Astral Codex Ten

GWWC

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GWWC

Article

GWWC is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 4 times across 4 issues between February 10, 2022 and December 22, 2025. The archive places it in contexts such as “effective altruist (GWWC since 2015 & Founders Pledge)”; “one takes the GWWC pledge to donate 10% of lifetime income”; “The GWWC website is mostly pitched at EAs”. It most often appears alongside ACX, ACX Grants, Eliezer.

Metadata

  • Category: Organizations
  • Mention count: 4
  • Issue count: 4
  • First seen: February 10, 2022
  • Last seen: December 22, 2025

Appears In

Source Context

Recovered passages from the original issue text. When the raw archive preserved outbound links inside the source passage, they are listed directly under the quote.

ACX Grants ++: The Second Half
February 10, 2022 · Original source
#75: Study The Real-World Effectiveness Of Psychedelics Psychedelics are set to be approved as medicines as early as 2023. I think that there is a citizen-science project not happening that could add to the evidence base and help the wide-spread implementation of psychedelic-assisted therapies. As founder of Blossom, a project dedicated to providing information on psychedelics - from research to implementation - and effective altruist (GWWC since 2015 & Founders Pledge), I could lead a large-scale citizen-science study to study the real-world effectiveness of non-clinical use of psychedelics for mental health & self-development. I'm looking for $45.000 to dedicate a significant amount of time to this project & pay others involved in the study. [Please contact acx@floriswolswijk.com]
Impact Market Mini-Grants Results
October 09, 2023 · Original source
This was a hard grant to value. One way to value it is something like: suppose that he keeps doing this x 3 years, and 5% of his students become long-term committed rationalists/EAs. That’s 9 new committed rationalist/EAs. Suppose half of those would have counterfactually found our community anyway; that’s about 4 new ones. Suppose of those four, one takes the GWWC pledge to donate 10% of lifetime income, and another goes into direct work and has a good career in some useful institution. Each of those people could plausibly generate $100K in charitable value. So maybe we should value this at $100K.
The Pledge
December 17, 2025 · Original source
This is why I was so excited ten-odd years ago when I discovered the Giving What We Can Pledge. It’s a commitment to give a certain percent of your income (originally 10%, but now there’s also a 1-10% “trial” pledge) to the most effective charity you know. If you can’t figure out which charity is most effective, you can just donate to Against Malaria Foundation, like all the other indecisive people.
Inline links: Giving What We Can Pledge, a 1-10% “trial” pledge, Against Malaria Foundation
The specific numbers and charities matter less than the way the pledge makes you think about your values and then yoke your behavior to them. In theory we’re supposed to do this all the time. Another holiday institution, New Year’s Resolutions, also centers around considering your values and yoking your behavior. But they famously don’t work: most people don’t have the willpower to go to the gym three times a week, or to volunteer at their local animal shelter on Sundays, or whatever else they decide on. That’s why GWWC Pledge is so powerful. No willpower involved. Just go to your online banking portal, click click click, and you’re done. Over my life, I don’t know if I would say I’ve ever really changed my character or willpower or overall goodness/badness balance by more than a few percent. But I changed the amount I donated by a factor of ~ten, forever, with one very good decision.
Not an effective altruist? Think it’s better to contribute to your local community, school, theater, or church? I’ll argue with you later - but for now, my advice is the same. Have you thought really hard about how you should be contributing to your local community, school, theater, or church? (The fundraising letters my family used to get from our synagogue left little doubt about what form of contribution they preferred). Have you pledged some specific amount? You won’t give beyond the $10-when-you-see-a-blog-fundraiser level unless you take a real pledge, registered by someone besides yourself - trust me, I’ve tested this. The GWWC website is mostly pitched at EAs. But if you like churches so much, you can probably get the same effect by pledging to God - and He keeps His own list, and offers His own member perks.
Inline links: and He keeps His own list, and offers His own member perks
Open Thread 413
December 22, 2025 · Original source
4: Thank you so much, and congratulations, to everyone who took the GWWC Pledge recently because of my post on the topic (a GWWC staff member told me Friday that it was 30 full pledges and 13 trial pledges, but more have come in since then). I’ve tried to give the promised permanent subscription to everyone involved. If you signed up but didn’t get yours, then either I didn’t see you, I misclicked something, or you have some kind of weird no-email-registered account that I can’t give subscriptions to - in any case, please email me at scott@slatestarcodex.com and we can sort it out. Please include in your email the address you’re registered on Substack with, if it’s different from the address you’re emailing me with.
Inline links: my post on the topic