The GiveWell Blog

A good volunteer is hard to find

We’ve written before about how volunteers often end up costing charities more in time and resources than the work they do for the organization is worth. (Charities seem to justify taking on these volunteers because of they often become donors and informal fundraisers for the charity.) In our experience, valuable volunteers are rare. The people…

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KIPP Houston has a 1.4 million dollar shortfall. How did this happen?

KIPP is one of the most well-known and, we believe, effective charities in the United States: it has a long track record of improving students’ performance in school and Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has cited it as a model for education reform. In our recent analysis of KIPP, we’ve been surprised to learn that…

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Update on GiveWell’s web traffic / money moved: Q2 2011

In addition to evaluations of other charities, GiveWell publishes substantial evaluation on itself, from the quality of its research to its impact on donations. This year, we have added quarterly updates regarding two key metrics: (a) donations to top charities directly through our website (b) web traffic. Money moved By “money moved” we mean donations…

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