Donating 10% 🔷

I’m taking Giving What We Can’s Trial Pledge 🔷 to donate 10% of my income in 2025 to highly effective charities.

Why I’m donating

I’m choosing to donate 10% of my income, because:

• As someone in the global top 1% by income, I have an extraordinary opportunity to help others
• I can use my money to do tangible good
• I want to live in a world where people who can help others, do

Donating 10% is something I’ve thought about since college, but I delayed pulling the trigger because:

• I wanted to pay off my student loans
• The opportunity cost of investing my donations for 30+ years made the “amount” I’d be giving up by donating much harder

I paid off my student loans earlier this year. My discount rate has also gone up significantly – I’m much less confident about what the world will look like in 30 years¹ and value near-term impact more highly.

Reading about the ‘Veil of Ignorance’ thought experiment also resonated with me- if I had been born as someone less fortunate, or as a factory farmed animal, would I want those who had the opportunity to help to take action? My answer is a resounding yes.

Why share publicly?

I’m sharing my reasons for taking the Trial Pledge 🔷 because transparency around giving can inspire others and shift social norms. Reading others’ reasons for donating influenced my decision. I hope that others might find value in my reasoning for donating and think that incredible good can be accomplished if more people give.

Where I’m donating

I plan to donate to funds instead of individual charities because they have dedicated researchers who can evaluate opportunities more thoroughly, and can reallocate money as new needs emerge. Here’s my planned allocations and reasoning:

• Long-Term Future Fund (45%) – AI development is the most important thing happening right now in the world, and I’d argue in history. The decisions we make now will have a disproportionate impact on what the future looks like. If you’re not familiar, Holden Karnofsky’s Most Important Century series is a great introduction to these ideas. There’s an enormous amount at stake in getting this right.
• GiveWell’s Top Charity Fund (30%) - This fund focuses on evidence-based opportunities to save lives through global health interventions. GiveWell estimates that the cost of saving a life through proven programs like malaria nets, vitamin A supplementation, and incentives for immunizations ranges between $3000 and $5500². Their cost-effectiveness analyses are public (and very detailed!) and this fund directs donations to charities with the highest marginal impact.
• Animal Welfare Fund (15%) - Factory farming creates a large amount of suffering in the world and funding for the welfare of farmed animals like pigs, chickens and fish is neglected . This fund supports projects to alleviate the suffering of farmed animals and other large populations of non-human animals.
• Rethink Priorities (5%) - Rethink Priorities is focused on helping other organizations maximize their impact on the lives of humans and animals. They’ve done compelling research on the moral weight’s of different species . They also have an interesting calculator to build a portfolio of charitable allocations under different uncertainty and risk tolerance assumptions. In a lot of ways, the org seems to me to be a mix of non-profit, philosophy department, and startup. Overall, their research areas are thought-provoking and I think will lead to more impact in the future.
• Shrimp Welfare Project (5%) - 5x more shrimp are farmed than land animals annually and there’s growing evidence that shrimp can feel pain and may be sentient. Dollar-per-dollar, donations to shrimp welfare impact an enormous number of shrimp lives (~1500 shrimp per dollar). I recognize “why I’m donating to shrimp welfare” is weird and I think will be a great segue into discussing effective giving.

I’ll evaluate my giving next year to decide whether to take the full 10% Pledge 🔶, continue my trial pledge 🔷, or choose another path.

If you’re interested in effective giving, I’m happy to:

• Share resources that helped me decide to pledge
• Chat about different cause areas and their impact
• Talk through concerns or questions about giving/pledging

If you think you might benefit from discussing any of this, please reach out- I’m always happy to chat!