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Fred Hollows Foundation

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The content below is not actively maintained and may be out of date. We last updated the content below in June 2010.

Fred Hollows Foundation does not currently qualify for our highest ratings.

More information:

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Published: June 2010

What do they do?

The Fred Hollows Foundation is a large, Australia-based charity aiming to improve vision in the developing world. They primarily focus on cataracts, which cause a significant amount of preventable vision loss in the developing world.

The Fred Hollows Foundation funds a wide variety of eye care activities in Asia, Africa, and Australia.1 As members of the Vision 2020 initiative to end avoidable blindness by the year 2020, they seek to "strengthen national eye health systems."2 Toward this goal, funds they grant are intended to train surgeons, support staff, and community health workers in clinical eye care skills, upgrade and build facilities, provide equipment, and subsidize screenings and procedures, including cataract surgeries.3 The Fred Hollows Foundation also funds research and advocacy.4

Review

We conducted an extensive review of the Fred Hollows Foundation. We have reviewed the Fred Hollow Foundation's website and have spoken to Brain Doolan, CEO of Fred Hollows Foundation, Virginia Sarah, Manager of Information, Knowledge and Education, and Joe Boughton-Dent, Communications Manager on the phone.5 We reviewed numerous documents, including documents created by Fred Hollows Foundation CEO Brian Doolan.

Our assessment has focused on the question of Fred Hollows Foundation's impact: has it changed lives, and if so, at what cost?

Fred Hollows Foundation submitted documents that estimate the number of cataract and other sight saving or improving interventions that have resulted from its work.6 Since the Fred Hollows Foundation is involved in a wide variety of activities, we sought to understand how this number is calculated. The Fred Hollows Foundation provided one example for one location of how 'cases of blindness averted' was calculated.7 Given the wide variety of activities the Fred Hollows Foundation is involved in, we were not confident that the cited example was representative. The Fred Hollows Foundation's stated guidelines assert that its figures capture only "impact" (i.e., changes that occurred due to the Fred Hollows Foundation's funding, not simply operations in which its funding played some role), but we believe that gauging impact is very difficult and cannot be confident that these guidelines are being followed without having seen a clear and comprehensive (or at least clearly representative) explanation of how the cited numbers have been arrived at.

Based on our review, we cannot confidently recommend that donors support the Fred Hollows Foundation.

Sources

  • 1.

    Fred Hollows Foundation, "Our Programs."

  • 2.

    Brain Doolan, Virginia Sarah, and Joe Boughton-Dent, conversation with GiveWell, September 10, 2009.

  • 3.

    Fred Hollows Foundation, “Country Program Output Summary.”

  • 4.

    Brain Doolan, Virginia Sarah, and Joe Boughton-Dent. Phone conversation with GiveWell, September 10, 2009.

  • 5.

    Brian Doolan, Virginia Sarah, and Joe Boughton-Dent. Phone conversation with GiveWell, September 10, 2009.

  • 6.

    Fred Hollows Foundation, "Country Program Output Summary" and Fred Hollows Foundation, "Country Program Output Summary (Breakdown of 'Other' Interventions)."

  • 7.

    Fred Hollows Foundation, "Response Regarding Fred Hollows Foundation Impact for GiveWell."

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