GiveWell focuses on doing high-quality research on where to give; we put relatively little effort into marketing, community building, or encouraging people to give more. We’d like to give a shout out to some organizations – most of them relatively young – that do focus on this important work.

Giving What We Can is an international society dedicated to eliminating extreme poverty. It provides a variety of resources to encourage people to give generously, including a membership pledge for lifetime giving of 10% of income, a “try giving” program for shorter and more flexible giving commitments, and a variety of local chapters currently in the U.S., U.K. and Australia. It also encourages people to give as effectively as they can, with a similar definition of effectiveness to ours, and its charity recommendations draw on our research. Giving What We Can is part of the Centre for Effective Altruism, which engages in a variety of projects around the ideas of effective altruism.

The Life You Can Save is an organization founded by the philosopher Peter Singer (who has been one of the most influential advocates for using GiveWell’s research). It spreads awareness of things people can do to fight extreme poverty through a blog, outreach events, and a worldwide network of regional community groups. The Life You Can Save also provides a list of charity recommendations that draws on our research and encourages people to pledge a percentage of their income to these charities (the recommended percentage scales with income level).

Charity Science aims to educate the public about the “science of doing good.” It aims to make research on good giving more accessible and entertaining, and encourages donations to our recommended charities. It does so by running small-scale experiments to see what works and what doesn’t in spreading the word. Experiments have included encouraging birthday and Christmas fundraisers, where people ask for donations instead of material possessions. Charity Science also provides education through write ups, infographics, and presentations.

Raising for Effective Giving (REG), a project of GBS Switzerland, is a community of poker players interested in making a positive impact. It encourages poker players to pledge at least 2% of their gross winnings (which REG states generally translates to 5-10% of net income) to its recommended charities. Its recommendations are a mix of GiveWell-recommended charities and effective-altruism-associated organizations. The first- and third-place finishers in the most recent World Series of Poker Main Event were REG members.