# GWWC Pledge History

[Giving What We Can](https://www.givingwhatwecan.org/) members have pledged to donate at least 10% of what they earn to help others as best they can, but this is broader than it was originally. The pledge was specific to global poverty, and only became [cause-neutral](https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/topics/cause-neutrality) in late 2014 after [a lot of discussion](https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/9Xp7BGoKnbSiP3Ng8/should-giving-what-we-can-change-its-pledge). I think that discussion is interesting to review now that we can see how it worked out, and is probably more interesting than continuing with this post below where I look at minor wording changes.

But, if you want to stick around for my looking through the [Internet Archive](https://archive.org/) for minor wording changes, here are the five versions it captured on the site.

The first one is [2011-07-26](https://web.archive.org/web/20110726123337/http://www.givingwhatwecan.org/our-pledge/index.php), with:

> I recognise that I can use part of my income to do a significant amount of good in the developing world. Since I can live well enough on a smaller income, I pledge that from today until the day I retire, I shall give at least ten percent of what I earn to whichever organizations can most effectively use it to fight poverty in developing countries. I make this pledge freely, openly, and without regret.

Sometime between [2014-02-08](https://web.archive.org/web/20140208030748/http://givingwhatwecan.org/about-us/the-pledge) and [2014-06-03](https://web.archive.org/web/20140603024731/https://www.givingwhatwecan.org/pledge) the pledge was changed to:

> I recognise that I can use part of my income to do a significant amount of good in the developing world. Since I can live well enough on a smaller income, I pledge that for the rest of my life or until the day I retire, I shall give at least ten percent of what I earn to whichever organisations can most effectively use it to help people in developing countries, now and in the years to come. I make this pledge freely, openly, and sincerely.

This expansion brought in things like interventions that save lives without necessarily making people less poor, interventions that take a while to pay off, and even [reducing existential risk](https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/9Xp7BGoKnbSiP3Ng8/should-giving-what-we-can-change-its-pledge?commentId=MNQFhGsgPQvXSWM7i) (provided that you think it's still worth it when only including the benefit to people in developing counties). I can't find any discussion of this at the time, but if there was please point me to it!

The big change was a few months later, sometime between [2014-11-27](https://web.archive.org/web/20141127052745/https://www.givingwhatwecan.org/pledge) and [2015-01-07](https://web.archive.org/web/20150107070427/https://www.givingwhatwecan.org/pledge), when they changed it to:

> I recognise that I can use part of my income to do a significant amount of good. Since I can live well enough on a smaller income, I pledge that for the rest of my life or until the day I retire, I shall give at least ten percent of what I earn to whichever organisations can most effectively use it to improve the lives of others, now and in the years to come. I make this pledge freely, openly, and sincerely.

Expanding the pledge to be cause netural was [very controversial](https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/9Xp7BGoKnbSiP3Ng8/should-giving-what-we-can-change-its-pledge): people were worried it would dilute what GWWC stood for, and hurt its credibility. On the other hand, there's a lot of value in having a pledge we can all stand behind, plus encouraging people to make a lifetime committment to a specific cause is contrary to a lot of what EA stands for.

Changes since then have been pretty minor. Between [2020-09-07](https://web.archive.org/web/20200907105108/https://www.givingwhatwecan.org/pledge/) and [2020-09-19](https://web.archive.org/web/20200919180352/https://www.givingwhatwecan.org/pledge/) it gained some blanks for expiration and amount:

> I recognise that I can use part of my income to do a significant amount of good. Since I can live well enough on a smaller income, I pledge that from now until __ I shall give __ to whichever organisations can most effectively use it to improve the lives of others, now and in the years to come. I make this pledge freely, openly, and sincerely.

Asking GWWC, they said this was to allow one version of the main text to cover what had previously required [other](https://www.givingwhatwecan.org/get-involved/trial-pledge) [variants](https://www.givingwhatwecan.org/get-involved/further-pledge).

Later, between [2022-02-08](https://web.archive.org/web/20220208085033/https://www.givingwhatwecan.org/pledge/) and [2022-02-13](https://web.archive.org/web/20220213084231/https://www.givingwhatwecan.org/pledge/) it gained one last blank, for the start date:

> I recognise that I can use part of my income to do a significant amount of good. Since I can live well enough on a smaller income, I pledge that from __ until __ I shall give __ to whichever organisations can most effectively use it to improve the lives of others, now and in the years to come. I make this pledge freely, openly, and sincerely.

Asking GWWC again, this was to cover both cases where someone was intending to start on a future date, and also cases where people wanted to pick a date in the past so the pledge would cover earlier income.

  
*Disclosure: [my wife](https://juliawise.net/) used to be President of GWWC, but I haven't run this post by her and I don't know her views here. I sent a draft of this post to GWWC.*