Pledging 2% of my Income to Effective Charities in 2026

I have taken a pledge to donate at least 2% of my income to effective charities in 2026, as part of Giving What We Can’s trial pledge.

This will be the first time I have done any kind of effective giving.

Selfish Reasons to Give

There are a lot of reasons to do this for the good of the world, but I will give the selfish altruism angle. The thing that really swayed me towards taking this seriously is reading the possible impact of effective donation. Almost as important as knowing how much better it made the world, was that it made me feel warm and good having made the donation. For example, GiveWell estimates that it costs around $3,500 - $5,500 in 2022-2024 to save a life.

Doing impactful good feels good, and it’s probably easier to sustain being an altruist if it’s an act I enjoy. I have gotten Gemini to explain why impure effective altruism is a good, and in fact sustainable, form of giving.

The Case for Doing it Publicly

Reasons to do it publicly:

Reasons to do it privately:

Weighing the pros and cons, I think writing it in a publicly-visible blog post personally sounds like the right balance. If people I know end up cumulatively donate even $5,000 to save 1 life, as a result of reading this, over the course of the lifetime of this blog, the cost to personal privacy and potential virtue signalling is definitely worthwhile.

Giving What We Can has written extensively on why one should do this publicly.

What am I donating to?

I am still figuring this out – all this is new to me, and I intend to write more about this once I do. I have started with some immediately beneficial health initiatives, especially in light of USAID cuts. My best guess is a good mix of immediately impactful short-medium term health and long-tail AI safety initiatives, but this will very likely change over time as I learn more.