47 lines
3.3 KiB
Markdown
47 lines
3.3 KiB
Markdown
---
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category: "AI & Effective Altruism"
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aliases:
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- "GWWC"
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tags:
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- Organization
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- EffectiveAltruism
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- Oxford
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- Philanthropy
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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."
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location: "Oxford, United Kingdom"
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start: 2009-11
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relations:
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- type: founded
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with: "[[Toby Ord]]"
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reverse: true
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start: 2009-11
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fn: 1
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- type: founded
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with: "[[William MacAskill]]"
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reverse: true
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start: 2009-11
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fn: 1
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- type: member_of
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with: "[[Effective Ventures]]"
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role: "hosted project"
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fn: 5
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created: 2026-09-22
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updated: 2026-09-22
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---
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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]
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[[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]
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### Effective Ventures and FTX
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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]
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### Footnotes
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[^1]: Giving What We Can, "Our history." https://www.givingwhatwecan.org/about-us/history
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[^2]: "Peter Singer's Keynote, Effective Altruism Summit 2013"; Edmonds, David. *Death in a Shallow Pond.* Princeton University Press.
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[^3]: "Toby Ord: Why I'm giving £1m to charity." *BBC News,* 2010. https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-11950843
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[^4]: "William MacAskill," Effective Altruism Forum topic page; MacAskill, William. *Doing Good Better.* Gotham Books, 2015.
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[^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
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[^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/
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