The GiveWell Blog

Staff Members’ Personal Donations for Giving Season 2025

| by GiveWell Staff

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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Growing Needs, Shrinking Aid: Answering More of Your Questions

| by GiveWell Staff

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.
Photos of Elie Hassenfeld, Meika Ball, Rosie Bettle, Alex Bowles, and Dilhan Perera

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:

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Podcast Episode 18: Behind the Planet Money ALIMA Grant Story

| by GiveWell Staff

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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November 2025 Updates

| by Chandler Brotak

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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Help Us Respond to an Uncertain Future for Global Health

(updated on: ) | by GiveWell Staff

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.

Our response so far

Donut chart with categories corresponding to the percentage of response funding for each program area
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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Podcast Episode 17: Bridging an Uncertain Time for a Lifesaving Program

(updated on: ) | by GiveWell Staff

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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