In addition to evaluations of other charities, GiveWell publishes substantial evaluation on itself, from the quality of our research to our impact on donations. This page summarizes two key metrics: (a) donations to top charities directly through our website, and (b) web traffic.
Money moved
The chart below shows GiveWell's annual "money moved" against its operating expenses. "Money moved" refers to donations to our top charities that we can confidently attribute to our research (
more detailed definition below).
Overall money moved includes all donations driven by GiveWell, including
$750,000 committed by Good Ventures to our top two charities and
$1 million committed to GiveWell Labs (the latter funding has not yet been allocated to specific organizations). Note that we count "money moved" when it is committed, rather than when it is disbursed.
The table below it shows GiveWell's money moved by charity. Note that because the vast majority of GiveWell's money moved comes in during December of each year, we only update these figures annually.
Total money donated, by charity (sorted by money moved to each charity in 2011)
| Charity | 2011 | 2010 | 2007-2009 |
|---|
| Against Malaria Foundation | $2,304,025 | $130,097 | $128,374 |
| Schistosomiasis Control Initiative | $762,716 | $0 | $0 |
| VillageReach | $630,104 | $1,132,468 | $336,929 |
| Nyaya Health | $117,759 | $0 | $0 |
| GiveDirectly | $86,146 | $0 | $0 |
| Small Enterprise Foundation | $78,070 | $13,403 | $125,000 |
| KIPP (and KIPP Houston) | $60,904 | $30,843 | $56,890 |
| GiveWell grants | $50,917 | $80,763 | $0 |
| Doctors Without Borders (MSF) | $48,156 | $0 | $0 |
| Pratham | $46,083 | $10,375 | $12,646 |
| Innovations for Poverty Action | $34,069 | $0 | $0 |
| Nurse-Family Partnership | $17,640 | $48,446 | $49,234 |
| Stop TB Partnership | $14,926 | $57,092 | $123,830 |
| Village Enterprise Fund | $9,014 | $2,077 | $125,000 |
| Population Services International | $0 | $31,172 | $161,273 |
| Other | $21,497 | $56,490 | $89,266 |
| GiveWell Labs | $1,000,000 | $0 | $0 |
| Total | $5,282,026 | $1,593,226 | $1,208,442 |
(
Note: GiveWell has not yet regranted some 2010 and 2011 donations given to GiveWell for the purpose of regranting. These are listed as "GiveWell grants.")
Web traffic
The chart below show our web traffic over time, as measured by unique visitors each month. There are seasonal spikes each December when interest in charitable giving peaks (circled in the chart below). We label other spikes.
Monthly unique visitors to the GiveWell website (through December 31, 2011)
More detail
More detail is available for each year in our
annual self-reviews.
What we count as "money moved"
- Donations made to top charities directly through our website. Though these donations go directly to top charities, we are able to track them and verify that they went through our website. (Example: VillageReach donate page)
- Donations that our recommended charities report back to us as being attributable to GiveWell (we have a high standard for this - we count only cases where (a) the donor explicitly stated that their donation was on the strength of GiveWell's recommendation or (b) the donor gave to Nurse-Family Partnership or Against Malaria Foundation and stated that they heard about it from a Nicholas Kristof column; Mr. Kristof has informed us that he included NFP in the column on our recommendation, and cited GiveWell in his column as his reason for recommending AMF.
- Donations that donors report to us (informally or using our donation report form) as donations that they made on the strength of our recommendation. We cross-reference our data with recommended charities' data, when necessary, to eliminate double-counting.
- Donations made directly to GiveWell and earmarked for re-granting. We count donations made and restricted in year X, and then granted in year Y, as "money moved" for year X, not year Y.
