2024-05-16T15:15 (+8)

Executive summary: The Giving What We Can Pledge involves several misconceptions, and clarifying these can better inform potential pledgers about the flexibility and impact of their commitment.

Key points:

  1. The pledge is a commitment to donate 10% of lifetime income, not necessarily annually.
  2. Pledgers can donate to any highly effective charity, not just those on the Giving What We Can platform.
  3. The pledge is not a legally binding contract and can be resigned if necessary.
  4. Signing the pledge, even if already donating 10%+, helps influence social norms and inspire others to give.
  5. There are several pledge options, including a trial pledge and a pledge to live on a set allowance and donate the rest.

 

 

This comment was auto-generated by the EA Forum Team. Feel free to point out issues with this summary by replying to the comment, and contact us if you have feedback.

Joris P @ 2024-05-16T15:44 (+3)

Wanted to flag that you can select multiple answers for every question in the survey, not sure if you meant that to be the case?