One for the World’s 1% Pledge is designed to help donors answer two simple questions:

• Where should I give?

• How much should I give?

We believe that pledging 1% of your income to highly cost-effective nonprofits is a highly impactful answer to these questions. We think this because:

Most people can have a huge impact with only 1% of their income.
According to renowned development economist Jeffrey Sachs, 0.7% of the annual income of OECD member countries would be sufficient to eliminate global poverty over a twenty-year period. Contributing even 1% of your own annual salary can make a remarkable difference when donated to highly effective nonprofit organizations. 

Most of us can live comfortably on 99% of our annual salary.
By taking the One for the World pledge and contributing 1% of your income, you are improving the lives of the world’s most under-resourced people. For thousands of people living in extreme poverty, those dollars can mean the difference between life and death. By contrast, donating this income is unlikely to make any meaningful difference at all to your quality of life.

1% creates a significant impact when given to high-impact nonprofits.
Perhaps 1% of your income means that you contribute $50 per month to One for the World partner nonprofit organizations. You may think you need to contribute more to have an impact - but in the hands of the right organization, it can achieve so much! That is why we lean on GiveWell, an independent nonprofit evaluator, to produce a data-driven, transparent, and cost-effective portfolio of nonprofit organizations that do an incredible amount of good per dollar spent. 

For example, your $50 can purchase and deliver 25 anti-malaria bed nets, or even provide 600 vitamin-A supplements to vitamin-deficient children! To see how much of a difference you can make with 1%, visit our impact calculator.

Donating each month is significantly more impactful for most donors than donating sporadically. On average, recurring donors give more per year and more over their lifetime of engagement with nonprofits than sporadic donors.

Giving regularly also makes it easier for you to stick to your Pledge, as the donation is predictable and habit-forming. It’s also more predictable for the nonprofits you support, allowing them to plan more strategically.

You can choose to give on a one-off basis or annually but we encourage you to give on a monthly basis for the reasons above. If you intend to give more than $10,000 per year, please reach out to our Managing Director, Emma, for bespoke advice.

One for the World has partnered with our donation software to provide a ‘future-dated Pledge’ option. This allows you to select a start date up to four years into the future. We specifically designed this to allow students to pledge now but only start donating after they graduate.

However, there is significant evidence from our Chapter Organizers that people who choose not to pledge now, and who ‘wait until after graduating’ to make a Pledge, do not follow through on their intention. So we strongly encourage you to make a commitment now, safe in the knowledge that you can modify your Pledge at any time. (Please see “How do I modify or cancel my pledge”.)

You can! If you set up a regular donation to start after you graduate, you will automatically be offered the chance to give via our ‘student giving option’. This lets you choose a small amount to start giving straight away, which will automatically update to your full 1% Pledge on your chosen start date.

Our Pledges are in no way legally binding. They are voluntary commitments that you enforce through your own conscience. You are able to modify or cancel your Pledge at any time. Indeed, if you face a period without income, we encourage you to pause your Pledge and come back to it. For instructions on modifying your Pledge, please see “How do I modify or cancel my pledge”.

One for the World’s 1% Pledge is a pledge of 1% of your gross income. So, if you earn $120,000 per year, this would be $100 per month.

However, we leave choosing the exact amount up to you - some pledgers include income apart from their salary, some pledge part of their wealth rather than their income, and some pledge different amounts for different sources of money. We particularly encourage you to include ‘extra’ income like bonuses or inheritances - but is ultimately up to you!

That’s great! Many of our donors choose to give more than 1% of their income. In fact, the average American at every level of income gives more than 1% of their income to charity:

If you want to give an amount that is really meaningful, we suggest you consider the Giving What We Can pledge of 10% of your income. Many of our staff and supporters give this amount, and you can fulfill your Giving What We Can pledge by giving through One for the World. 

If you take the Giving What We Can pledge, be sure to let us know! This data is very valuable to us as it helps us track our impact, raise funds for our operating costs and evaluate the success of our programs.

We believe anyone with disposable income in a high-income country can donate 1% of their income without making any meaningful sacrifice to their quality of life. If you think you cannot afford this amount, we encourage you to think hard about what you are spending money on! Most of us regularly spend money on non-essential things like bottled water; takeaway food and coffee; taxis instead of public transport; eating out; foreign travel etc.. Accordingly, we could give 1% by giving up a fraction of these expenses - and the impact of that money for someone living in extreme poverty will be hundreds of times bigger than the impact of buying that extra takeaway meal.

However, if your circumstances mean you can’t donate 1%, any donation is better than no donation. Our amazing nonprofit partners can use even $10 to make a significant difference on the ground.

The best ways to get involved are to set up or volunteer at a Chapter at your university; or to host a corporate talk at your company.

You can read more about how to found or volunteer at a Chapter here. 

Effective giving talks at companies are a big part of our awareness-raising and fundraising. Senior staff from One for the World deliver talks every year at companies like Google, Bain, Microsoft, Meta, SimpliSafe, Accenture and Bridgewater. 

These talks can be virtual or in-person and are a great way to explain how your colleagues can get more impact from their charitable donations, and to advertise the incredible nonprofits we recommend. The format is a 40-minute talk and 20-minute Q&A, introducing the main ideas of effective giving and promoting our 1% Pledge. We can support you with advertising copy and graphics, a bespoke donation page, and help to get internal sign-off.

Talks have so far raised $730k in one-off donations and ~$200k per year in recurring donations, so they are highly impactful. You can see more about what a One for the World giving talk entails here and see the deck we use here. To discuss booking a talk, reach out to Managing Director Emma.

We occasionally need skilled volunteers for things like web design, UX design, data management, marketing, and communications. If you would like to discuss volunteering with our HQ team, please reach out to Managing Director Emma.

One for the World is a 501c3 non-profit (EIN: 84-2124550) and a charity registered in England & Wales (charity number 1193383).

Our mission is to build a movement of people revolutionizing charitable giving to end extreme poverty through education, training, and community building. 

Our vision is a world in which everyone fully embraces their opportunity to give effectively and therefore no one lives in extreme poverty.

Every strategic decision we make aims to expand awareness of effective giving and increase the amount we funnel to our nonprofit partners yearly. We strongly encourage individuals to donate at least 1% of their income to our nonprofit partners that are on the ground fighting extreme poverty through cost-effective interventions. We have also invested in developing leaders across university campuses worldwide to organize One for the World chapters, train volunteers to recruit 1% Pledgers, coordinate events, and support various One for the World initiatives.

One for the World is unique in its field, for several reasons:

• We help young people take action now as philanthropists. Many nonprofits only target the wealthiest donors, which means older donors. It’s why so few nonprofits have university outreach programs. However, One for the World believes that young people want to take action now and we give them a simple, affordable way to do that.

• We are laser-focused on cost-effectiveness. Many philanthropic movements try to harness public sentiment and so promote causes that are topical, that help with crises or natural disasters, or that are based in their donors’ communities. Regrettably, these interventions are often not evidence-backed and cannot show a lasting positive effect on the problems they try to address. They are also sometimes beset by scandal. One for the World follows the data and so recommends programs that consistently do what they say they will, in the most efficient way possible.

• We promote a lifelong, affordable Pledge. Most nonprofits spend their fundraising and marketing budgets trying to get people into a ‘funnel’. It usually goes something like this:

• Donor clicks on an ad or visits website

• Donor signs up for newsletter

• Donor comes to an event

• Donor makes a small one-off donation

• Donor starts a small regular donation

One for the World is much more ambitious than this. We know that regular donors are more effective philanthropists. (Please see “How often should I donate?”.) We also know that many people in high-income countries can survive perfectly well on 99% of their income. So we encourage pledgers to make a lifelong commitment to give an affordable amount each month, which helps them have substantially more impact than those who donate sporadically or only start donating in later life.

We are powered by peer outreach. One for the World doesn’t employ teams of fundraisers and marketers. Instead, we support our amazing volunteers to tell their peers about effective giving and invite them to join our movement, whether that’s at the university, their church or their workplace. That’s how we’ve raised over $4.5m for effective charities with a maximum of only four full-time staff.

One for the World was co-founded in 2014 by two MBA students, Kate Epstein, and Josh McCann, at The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. 

During their program, Kate and Josh realized that their classmates were interested in learning about effective giving and high-impact nonprofit organizations but lacked the tools to take action. In order to empower their peers with the education and tools to evangelize effective giving on campus, the first One for the World chapter was established at Wharton and quickly expanded to include chapters on campuses around the world, including the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, and Canada.

We are funded by a mixture of grants and donations from High Net Worth Individuals who support our mission. You can see our financial filings here. They donate to us because we turn every dollar we spend on our operating costs into many dollars for our nonprofit partners.

As of 2024, our largest funder is the Open Philanthropy Project, which distributes the fortune of Dustin Moskovitz and Cari Tuna.

We do not take any cut from our members’ donations to fund our operating costs.

We do not take a cut from our members’ donations to fund our operating costs. Accordingly, every cent that reaches One for the World’s bank account in a donation intended for a nonprofit partner is passed on in full.

One for the World does not receive any funds or benefits from the nonprofit organizations that we feature. 

Depending on how you donate, some processing fees are taken out of your donation, which is in line with processing expenses you would likely pay if you donated to each organization directly. A small extra fee is taken if you use our ‘future pledge’ donation platform, Donational, to enable you to pledge now and pay when you graduate. 

For those donating directly through our website, the percentage regranted to our nonprofit partners increases the more you donate. Donational charges a flat fee of 2%. Stripe then charges 2.2% + 30 cents USD for credit card transactions (3.5% for Amex), so for the median donor giving $50 per month, 95.2% of their donation is regranted. The percentage that goes directly to the organizations is increased even further if you opt to use our direct bank connections. 

For legacy donors processed through Network for Good, 96.15% of your donation goes directly to the charity. In 2021-22, the average processing fee was 2.9% per dollar donated, as we accepted a significant number of large donations by check, which carries no processing fee.

One for the World strives to be radically transparent. We publish all our financial filings and impact reports in public on our website. We are audited each year and file extensive financial disclosures with US and UK regulators.

Ultimately, there has to be an element of trust in our relationship with our members. If senior staff colluded in fraud, or if we set out to deceive donors, it is plausible that we could do this. However, our level of transparency is considerably higher than in many organizations. We also have trusted relationships with many other reputable, highly-scrutinized organizations, such as our nonprofit partners. If you have concerns about our transparency, please reach out, and we’ll share as much information as we are able to without compromising individuals’ privacy.

All data is handled in accordance with One for the World’s privacy policy. We do not hold any credit card or bank account information - this is processed by Stripe and is not visible to One for the World staff.

Donational is donation software that allows students to pledge today but not start donating until after they graduate. Donational was founded by a One for the World supporter and has largely been developed for our benefit. They charge a fee for their service but, without their ‘future pledge’ technology, we don’t think we could attract our student pledgers. (Please see “Where does my money go when I donate?”)

If you want to avoid these processing costs, please contact us for manual donation options with lower processing fees.