By now you know that Giving What We Can is about helping others give more effectively, increasing charitable impact so we can collectively make more of a dent in the world’s problems.

But there’s another big part of our mission—and that’s changing the norms around charitable giving.

Most people:

a) give relatively little to charity over their lifetime (with an average at around 2% of income).

b) don't give to the highest-impact causes.

We want to change both of those things.

That’s why we created the 🔸10% Pledge — a public commitment to give at least 10% of your income to high-impact causes over your lifetime. We've now got nearly 10,000 pledgers! 

The impact of making giving at this level just a normal part of life in higher-income countries — something akin to voting in elections — would be incredible.

Consider that anyone earning above 62k per year post-tax in the US is in the top 1% of income-earners worldwide. If all of these people gave 10% of income for just two years, there would be enough money to:

🍞 completely end world hunger
💧 provide clean water and sanitation for all

🐥 halve factory farming and

🌎 build the systems we need to prevent pandemics.

See the research

But even as a purely individual action, I think that pledging to give a portion of your income to those who need it most is an incredible way to make a difference in the world.

One way to think about this is to use the research of GiveWell, a charity evaluator that spends thousands of hours of research trying to find the charities that do the most per dollar.

Based on their estimations, around $200 a month directed to one of their top charities is akin to saving someone's life Every. Two. Years.

So imagine the impact of giving this way over the course of your career!

If you're not sure you can swing 10%, consider a Trial Pledge, where you can choose how much of your income to donate and for how long you want the pledge to last. For the monthly cost of a few Ubers or meals out, you could be — quite literally — saving lives. 

Anyway, the goal of this email isn’t to convince you to take a pledge. But we do want you to leave this intro series knowing why we created it, and why so many members of our community have decided to take it (and also the Trial Pledge).

Watch the video below to see why and how the Pledge was created and hear from people who have taken it!