File - A coal-fired power plant is silhouetted against the morning sun on July 27, 2018, in Glenrock, Wyo. A climate philanthropy organization, Giving Green, received a $10 million anonymous donation in April, 2024, and thinks that the same donor may have given even more. On a Friday morning in April, Dan Stein, the founder of Giving Green, a climate philanthropy organization, found some big news in a surprising email. An anonymous donor had given his fund $10 million.
The mystery gift went to Giving Green’s fund, which is housed at Giving What We Can, an organization inspired bythat asks people from all over the world to pledge to give away a percentage of their income or their wealth each year. The donor is anonymous with the gift coming from a In general, giving anonymously is often perceived as the highest form of giving, with a donor deflecting attention from themselves, Martin said, adding the donor thinks “I’m doing this out of a sense of creating a better community and simply saying that this money should go towards other uses rather than sitting in my pocket or my bank account.”
One recommended organization, Industrious Labs, advocates for decarbonizing heavy industries like aluminum and steel. Evan Gillespie, a partner at the organization, said those industries are often wrongly thought to be the hardest to abate. Giving Green reached out directly to them for what turned out to be a long vetting process that ended with Giving Green recommending them two years in a row.
Many effective altruists also pledge to give away a portion of their incomes while others have argued for the morality of earning as much money as possible in order to give it away.