Raising for Effective Giving (REG) is a “meta-charity” that promotes donating part of one’s earnings to highly effective charities. Pursuing a rational, quantitative and impact-oriented approach to helping others, REG targets industries such as poker, where people are likely to share the same mindset.

We hope to add several full-time equivalents to our team in order to expand in poker, start projects in other industries that we believe are particularly promising and explore other areas to find new opportunities.

Our impact – facts & figures

  • In its first year of operations, REG raised over $550,000 for cost-effective charities. Seed funding of $50,000 (enabling 2 full-time equivalents) got REG off the ground during this initial period, generating a charitable ROI of over 1,000%.
  • Total money moved: More than $825,000 moved to effective charities since REG’s founding in 2014, with a return on investment of over 10 : 1.
  • Transparency: Fully transparent expenses and extensive reports on money moved
  • A growing movement: >200 members; positive trend in sign-ups
  • Very positive reception inside and outside the poker world: NPR Planet Money, The Independent, PokerNews, BLUFF europe, Calvin Ayre, All In, PokerListings and many more; GPI Award for “Charitable Initiative Of The Year 2014”
  • Supported by some of the biggest names in poker, including Martin Jacobson, Liv Boeree, Erik Seidel, Jason Somerville, Daniel Negreanu, Max Steinberg and many more

The future of REG: From poker to DFS, gaming and finance

We believe there is significantly more REG can do, both in poker and in new industries. Our “best case” vision: A global “Donate 2%” movement, spanning lots of industries and professional communities.

In poker, we aim to continue our outreach activities at events at the world’s biggest poker tournaments, expand our networking activities and matching fundraising campaigns, and increase our corporate partnerships.

We will also try to replicate the success REG had in poker by bringing the approach to other industries. In particular, we set up the first few steps for REG expansions into daily fantasy sports (DFS), gaming and finance and are looking for additional seed funding to kick-start the operations. With a matching challenge of 2x $75,000 in DFS and partnerships with established gaming sites, such as SK Gaming, we’ve already had the first successes. In the longer term, we plan to explore further target industries.

REG is still a start-up, and as such there is no guarantee that our proposed projects will be as successful as REG has been in poker. However, we believe that REG’s success to date is a strong proof of concept, and expect our planned projects to have a similarly large positive impact.

How to support REG

Please support REG today by making a donation to REG and picking “Effective Altruism Foundation”, the organisation behind REG, as a beneficiary. Your donation will be earmarked for REG. Thank you!