Twenty-eight current and former college presidents have joined a new giving campaign, promising 5 percent of their total pay this year to charities fighting poverty around the world, The Chronicle of Higher Education reports.

The university executives went public Monday with the launch of a Web site for the Presidents’ Pledge Against Global Poverty, a program started last year by the Rev. Ann M. Svennungsen, former president of Texas Lutheran University. The donors can choose their own charities but must earmark at least half the money for international antipoverty efforts.

The signers primarily represent small religious and liberal-arts schools, but the list also includes former leaders of Duke and Columbia universities and Kevin P. Reilly, head of the University of Wisconsin system.

College presidents “have tended to get so caught up in budgets and culture wars and local politics,” Mr. Reilly said. “I don’t think many of us have stepped out as much as we should on these larger societal and international issues, like global poverty.”