Giving What We Can
Organizes a community around public giving pledges and provides resources and recommendations intended to encourage effective donations.
90% of weighted axes reviewed. A mechanism hypothesis, not proven effectiveness or a donation recommendation.
Who this work enables
Humanity’s Checklist source match
Status — editorial, partial alignment.
Visible commitments can help make generosity socially valued, a partial match to redirecting status; this is not the checklist’s specific charity-designer-goods model.
Explicit checklist adoption: not verified. A mechanism match is not an affiliation, endorsement, evidence of effectiveness or a scoring bonus. Read the practice.
Focus classification: 2026-10-27. Based on the organization’s dated official sources below; earlier axis-review dates are unchanged.
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The proposed pathway
Public giving commitments and effective-giving norms
Six dimensions, with rationale
Structural depth
3 / 4Targets recurring giving norms and resource allocation through public commitments; voluntary pledges do not by themselves change structural rules.
Institutional reach
4 / 4The documented community and resources operate across donors and causes rather than one recipient program.
Durability
2 / 4Commitments and habits may persist, but pledge retention and actual giving need ongoing support and independent verification.
Scalability
3 / 4A common pledge model and educational resources can spread, while community building and suitable local giving arrangements require work.
Funding additionality
UnreviewedUnknown: a current marginal funding gap, counterfactual and delivery capacity have not been audited.
Community agency
UnreviewedUnknown: participation, open access or stated values do not establish audited consequential decision rights for affected communities.
Evidence and selection
Organization reported; documented official mechanism
Illustrative inclusion to examine this mechanism. Inclusion is not an external recommendation or a verified comparative ranking.
A testable next question
Do public commitments cause sustained net additional effective giving after displacement, attrition and community costs, with independently assessed recipient outcomes?
Review confidence: Moderate for documented design; low for systemic attribution. Pledge-community and giving-education mechanism; not a validation of every recommended charity or a tax-deductibility determination.
What remains uncertain
Pledges and gross donations are not verified additional giving or welfare gains. Recommendations rely on external evidence, donor selection and value judgments; legal donation routes vary by entity and jurisdiction.
Sources to inspect
- Giving What We Can — public pledges, community and giving resources ↗
official · checked 2026-10-27
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Axis review: 2026-10-27 · weighting method v0.2 (2026-10-26) · Method, conflicts and coverage