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GiveWell aims to find and fund programs that will do the most good per dollar. To do this, we carefully evaluate potential grants before making them—assessing academic evidence, building cost-effectiveness models, and talking to people in the sector who know the program well.

But our work doesn’t stop there. When a program we’ve supported nears the end of their funding, we also regularly evaluate its results to decide whether to continue our support. This typically involves gathering and analyzing extensive monitoring data. In most cases, the results are consistent with what we expected, and we renew the programs’ support. But sometimes we decide that, even if a program is doing a lot of good, it may not be having the impact we expected. In that case, we decide not to renew our support and instead direct those funds to where we think they’ll do much more good for people in need.

In this episode, GiveWell CEO and co-founder Elie Hassenfeld speaks with Senior Program Officer Erin Crossett about the research that led GiveWell not to renew support for Evidence Action’s Dispensers for Safe Water—a program that installs chlorine dispensers at rural water points so that households can treat their drinking water and reduce waterborne disease—in Malawi and Uganda.

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The post Podcast Episode 25: Following the Data on Dispensers for Safe Water appeared first on The GiveWell Blog.

Every month we send an email newsletter to our supporters sharing recent updates from our work. We publish selected portions of the newsletter on our blog to make this news more accessible to people who visit our website. For key updates from the latest installment, please see below!

If you’d like to receive the complete newsletter in your inbox each month, you can subscribe here.

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The post February 2026 Updates appeared first on The GiveWell Blog.

GiveWell is launching two new requests for information (RFI) to expand GiveWell’s funding for vaccination outreach and anemia control programs. We’re excited to replicate the success of last year’s water chlorination RFI and explore how to reach even more people in low- and middle-income countries with programs to save and improve lives.

The first RFI seeks organizations that would like to implement targeted vaccination outreach or mobile vaccination programs in Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Nigeria, or Somalia. The second seeks programs that reduce iron deficiency anemia through large-scale food fortification, targeted iron supplementation, and iron biofortification in Africa.

These RFIs are just one component of our expanding efforts to find and fund high-impact ways to help people in need. We’re making them public in an effort to reach as many organizations as possible, and we encourage you to share them with your networks. Submissions for both RFIs are due March 27.

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The post GiveWell Launches RFIs for Targeted Vaccination Outreach in Three Countries and Anemia Control Programs in Africa appeared first on The GiveWell Blog.

In our 2025 grantmaking year, GiveWell approved $418 million in grants to highly cost-effective programs in order to save and improve lives as much as we can. Through years of deliberate groundwork, we’ve been growing our research capacity and scope in order to direct substantially more funding to the most impactful opportunities we can find. Last year’s grantmaking reflects this growth, and we will be continuing an intensive effort this year to scale our ability to partner with donors to help people in need.

Between February 1, 2025, and January 31, 2026, GiveWell approved 131 grants to 69 organizations—the most grants we’ve made in a year so far. This post provides an overview of the kinds of grants we made and the impact we had last year. This was only possible thanks to the generosity of our donors. We’re incredibly grateful for the trust you place in our research and for your partnership in trying to do the most good we can together.

In 2025, we launched more than 200 formal grant investigations, after reviewing many additional promising opportunities. Tens of thousands of hours went into this research, which resulted in 131 approved grants. This is more than double the number of grants we approved during 2024, and resulted in a year-over-year increase of more than 20% in total grantmaking dollars.

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The post GiveWell’s 2025 Grantmaking: Record Grants, Expanded Reach, Crisis Response appeared first on The GiveWell Blog.

Vaccines are remarkably effective at preventing deadly diseases, and, while global needs for them are great, vaccines already receive substantial global funding. This creates a challenge: How do you identify opportunities where additional funding can meaningfully increase vaccination rates and save lives?

GiveWell has long recognized the potential for highly cost-effective vaccine programs. We started supporting vaccination programs in 2015 and have made over $200 million in vaccination-related grants to date. For example, New Incentives, one of our Top Charities, aims to increase routine childhood vaccinations in northern Nigeria by providing small cash incentives to caregivers who bring their children into clinics for vaccinations.

Over the past several years, we’ve been growing our research team and laying the groundwork to expand the scope of our work and funding.

In this episode, GiveWell CEO and co-founder Elie Hassenfeld speaks with Natalie Crispin, who leads GiveWell’s vaccination grantmaking. They discuss how our research approach has evolved and what it means for helping more children access life-saving vaccinations.

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The post Podcast Episode 24: Testing New Strategies to Increase Vaccination Coverage appeared first on The GiveWell Blog.

Seasonal malaria chemoprevention (SMC)—a program that provides preventive antimalarial medication to young children during the months when malaria is mostly likely to be transmitted—is one of the most cost-effective programs GiveWell has identified. Malaria Consortium’s SMC program has been one of our Top Charities since 2016, and we’ve recommended more than $500 million in grants to the program.

Most of our funding to date has supported programs in West Africa, where strong evidence gives us confidence in the effectiveness of the drug combination used. In eastern and southern Africa, malaria chemoprevention programs could potentially help many more children, but we have substantial uncertainties about drug effectiveness in that region.

In this episode, GiveWell CEO and co-founder Elie Hassenfeld speaks with Senior Researcher John Macke about the CHAMP trial, a randomized controlled trial of chemoprevention drugs we’re supporting in Malawi, and how it could shape our malaria grantmaking.

This research is one example of how GiveWell is building for the future: investing in research now that could substantially expand our ability to direct funding cost-effectively in the years ahead.

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The post Podcast Episode 23: Generating Evidence for the Future of Malaria Prevention appeared first on The GiveWell Blog.

Every month we send an email newsletter to our supporters sharing recent updates from our work. We publish selected portions of the newsletter on our blog to make this news more accessible to people who visit our website. For key updates from the latest installment, please see below!

If you’d like to receive the complete newsletter in your inbox each month, you can subscribe here.

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The post January 2026 Updates appeared first on The GiveWell Blog.

GiveWell is often thought of for its Top Charities, but over the last several years, we’ve been substantially broadening our work. We’ve developed new ways to identify potential grantees, funded research to fill gaps in our understanding, and explored new program areas where we believe cost-effective opportunities exist but other funders aren’t investing. This increased breadth isn’t a goal in itself—we’ve been laying the groundwork to deliver more impact, now and in the future.

In this episode, GiveWell CEO and co-founder Elie Hassenfeld speaks with Senior Program Officer Julie Faller about how our research approach has evolved and what it means for the future of our grantmaking.

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The post Podcast Episode 22: Evolving Our Research Approach for Greater Impact appeared first on The GiveWell Blog.

GiveWell has built its reputation on rigorous research—analyzing randomized controlled trials, building cost-effectiveness models, and reviewing monitoring data to identify cost‑effective ways to save and improve lives. In an effort to supplement this desk research and make better decisions, we’ve been working to gather more information directly from the people who live and work in the countries where we fund programs.

In this episode, GiveWell CEO and co-founder Elie Hassenfeld speaks with Principal Researcher Alex Cohen about GiveWell’s work to gather local insights to check our assumptions and figure out what we might be missing.

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The post Podcast Episode 21: Testing Our Assumptions through Local Insights appeared first on The GiveWell Blog.

Global health programs faced major disruptions to their funding in 2025. Back in March, we published our first podcast episode to share a timely snapshot of the immediate impacts caused by the foreign aid freeze and GiveWell’s initial response strategy. It was unclear whether and when funding would resume, and what the medium and long-term implications would be for life-saving programs.

Over the last year, GiveWell has drawn on almost two decades of cost-effectiveness research and analysis to assess the effects of this tumult in real time, identify gaps where funding could have exceptional impact, and prepare for future needs. We’ve made nearly $50 million in grants in direct response to funding cuts, as part of our expected total grantmaking of around $350 million for the year.

In our final episode of the year, GiveWell CEO and co-founder Elie Hassenfeld and Director of Research Teryn Maddox follow-up on their first podcast conversation to look back at GiveWell’s response: Where did we succeed? What did we get wrong? Where could we have done better? How did our response evolve? And what might all of this mean for the world and our work in 2026?

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The post Podcast Episode 20: Taking Lessons from a Year of Aid Cuts into 2026 appeared first on The GiveWell Blog.

Every month we send an email newsletter to our supporters sharing recent updates from our work. We publish selected portions of the newsletter on our blog to make this news more accessible to people who visit our website. For key updates from the latest installment, please see below!

If you’d like to receive the complete newsletter in your inbox each month, you can subscribe here.

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The post December 2025 Updates appeared first on The GiveWell Blog.

We are excited to share that Coefficient Giving, formerly Open Philanthropy, has decided to renew and increase their funding for GiveWell, committing to set aside $175 million in 2026 for opportunities we recommend.

This is great news for the people our grants help, and it comes at a critical moment. Following 2025’s aid cuts, we think needs are greater than they were a year ago, and we expect they will continue to grow in the coming years as the impacts of current and future cuts mount. We’re grateful to see donors—including Coefficient Giving—stepping up and signaling that they trust us to help in the years ahead.

We think donating now to our Giving Funds remains an excellent way to help people in need, and we’re actively seeking donors who want to be part of this moment of substantial need and opportunity. Every dollar you give will be put to work, saving and improving lives through the most cost-effective programs our research identifies.

Last year, we raised $415 million and directed $397 million. This new commitment from Coefficient Giving, combined with recent updates from other donors, will make a real difference in the amount of funding we use to help people over the next few years.

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The post Coefficient Giving Commits $175 Million to GiveWell Opportunities appeared first on The GiveWell Blog.

For this post, a number of GiveWell staff members volunteered to share the thinking behind their personal donations for the year. We’ve published similar posts in previous years. Staff are listed alphabetically by first name.

You can click the links to jump to a staff member’s entry: Araceli Steger, Calum Best, Devin Jacob, Elie Hassenfeld, Jeremy Rehwaldt, Kameron Smith, Katie Skoff, Lauren Imholte, Lisa McCandless, Lucy McNamara, Maggie Lloydhauser, Matthew Kertman, Paige Henchen, Sai Jahann, Sarah Eustis-Guthrie, Tori Shepard, Teryn Mattox.

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The post Staff Members’ Personal Donations for Giving Season 2025 appeared first on The GiveWell Blog.

On December 4, 2025, we held a panel discussion titled “Growing Needs, Shrinking Aid: Cost-Effective Action in a Year of Funding Cuts.” The discussion, which was moderated by GiveWell co-founder and CEO Elie Hassenfeld, addressed the effects of recent cuts, how GiveWell is responding, and what we’re learning along the way—including our predictions and uncertainties about the future. GiveWell researchers Alex Bowles, Dilhan Perera, Meika Ball, and Rosie Bettle answered questions and shared their latest insights. Watch the video or read the transcript.

Because of limited time, we were unable to answer all of the questions live. Below we’ve answered some of the questions that weren’t addressed during the webinar, along with some additional questions submitted by audience members, focusing on four themes:

• The challenges of an uncertain future
• Taking action in the face of uncertainty
• The role of cost-effectiveness
• Future GiveWell grantmaking

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The post Growing Needs, Shrinking Aid: Answering More of Your Questions appeared first on The GiveWell Blog.

This episode follows up on the November 26, 2025 episode of Planet Money, "Saving lives with fewer dollars," which covered GiveWell's evaluation of a grant to the Alliance for International Medical Action (ALIMA) to maintain primary healthcare, hospital services, and malnutrition treatment in two subdistricts of North Cameroon following unexpected aid cuts earlier this year. We recommend listening to the Planet Money episode first, as it provides important context.

Significant changes to foreign aid this year created challenges for implementing organizations—and for funders evaluating which programs to support with limited resources. The Planet Money team followed along as we assessed the effects of the cuts in real time, focusing on our evaluation of a potential grant to ALIMA to maintain nutrition and primary healthcare services in Cameroon.

Following the announcement of the US government's stop-work order and funding freeze in January, we created a rapid response research team and began assessing opportunities we thought were potentially highly cost effective. In March, we launched an investigation of the $1.9 million ALIMA grant, which we funded in June based on the team's findings.

In this episode, GiveWell co-founder and CEO Elie Hassenfeld dives deeper into the grant investigation with Program Officers Rosie Bettle and Alice Redfern, discussing the timeline, modeling approach, and what ultimately led us to make the grant.

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The post Podcast Episode 18: Behind the Planet Money ALIMA Grant Story appeared first on The GiveWell Blog.

Every month we send an email newsletter to our supporters sharing recent updates from our work. We publish selected portions of the newsletter on our blog to make this news more accessible to people who visit our website. For key updates from the latest installment, please see below!

If you’d like to receive the complete newsletter in your inbox each month, you can subscribe here.

Read More

The post November 2025 Updates appeared first on The GiveWell Blog.

It has been a tumultuous year for global health. In early 2025, the US government cut billions of dollars in foreign aid, affecting millions of people around the world and creating substantial uncertainty that continues to ripple through health and development programs around the world.

Drawing on almost two decades of cost-effectiveness research and analysis, GiveWell assessed the effects in real time and identified funding gaps where donors’ contributions could have exceptional impact. Our actions were guided by our core principles:

• Search for highly cost-effective giving opportunities, even in uncertain circumstances.
• Rigorously evaluate those opportunities and share our research publicly, while acknowledging that timely action sometimes requires accepting higher uncertainty.
• Direct funds to where we think they'll do the most good, considering both immediate needs and long-term implications.

In response to funding shortfalls, we funded time-sensitive opportunities to ensure that cost-effective programs could continue. And in response to substantial uncertainty and in expectation of growing needs, we engaged in efforts to research new areas and prepare ourselves for the future. You can read some examples of our response later in this post.

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The post Help Us Respond to an Uncertain Future for Global Health appeared first on The GiveWell Blog.

Despite significant progress over the past several decades, malaria remains a leading cause of death globally for children under five. This year’s cuts to foreign aid funding disrupted highly effective programs to prevent malaria, such as seasonal malaria chemoprevention (SMC).

SMC provides antimalarial medication to children under the age of five during the rainy season when malaria transmission is highest, reducing their risk of dying from the disease. Malaria Consortium’s SMC program, which is one of the most cost-effective programs our researchers have identified, has been one of GiveWell’s Top Charities since 2016, and we’ve recommended more than $500 million in grants for the program since that time.

SMC is only delivered during a specific period each year when malaria transmission is highest. The campaigns require careful planning and preparation on a specified timeline to ensure that the drugs are ready to distribute during that window. The funding freeze that started in January jeopardized 2025 SMC campaigns in several countries because of the disruption to funding for these time-sensitive pre-campaign activities.

In this episode, GiveWell CEO and co-founder Elie Hassenfeld speaks with Program Officer Natalie Crispin about how GiveWell responded quickly and flexibly to ensure that SMC campaigns moved forward this year.

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The post Podcast Episode 17: Bridging an Uncertain Time for a Lifesaving Program appeared first on The GiveWell Blog.

Every month we send an email newsletter to our supporters sharing recent updates from our work. We publish selected portions of the newsletter on our blog to make this news more accessible to people who visit our website. For key updates from the latest installment, please see below!

If you’d like to receive the complete newsletter in your inbox each month, you can subscribe here.

Read More

The post October 2025 Updates appeared first on The GiveWell Blog.

Our Beyond the Spreadsheets podcast mini-series lets you ride along with our leadership team on their recent weeklong site visit to Malawi. Recorded daily during the trip, the series shares the behind-the-scenes experience of a GiveWell site visit through real-time reflections and clips of conversations.

At GiveWell, the vast majority of our work is desk-based research—analyzing evidence and modeling program outcomes. Site visits are a small part of what we do, but they add crucial on-the-ground context that raises important questions, challenges our assumptions, and makes our research stronger.

We had two main goals in visiting Malawi. First, we wanted to understand the effects of foreign aid cuts firsthand in a country that may be particularly hard hit. Second, we wanted to see livelihoods programs like GiveDirectly and Spark Microgrants in action, providing insight as we expand our focus on interventions that aim to increase people’s economic well-being.

Throughout the week, the team visited health clinics, schools, and local villages to speak with healthcare workers and community members who shared a glimpse into their lives. Listen to the episodes below to hear a candid, day-by-day account of our learning process and some of the new insights and questions that will inform our future research.

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The post Beyond the Spreadsheets: Malawi Site Visit Podcast Series appeared first on The GiveWell Blog.