WHO’S BEHIND THE STUDENT PLEDGE?
Students, mostly. Every chapter is run by undergrads who decided it was worth their time, and their names are on the wall with everyone else's. If you want to know who's doing it at your school, they're easy to find.
The pledge is partnered with The School for Moral Ambition, an organization built around one uncomfortable observation: a lot of talented people spend forty years working on problems that don't matter very much, and almost nobody decides to do that on purpose. It happens one reasonable step at a time.
The giving pledge runs with Giving What We Can, who have been asking people to put a number on their giving since 2009.
A partnership between
Why Now?
Because the decisions get more expensive later. At twenty, changing direction costs you a summer. At thirty-five it costs a mortgage, a title, and the version of yourself everyone already knows. That's why the recruiting calendar works as well as it does. It shows up at the exact moment you're least able to argue with it.
What this isn't
Nobody here is telling you to be poor, and nobody is telling you what to care about. There's no correct answer on the form. The claim is smaller than that. Write something down, put your name on it where people you know can see it, and you're more likely to actually do it. That's the whole mechanism. The wall, the emails and the yearly check-in exist for one reason, which is to make a sentence you wrote at twenty harder to quietly forget.
Frequently
Asked Questions
Sign anyway. We started with five campuses because we had people there, not because the rest don't count. Enough names from one school is how it becomes a campus.
Only your name, school and major, and only if you leave the box unchecked. Never your percentage, never your career answer, never anything else you tell us. Check the box and you're counted but not named.
One that publishes what happens to your money, how many people, what result, at what cost, and lets outsiders check the work. GiveWell exists to do that checking. The giving pledge runs with Giving What We Can, who have been asking people to put a number on it since 2009 and have a version built for students who aren't earning yet.
Less than you'd expect, on purpose. You get one short email a month with projects, fellowships, jobs, and what other people decided to do. You get everyone else who signed, at your school and elsewhere, including Circles — small groups that meet to talk about this instead of thinking about it alone at 2am. There's a Summit in November. And once a year we ask how it's going. A newsletter isn't going to change your life. It's a thread back to something you decided, so it doesn't quietly disappear.
You probably will about something. There's no contract and no money changes hands here. Once a year we'll email and ask how it's going, and you can update your answer, keep it, or ignore us.
Yes, right up until you tell people. That's what the wall is for.
Almost nobody does at your age, and that's the reason to sign now rather than later. The career pledge is about how you choose, not what you choose. You're promising to pick on purpose instead of taking whatever shows up first.
Then take the giving pledge, and don't treat it as the consolation prize. Somebody has to make the money, and ten percent of that salary over thirty years moves more money to more problems than most people who work on those problems full-time ever will.