Effective Legacies Have Arrived!

Effective Legacies, our totally revamped (and free) will preparation service is now up and running for those interested in bequeathing to GiveWell!

In October 2015, we rolled out the beta version of our Legacy campaign and your response spoke for itself. In the short time it was active, almost 50 people created free documents bequeathing to GiveWell’s top charities, and many others have expressed interest to do so since we paused the service in December. To get an idea of just how much impact that is, let’s put this in perspective: if a single will among those is executed as written, the project ROI will likely exceed a 1-to-1 ratio. If two of those wills are executed, this campaign approaches the category of “rampant success."

Of course, by the very nature of this campaign, we likely won’t know for quite some time just how effective it could be. And ironically, given the high quality of human that would choose to donate a portion of their estate to effective charities, we’re kind of hoping that it will be a very long time. Regardless, these bequests will make a massive impact in the developing world some day.

In any case, the people have spoken and we’re listening, which is why we’ve spent the last few months piecing together an improved legacy campaign that shows just how committed we are to making this free service accessible to everyone!

Yes, Effective Legacies have arrived! Fill out a 15-minute form and finish with a professional, legally binding document that will honour your commitments if the unexpected happens. We are very thrilled to announce that our new partnership with LawDepot has made this service even higher quality and unbelievably easy to use. And it’s still free! Feel free to try it out even if you’ve made a will with us before. And of course, tell your friends and family.

Questions? Thoughts? Send them to baxter@charityscience.com.

​(Currently this service is only available in Canada, the US, the UK, and Australia at the moment, but we’re constantly working on expanding.)