At Effective Altruism Australia, our mission is to help Australians maximise the good their donations can do — by connecting them with highly effective charities tackling global poverty and climate change.
But that raises a fair question: how effective is that work?
In other words: how much additional funding for high-impact charities is generated for every dollar spent on EAA’s own operations?
After reviewing three years of data, we now have an answer. Our best estimate is that for every $1 spent on our fundraising, donation processing, and outreach, $5 to $8 ends up with effective charities.
That’s not just a nice story — it’s based on a structured methodology developed by Giving What We Can, which we’ve followed and carefully adapted to our context. If you’re into the details, you can see the full explanation here.
Turning support into scaled impact
EAA doesn’t deliver aid programs directly — but we do more than just pass funds along. We help people discover, trust, and support some of the world’s most impactful initiatives.
That includes:
🤝 Making high-impact giving easier through tax-deductible donations
🎯 Running targeted campaigns that grow support for evidence-based programs
🧠 Advising major donors and partners on where their gifts can do the most good
🇦🇺 Building a national community of Australians focused on solving the world’s biggest problems
This kind of behind-the-scenes work can be harder to measure. But it’s no less real.
Between 2022 and 2024, we moved millions of dollars to high-impact programs, and we’ve now traced that movement back to the operational support that made it possible.
Our calculation includes:
🏦 The total money we moved to partner charities
🔄 Adjustments for how much of that was counterfactually caused by EAA
📊 The effectiveness of the recipient programs
🏗️ Our operational costs linked to fundraising and donation infrastructure
We even surveyed our own team to estimate how much impact they would have had in alternative roles — to avoid overestimating the value of their work here.
What this means for donors
We’re careful not to overstate our impact. But if you’ve ever wondered whether funding an organisation that supports effective giving is itself a high-impact donation, we now have a clearer answer.
Supporting EAA means enabling more Australians to give — and to give more effectively. It’s a way of backing not just a cause, but a multiplier effect.
While past operational grants from organisations like Founders Pledge have made this work possible, that kind of funding isn’t guaranteed or sustainable. Ongoing support from individuals who value impact at scale is vital to our future.
Want to be part of it?
If you’d like to support the work that helps others give better, you can donate directly to EAA’s operations — just look for the “Amplify my impact” option on our donation page.
Thank you for being part of the journey from generosity to genuine impact.
