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FAQ's

Donations

Yes! Donations of $2 or more are tax deductible in Australia.
Effective Altruism Australia (ABN 87 608 863 467) and Effective Altruism Australia Environment (ABN 57 659 447 417) endorsed as Deductible Gift Recipients (DGR) by the Australian Taxation Office (ATO).
You will receive a receipt for donations once we confirm it has arrived in our bank account. For bank transfers, this will usually take 1-2 days (longer over the weekend). For credit cards, the wait should be no longer than 15 minutes. If you do not receive a receipt within the relevant timeframe, please send an email to info@eaa.org.au including your full name, a description, the amount donated and the name of your banking institution. We’ll hop onto it straight away. Also note that receipts may occasionally end up in your spam inbox.
Yes you will. For the 2023-2024 financial year, these were sent on 4 July 2024 If you didn’t get yours, you are welcome to contact us at info@eaa.org.au and we’ll look into it. Note that we also send out individual receipts for each donation received, once the donation reaches our bank account (see above).
Visa/Mastercard fees are 1.4% plus 30c per transaction. Amex fees are 1.75% plus 30c per transaction. International Card fees are 2.9% plus 30c per transaction.
Payments made via bank transfer have no fees.
These fees are the same for both EAA & EAAE.
You can currently donate to EAA and EAAE in two different ways, by bank transfer or by credit card. Both methods allow us to process your payment at no cost to you. However, please note that for large donations (over $2,000) we prefer bank transfer, as it reduces the fees we pay. To donate by bank transfer you will need to register your intention to make a single, or recurring, transfer to our bank account. You can do this by completing the form on our donation page. Once we have registered your intention to donate, we will send you a unique code. You will need to use this unique code as a reference number when sending your payment to our bank account so that we can identify your payment. We will send you a tax receipt for every payment we receive from you. You should receive your receipt within 1-2 days. To donate by credit card, simply follow the instructions and fill in your details on our donation page.
When making donations to EAA, the Donate page on our website will allow you to designate a specific EAA partner charity, if you so wish. Alternatively, you can also choose to allow EAA to decide on the partner designation based on the latest evidence available to us.
By contrast, when making donations to EAAE, you will not be able to designate a specific EAAE partner charity. Instead, every three months, EAAE will consider the latest evidence pertaining to EAAE’s partner charities. EAAE will then decide which of its partner charities will be granted the donations that have been received over the past three months. This less flexible approach for designating donations to our partner charities is a result of specific regulatory requirements that apply to registered environmental charities.
You can now make donations via credit card.
We accept Visa, Mastercard and American Express.
Yes. Your credit card details are encrypted and submitted directly from your web browser to our payment processor, Stripe. Our accounting staff only have access to the last 4 digits of your credit card number.
We suggest that you use whichever payment method is most convenient for you. For major donations (over $2,000), we prefer that you donate via bank transfer to reduce fees.
Please email info@eaa.org.au with details of your donation, including name, description, amount and the name of your banking institution.
Running any charity has costs. To get your donation to its destination we need to pay our staff, meet our regulatory obligations, and cover the costs of auditors, accountants, government registrations, banking facilities, websites, software and more. We meet these expenses preferentially using donations directed towards our running costs. In the 2023 – 2024 financial year, Effective Altruism Australia’s operational expenses were 3.26 of the overall amount of donations we received. In the 2023 – 2024 financial year, Effective Altruism Australia Environment’s operational expenses were 1.80% of the overall amount of donations we received.
At EAA we don’t currently have enough funding to realise all our goals, like growing effective giving and building a vibrant community in Australia. Donations to support our work help us achieve this. If you choose to support EAA’s work (under “Amplify my impact” on our donation form), you’ll be helping us cover essential operational expenses, improve our infrastructure, reach new audiences, grow our community, and otherwise pursue our mission of supporting Australians to tackle the world’s most pressing problems.
Currently, most donations to support our work cover our running costs, like paying part-time accounting staff who get your donation to its destination. We’re also excited about growing our fundraising efforts to enlist new donors to effective giving and increase support for our partners’ life-changing and life-saving work. Supporting EAA’s fundraising work can thus have a catalytic effect, known as a ‘giving multiplier’.
All funds donated specifically to support EAA’s work are allocated by our governing Board of Directors, and we publish our audited financial statements each year.

First—thank you, we greatly appreciate your support. To make a donation solely towards EAA’s activities, please follow these steps:

  1. Head to our donation form and scroll down to “Amplify my impact”
  2. Click inside the “Custom amount” box and enter the amount you wish to donate towards EAA’s work
  3. Fill out your details and click “Donate”
  4. If there’s a specific aspect of our work you’d like to support, please send a short email to info@eaa about your intent. For example, you may wish to support our fundraising, community building, or policy work.
This is certainly possible and we welcome any assistance in meeting our running costs. To donate directly to EAA operational or community building costs, you can visit our Donate page and then select “I would like to choose how to allocate my donation” then “Effective Altruism Australia Amplify To donate directly towards operations for EAAE you can visit our Donate page and then select “I would like to choose how to allocate my donation” then “Effective Altruism Australia Environment Operations”.
For recurring bank payments, you need to log into your internet banking app or website and change the amount of the recurring transfer. Some banks require you to cancel the existing transfer and make a new one. Please ensure you keep the original reference number in your recurring donation so that our automated system can match it to you.
You can cancel recurring bank transfers via your banking website, app or branch. Once you cancel the transfer, there is nothing further you need to do.
Effective Altruism Australia and Effective Altruism Australia Environment both support workplace giving arrangements and can work with you and your employer’s payroll team to set this up. There are already many Australians making donations to us through such arrangements. To discuss how to make this happen at your workplace, please contact us at info@eaa.org.au.
Effective Altruism Australia and Effective Altruism Australia Environment are registered on the following workplace giving platforms: Benevity, Good2Give, Goodstack, YourCause (EAA only) and Good Company.
Yes. You can arrange to make an unrestricted bequest to us by including the following text in your will:
“I give to Effective Altruism Australia (ABN 87 608 863 467), for its general purposes free of all duties the sum of $X for which an authorised receipt from Effective Altruism Australia will be sufficient discharge for the executor(s) or trustee.”

Charity Partners

At Effective Altruism Australia, we consider research from independent charity evaluators and academia to identify the very best projects to support. We work with GiveWell, Giving What We Can, and The Life You Can Save. We further review whether the work of each highly recommended charity is in line with our purpose, and ensure our partnership would be beneficial within the landscape of Australian charitable giving. At Effective Altruism Australia Environment, we have partnered with two evaluation partners: Giving Green and Founders Pledge. Both organisations perform rigorous research and recommend highly effective climate initiatives, and each organisation conducts independent evaluations on what works best. We choose charities that have been independently recommended by both organisations.

EAA and EAAE are organisations which have been set up to fundraise in Australia for the world’s most effective charities. We contact charities that pass an initial selection process and request further information for our due diligence. Charities that pass the subsequent due diligence assessment are designated as partner charities and EAA/EAAE will fundraise on their behalf in Australia.

Part of the strength of the Effective Altruism movement is the varied views of its membership, all of which are focused on most effectively improving the world. Some members of the Effective Altruism movement focus on the reduction of suffering of all sentient beings, and to them this includes non-human animals. Further, some believe that reducing the suffering of future humans is equally as important as those presently alive. Because of this, reducing the chance of future harm to humans or existential risk, may be the most effective use of our time and money (e.g., by reducing the risks of future pandemics or artificial intelligence).

Effective Altruism Australia, as an institution, welcomes all of these wonderful perspectives and points of view. However, the Australian charity sector’s current legal framework only allows tax deductions for a limited set of cause areas. It is therefore only possible for EAA and EAAE to aim to alleviate suffering among presently living humans and address climate and environmental challenges. EAA and EAAE were created for these purposes, and must remain focused on them, as a broader scope could risk the loss of tax deductibility status.

If you are passionate about animal welfare or reducing global catastrophic risks, we strongly encourage you to support your chosen cause even without the existence of a tax deductible option in Australia. You can find more information about animal causes at Animal Charity Evaluators, Farmkind, and Giving What We Can. You can also read Giving What We Can’s writeup and donation recommendations on reducing global catastrophic risks.

Most importantly, we believe that all lives are equal, no matter where you live. This philosophy means that we search all over the world (including in Australia) for the most effective charities. At present, charity evaluators and research suggest that the most cost-effective projects for alleviating poverty are those focused on people living in developing countries. Likewise, the available evidence indicates that the most cost-effective climate change interventions are overseas. If you want to understand more about why it is so much more cost-effective to help people in poorer countries then please visit GiveWell, Open Philanthropy, The Life You Can Save or The Global Priorities Project.

Effective Altruism Australia partners with charities that demonstrate strong evidence of impact. Our process prioritises organisations evaluated by trusted third parties. We conduct our own evaluation and due diligence, but generally do that after charities have been vetted by these evaluators who have more resources to conduct in-depth research.

Partnership Pathways

If you’re interested in partnering with us, we recommend contacting our trusted evaluators directly. These include GiveWell, Founders Pledge, Giving What We Can, and Giving Green.

Evidence Requirements

Evaluators typically assess:

  • Quantifiable impact metrics:
    • For global health/poverty: Lives saved per dollar, quality-adjusted life years (QALYs), or equivalent
    • For climate initiatives: CO₂ emissions reduced per dollar
  • Intervention evidence: Rigorous studies demonstrating your approach’s effectiveness
  • Organisational transparency: Sufficient access to data and operations for thorough evaluation

For more information about our selection criteria for recommended and listed charities, see our charity inclusion criteria page.

Effective Altruism Australia

Effective Altruism Australia (EAA) is a registered Public Benevolent Institution (PBI) that aims to alleviate poverty, distress and suffering. EAA recognises that we do not have the scale to effectively achieve this focus on our own, so we partner with charities that share our purpose of alleviating poverty effectively – i.e., we have a common purpose. We fundraise in Australia and partner with charities who use these funds to deliver high-impact programs for us. In this way, EAA can achieve far superior results and impact than if we were to try to alleviate poverty by ourselves. EAA is based on the principles of Effective Altruism which is a philosophy and social movement that applies evidence and reason to help determine the most effective ways to improve the world.
Like EAA, EAAE is also a charity founded on the ideas of Effective Altruism. EAAE is focused on advancing the natural environment, including through combating climate change. EAAE oversees the Effective Altruism Australia Environment Fund which helps combat climate change by enabling Australians to donate to evidence-based, cost-effective, high-impact organisations. Once you donate, EAAE works with independent evaluators to identify the partner charities and projects where the impact of your donations will be greatest.
Effective Altruism Australia (EAA) and Effective Altruism Australia Environment (EAAE) are two separate legal entities with similar, but distinct purposes and projects. While both organisations help Australians donate to tax-deductible, evidence-based, cost-effective charities, EAA focuses on the charities that most effectively alleviate poverty, distress, and suffering, while EAAE focuses on those charities that most effectively advance the natural environment.

Please express your interest by emailing info@eaa.org.au. While we welcome all offers of support we are particularly interested in volunteers with technical skills to assist in developing our website and automating various processes. If you think this may be you, please let us know!

Yes. You can view or download our financial statements here.

Effective Altruism

Effective Altruism is a growing social movement and philosophy that combines both the heart and the head: compassion guided by data and reason. If you are interested in learning more about Effective Altruism then please consider visiting effectivealtruism.org or the Effective Altruism Wikipedia page.

There are a wide range of different Effective Altruism chapters across Australia with both online and offline presences. Many have regular social gatherings and all welcome new members. If you can’t find one for your area or university and would like to set one up then please contact info@eaa.org.au.

Please contact info@eaa.org.au with any feedback or concerns.
Please contact info@eaa.org.au.