Donation recommendations 2024
Christmas time is donation time. Of course, we also notice this at Effektiv Spenden.
We would therefore like to share our current donation recommendations with you. In all five subject areas (Extreme Poverty, Climate Action, improving animal welfare, Existential Risks and Defending), our Giving Funds are our top recommendation for this year.
They offer several advantages:
- Effective: We can respond flexibly to the funding requirements of projects and new findings in research. This means that your donation is used where it will make the biggest difference.
- Simple: You don’t have to choose between individual top recommendations with different focuses, but let experts decide for you.
- Current: Especially in the case of a recurring donation, the funds ensure that the money is always used for the most promising organizations at the time. Your donation is always up to date.
If you would like to find out more about why we think Giving Funds are so useful, how exactly we decide on distribution and which organizations we have supported with the funds in the past, we recommend our article “What are Giving Funds?”
For those for whom the funds are too abstract and who prefer to support individual organizations, we are of course also retaining our “classic” recommendations.
Fighting Poverty
This year, there are no changes in this area, as GiveWell’s Top Charities remain unchanged. As a result, we continue to recommend the four GiveWell Top Charities, all of which implement highly effective and cost-efficient health interventions.
For those particularly interested in education, we recommend Deworm the World. Direct cash transfers from GiveDirectly offer an effective way to significantly improve the livelihoods of people in extreme poverty. Although no longer GiveWell Top Charities, both remain highly impactful. GiveWell still supports them through its All Grants Fund or staff donations, and recent evaluations suggest direct cash transfers are up to 4x more cost-effective than previously estimated.
Mitigating Climate Change
In the area of Mitigating climate change, we are pleased to add DEPLOY/US to our list of top organizations.
DEPLOY/US focuses on strengthening conservative climate policies in the United States. The goal is to counteract political polarization that prevents the U.S. government from implementing long-term, effective measures to decarbonize the economy. Our research partner, Founders Pledge, considers this a “promising approach to improving U.S. climate policy, increasing the likelihood of further bipartisan political successes, and making the U.S. response to climate change more robust.” In the essay “Climate at the Crossroads? Robust Philanthropic Strategies for Impact Amid Political Uncertainty in the US and Beyond,” Founders Pledge demonstrates that supporting the “Ecoright” ecosystem is a highly neglected area, offering significant potential for impactful action.
The previously recommended climate organization Carbon180 is no longer listed as a top organization. This decision does not stem from active criticism but rather from the lack of a current evaluation by our research partners. If you are particularly interested in the approach of negative emissions pursued by Carbon180, you can book a free donation consultation, and we will assist you in continuing to engage in this area.
Improving Animal Welfare
Also in this area, we have added another organization with Sinergia Animal to our list of top organizations.
Sinergia Animal primarily works in South America and Southeast Asia to improve conditions for animals in industrial farming. They achieve this through corporate campaigns, consumer education, and partnerships in regions where animal welfare is not prioritized, aiming to enhance farming standards, reduce animal product consumption, and expand plant-based options. Our research partner, Animal Charity Evaluators, recommends Sinergia Animal for their “strong track record in effectively engaging key stakeholders, including producers and retailers, through corporate campaigns.”
The previously listed top organization in the field of Improving animal welfare, Good Food Institute, remains a recommendation. However, it is now categorized under climate protection because the current evaluation from our research partner Giving Green focuses entirely on this area.
Safeguarding the Future
For donors who want to reduce the greatest known risks to humanity, we continue to offer our Giving Fund and do not recommend any single organizations. We closely follow the Emerging Challenges Fund by the experts at Longview Philanthropy. This fund works to address global security risks posed by new technologies by supporting highly effective organizations, as the funded projects from last year clearly demonstrate. You can also read more details here.
For donors who want to focus exclusively on risks from advanced artificial intelligence, we also offer the Giving Fund: Ensuring Safe AI, where we also collaborate with Longview Philanthropy.
Defending Democracy
For years, various projects on the definition and empirical measurement of democracy have shown a dangerous trend: Since around the year 2000 – and accelerating from 2015 onwards – the global spread and deepening of democracy came to its provisional end. Instead, a gradual, and sometimes rapid, decline into illiberal or autocratic forms of government set in.
Since democracy not only represents a value in itself but also directly and indirectly contributes to all other areas we are committed to, we at Effektiv Spenden, with the support of some major donors, started focusing on this area a few years ago. Primarily by supporting the establishment of the non-profit international evaluation think tank Power for Democracies, which investigates which pro-democratic measures are particularly effective and which organizations are particularly successful and efficient in implementing these measures. We expect the first concrete donation recommendations from Power for Democracies in the coming year.
Anyone who wants to get involved in defending democracy before then can do so with the help of our Giving Fund: Defending Democracy. This fund is managed by our team member Stephan Schwahlen, who has been advising major donors on their funding decisions in the field of Defending Democracy since 2018 and is also a co-founder of Power for Democracies.
Since we do not yet have external analyses and evaluations, the effectiveness of the measures we recommend and support is associated with higher uncertainty than our other recommendations. Additionally, until the first results from Power for Democracies are available, we are limiting ourselves to supporting initiatives operating in Germany. For these two reasons, we have decided to mark this Giving Fund with a “Beta” label.
The projects that we supported with the fund last year can be seen in the chart below. here can be read here.
Christmas presents
Still lacking gift ideas? For the perfect last-minute gift, we recommend our Donation voucher. It gives you the opportunity to make an effective donation and bring joy to people who already have everything. You make the donation directly through us and receive your voucher code. The recipient then uses the code to redeem the donation voucher via our website. They can then choose which of our recommended organizations the donation should go to. A great way to give a Christmas present that brings double the joy and really makes a difference!
Free donation advice
If you are overwhelmed by choice after reading this article, or if you have any questions about our Giving Funds, individual organizations, our research partners, or Effektiv Spenden itself, please feel free to contact us. You can book a free and non-binding donation consultation directly through our website or – especially when time is of the essence – contact us directly at – call us directly on +49 (0)30 / 260 355 19. We are happy to help you with this between the years.
About the author
Founder & Managing Director
More blog posts
-
Tax-deductible donations in Switzerland?
What do I need to keep in mind if I want to claim my donations as a tax deduction in Switzerland?
-
How 700 OpenAI Agents Hacked Hugging Face
700 AI agents escaped from their test environment and hacked Hugging Face. We explain the AI agent cyber attack.
-
Our Giving Fund: Fighting Poverty in H2/2025
Our Giving Fund: “Fighting Poverty” supports four projects in Africa and India with a total of 5.3 million euros in donations from the second half of 2025.