---
category: "AI & Effective Altruism"
aliases:
  - "GWWC"
tags:
  - Organization
  - EffectiveAltruism
  - Oxford
  - Philanthropy
summary: "Pledge society launched at Oxford in November 2009 by Toby Ord and William MacAskill, later housed under Effective Ventures, which repaid 26.8 million dollars of FTX money in 2024."
location: "Oxford, United Kingdom"
start: 2009-11
relations:
  - type: founded
    with: "[[Toby Ord]]"
    reverse: true
    start: 2009-11
    fn: 1
  - type: founded
    with: "[[William MacAskill]]"
    reverse: true
    start: 2009-11
    fn: 1
  - type: member_of
    with: "[[Effective Ventures]]"
    role: "hosted project"
    fn: 5
created: 2026-09-22
updated: 2026-09-22
---

Giving What We Can is a society whose members pledge to give at least ten percent of their income to the charities they judge most cost-effective. By its own account it was "the brainchild of Toby Ord, a philosopher at Balliol College, Oxford," who, inspired by the ideas of ethicists such as [[Peter Singer]], decided in 2009 to commit a large part of his income to charity and worked with a fellow Oxford philosopher, [[William MacAskill]], to form a society of people who would do the same. Ord, his wife, the physician Bernadette Young, and MacAskill launched it in November 2009; within a year 64 people had joined, pledging 21 million dollars, and it took on full-time staff in the summer of 2012. It lists as early supporters the [[Future of Humanity Institute]], Balliol College and the Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics.[^1] Singer took the pledge in November 2009.[^2]

[[Toby Ord]] set his own living allowance at about 18,000 pounds a year, giving away the rest toward a lifetime target of one million pounds.[^3] MacAskill went on to found [[80,000 Hours]] with [[Benjamin Todd]] in 2011 and to write the longtermist *What We Owe the Future.*[^4]

### Effective Ventures and FTX

Giving What We Can became one of the projects hosted by [[Effective Ventures]], the umbrella of two charities, Effective Ventures Foundation in the United Kingdom and Effective Ventures Foundation USA, alongside the [[Centre for Effective Altruism]], 80,000 Hours and the EA Funds.[^5] In 2022 Effective Ventures and its projects received about 27 million dollars from [[Sam Bankman-Fried]]'s [[FTX]] and the FTX Foundation. On December 13, 2023, it agreed to return 26,786,503 dollars to the FTX bankruptcy estate, a sum equal to all of the money received, and its boards then decided to spin out every project as an independent organization.[^5][^6]

### Footnotes

[^1]: Giving What We Can, "Our history." https://www.givingwhatwecan.org/about-us/history
[^2]: "Peter Singer's Keynote, Effective Altruism Summit 2013"; Edmonds, David. *Death in a Shallow Pond.* Princeton University Press.
[^3]: "Toby Ord: Why I'm giving £1m to charity." *BBC News,* 2010. https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-11950843
[^4]: "William MacAskill," Effective Altruism Forum topic page; MacAskill, William. *Doing Good Better.* Gotham Books, 2015.
[^5]: "EV updates: FTX settlement and the future of EV." Effective Altruism Forum. https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/HjsfHwqasyQMWRzZN/ev-updates-ftx-settlement-and-the-future-of-ev
[^6]: "Effective Ventures Settles $26.8M FTX Donations Case." *The Crypto Times,* January 31, 2024. https://www.cryptotimes.io/2024/01/31/effective-ventures-settles-26-8m-ftx-donations-case/