Impactful giving: A communications problem

Etkili Bağış Zirvesi (Effective Giving Summit) August 1, 2026 / Istanbul, Türkiye

Is impactful giving more of a communications problem than anything else?

That question stayed with us after spending the first day of August in Istanbul at the first Etkili Bağış Zirvesi, a gathering focused on effective altruism and impact-driven giving in Türkiye.

The day centered on a simple question: how do we do the most good with the resources we have? Alparslan Bayrak, founder of Etkili Bağış, opened with a presentation on evidence-guided philanthropy and where Türkiye currently stands. That was followed by a panel moderated by Effective Altruism Turkey’s Ceren Karabulut, featuring Cem Berk from Bright Thinking Project, Asst. Prof. Ecem Buse Sevinç Çubuk, Assoc. Prof. Engin Arıkan, and Kemal Yağanlar, who shared how they decide where to direct their giving.

What stood out to us was how donors typically choose. We tend to give to the organisations we are already familiar with, the ones running visible campaigns, or the names everyone trusts. Meanwhile, there are initiatives creating significantly more impact with the same resources that most people have never heard of.

That is more of a communications challenge than a lack of generosity.

High-impact, evidence-led work is nuanced and genuinely difficult to explain. But when an organisation can't articulate plainly what it does and why it matters—or when that message doesn't reach the right audiences—it becomes hard for people to make informed decisions. The willingness to give is there, the clarity on where to give often isn't.

Helping purpose-driven organisations bridge that gap and explain their work effectively is at the core of what we do at Dial Down.

Gatherings like this one help slow the conversation down so we can ask better questions. Thank you to Etkili Bağış, Effective Altruism Turkey, and HAN Spaces for hosting such a thoughtful gathering. Looking forward to more conversations like this.