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.
The post January 2025 Updates 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.
The post January 2025 Updates appeared first on The GiveWell Blog.
Water quality is a significant area of grantmaking for GiveWell. Since 2022, we’ve directed around $120 million to water quality interventions, including a $65 million grant in 2022 to support Evidence Action’s chlorine dispenser program in Kenya, Uganda, and Malawi, and a $39 million grant in 2023 to support Evidence Action’s work assisting the scale up of in-line chlorination in two states in India.
We think that chlorination programs like these are likely to be highly cost-effective because chlorine is cheap, and based on our research, we think it can have a substantial impact in reducing child mortality.
In June, we wrote about our current plans for our water grantmaking portfolio. As we mentioned then, one of our highest-priority goals is to expand the number of implementers of large-scale chlorination programs. This is because our current grantmaking relies heavily on Evidence Action, which does not operate in some of the places where we think chlorination could look most cost-effective, such as parts of Francophone Africa.
Towards this goal, we are launching a public request for information (RFI) to identify organizations who would be interested in implementing chlorination programs in our highest-priority countries.
The post GiveWell Is Looking to Fund Pilots of Water Chlorination Programs appeared first on The GiveWell Blog.
Water quality is a significant area of grantmaking for GiveWell. Since 2022, we’ve directed around $120 million to water quality interventions, including a $65 million grant in 2022 to support Evidence Action’s chlorine dispenser program in Kenya, Uganda, and Malawi, and a $39 million grant in 2023 to support Evidence Action’s work assisting the scale up of in-line chlorination in two states in India.
We think that chlorination programs like these are likely to be highly cost-effective because chlorine is cheap, and based on our research, we think it can have a substantial impact in reducing child mortality.
In June, we wrote about our current plans for our water grantmaking portfolio. As we mentioned then, one of our highest-priority goals is to expand the number of implementers of large-scale chlorination programs. This is because our current grantmaking relies heavily on Evidence Action, which does not operate in some of the places where we think chlorination could look most cost-effective, such as parts of Francophone Africa.
Towards this goal, we are launching a public request for information (RFI) to identify organizations who would be interested in implementing chlorination programs in our highest-priority countries.
The post GiveWell Is Looking to Fund Pilots of Water Chlorination Programs appeared first on The GiveWell Blog.
GiveWell’s cross-cutting team works to improve GiveWell’s grantmaking by tackling complex research questions that cut across grantmaking areas, reviewing our research and grants, and ensuring transparency and legibility in our findings. This post explains more about our role, how we think the work we do helps GiveWell’s grantmaking, and our current areas of focus.
What does the cross-cutting team do?The GiveWell research team’s goal is to find and fund the most cost-effective giving opportunities in global health and development. While our grantmaking teams are focused on funding programs in their specific areas (malaria, vaccines, nutrition, water, livelihoods, and new areas), the cross-cutting team addresses research questions that span across different areas of our work.
We do this in a few ways:
The post Research Strategy: Cross-Cutting appeared first on The GiveWell Blog.
GiveWell’s cross-cutting team works to improve GiveWell’s grantmaking by tackling complex research questions that cut across grantmaking areas, reviewing our research and grants, and ensuring transparency and legibility in our findings. This post explains more about our role, how we think the work we do helps GiveWell’s grantmaking, and our current areas of focus.
What does the cross-cutting team do?The GiveWell research team’s goal is to find and fund the most cost-effective giving opportunities in global health and development. While our grantmaking teams are focused on funding programs in their specific areas (malaria, vaccines, nutrition, water, livelihoods, and new areas), the cross-cutting team addresses research questions that span across different areas of our work.
We do this in a few ways:
The post Research Strategy: Cross-Cutting appeared first on The GiveWell Blog.
GiveWell is dedicated to finding outstanding giving opportunities and publishing the full details of our analysis to help donors decide where to give. The table below describes our financial performance in 2022 and 2023.
The post GiveWell’s Fundraising and Grantmaking in 2023 appeared first on The GiveWell Blog.
GiveWell is dedicated to finding outstanding giving opportunities and publishing the full details of our analysis to help donors decide where to give. The table below describes our financial performance in 2022 and 2023.
The post GiveWell’s Fundraising and Grantmaking in 2023 appeared first on The GiveWell Blog.
GiveWell is dedicated to finding outstanding giving opportunities and publishing the full details of our analysis to help donors decide where to give. The table below describes our financial performance in 2022 and 2023.
The post GiveWell’s Fundraising and Grantmaking in 2023 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 Richards, Chandler Brotak, Dilhan Perera, Elie Hassenfeld, Erin Crossett, Julie Faller, Lauren Imholte, Maggie Lloydhauser, Natalie Crispin, Paige Henchen, Sarah Eustis-Guthrie, Steph Stojanovic, Teryn Mattox.
The post Staff Members’ Personal Donations for Giving Season 2024 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 Richards, Chandler Brotak, Dilhan Perera, Elie Hassenfeld, Erin Crossett, Julie Faller, Lauren Imholte, Maggie Lloydhauser, Natalie Crispin, Paige Henchen, Sarah Eustis-Guthrie, Steph Stojanovic, Teryn Mattox.
The post Staff Members’ Personal Donations for Giving Season 2024 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.
The post November 2024 Updates 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.
The post November 2024 Updates appeared first on The GiveWell Blog.
Our goal with hosting quarterly open threads is to give blog readers an opportunity to publicly raise comments or questions about GiveWell or related topics (in the comments section below). As always, you’re also welcome to email us at info@givewell.org or to request a call with GiveWell staff if you have feedback or questions you’d prefer to discuss privately. We’ll try to respond promptly to questions or comments.
You can view previous open threads here.
The post December 2024 Open Thread appeared first on The GiveWell Blog.
Our goal with hosting quarterly open threads is to give blog readers an opportunity to publicly raise comments or questions about GiveWell or related topics (in the comments section below). As always, you’re also welcome to email us at info@givewell.org or to request a call with GiveWell staff if you have feedback or questions you’d prefer to discuss privately. We’ll try to respond promptly to questions or comments.
You can view previous open threads here.
The post December 2024 Open Thread appeared first on The GiveWell Blog.
Our three Giving Funds—all of which focus on maximizing the impact of your gift—were designed for donors with different preferences, and we encourage you to donate to the one that makes the most sense for you:
We think donors can do a huge amount of good by supporting these funds. The rest of this post describes some of the work that donations to these funds have enabled over the past year.
The post GiveWell’s 2024 Giving Recommendations appeared first on The GiveWell Blog.
Our three Giving Funds—all of which focus on maximizing the impact of your gift—were designed for donors with different preferences, and we encourage you to donate to the one that makes the most sense for you:
We think donors can do a huge amount of good by supporting these funds. The rest of this post describes some of the work that donations to these funds have enabled over the past year.
The post GiveWell’s 2024 Giving Recommendations appeared first on The GiveWell Blog.
GiveWell aims to save and improve lives as cost-effectively as possible. That mission has an urgency, and we put a lot of effort into finding and funding high-impact giving opportunities quickly. But we also want to maximize our impact over time, and have found that high-impact interventions can take years of investment to discover, vet, launch, and scale.
As a result, we’ve begun to deploy funds across a longer time period in order to (a) avoid a scenario where we want to make cost-effective grants but can’t due to lack of funds, (b) aid long-term planning for our research team, and (c) communicate consistent expectations to grantees and potential grantees about our cost-effectiveness threshold.
Specifically, we previously aimed to allocate all funds within the same year they were raised, targeting a year-end balance of zero. Now, we plan to enter each year with sufficient funds to fully cover our grantmaking activities for that year without accounting for new donations.This approach creates greater financial stability, which we think will allow us to plan better and to achieve greater impact over time.
If you donate to our Top Charities Fund (TCF), nothing has changed. We still expect to commit TCF donations in the quarter after they are received. These changes will only apply to our unrestricted and All Grants Fund (AGF).
The post An Update to GiveWell’s Grant Deployment Timelines appeared first on The GiveWell Blog.
GiveWell aims to save and improve lives as cost-effectively as possible. That mission has an urgency, and we put a lot of effort into finding and funding high-impact giving opportunities quickly. But we also want to maximize our impact over time, and have found that high-impact interventions can take years of investment to discover, vet, launch, and scale.
As a result, we’ve begun to deploy funds across a longer time period in order to (a) avoid a scenario where we want to make cost-effective grants but can’t due to lack of funds, (b) aid long-term planning for our research team, and (c) communicate consistent expectations to grantees and potential grantees about our cost-effectiveness threshold.
Specifically, we previously aimed to allocate all funds within the same year they were raised, targeting a year-end balance of zero. Now, we plan to enter each year with sufficient funds to fully cover our grantmaking activities for that year without accounting for new donations.This approach creates greater financial stability, which we think will allow us to plan better and to achieve greater impact over time.
If you donate to our Top Charities Fund (TCF), nothing has changed. We still expect to commit TCF donations in the quarter after they are received. These changes will only apply to our unrestricted and All Grants Fund (AGF).
The post An Update to GiveWell’s Grant Deployment Timelines appeared first on The GiveWell Blog.
This year, we re-evaluated the cost effectiveness of direct cash transfers as implemented by our friends at GiveDirectly. Our complete writeup is here, and full of fascinating details, but the main headline is: we now estimate that GiveDirectly’s flagship cash program is 3 to 4 times more cost-effective than we'd previously estimated.
It is important to note two things: (1) this won’t alter our Top Charities list or our grantmaking—we believe that the programs we currently direct funding to are at least twice as cost-effective as this new estimate, so we don’t expect to support GiveDirectly’s flagship program in the near term; and (2) this update is the result of re-evaluating the evidence underpinning GiveDirectly’s program, which we hadn’t formally done since 2019—the structure of GiveDirectly’s program has not changed (though they are now carrying it out in more locations since our last evaluation).
We share more information about our research below. You can read our full, detailed report here. You can read GiveDirectly’s blog post on our re-evaluation here.
The post Re-evaluating the Impact of Unconditional Cash Transfers appeared first on The GiveWell Blog.
