The GiveWell Blog

Responses to objections on cash transfers

Since our recommendation of GiveDirectly last year, we’ve seen a fair amount of pushback and skepticism. We’ve recently been speaking with donors who have supported our other top charities – and not GiveDirectly – to get a better sense of what their reservations are. This post lays out what we see as the most common…

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Empowerment and catastrophic risk

In previous posts, I have: Laid out the view that in general, further economic development and general human empowerment are likely to be substantially net positive, and are likely to lead to improvement on many dimensions in unexpected ways. Listed possible global catastrophic risks that provide a potential counterpoint to this view, while also noting…

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Our landscape of the open science community

[Added August 27, 2014: GiveWell Labs is now known as the Open Philanthropy Project.] We previously wrote about a decision to complete a “medium-depth investigation” of the cause of open science: promoting new ways of producing, sharing, reviewing, and evaluating scientific research. The investigation broadly fits under the heading of GiveWell Labs research, which we…

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Grant to Center for Global Development (CGD)

Via the grantmaking process described previously, Good Ventures has decided – with GiveWell’s input – to make a grant to the Center for Global Development (CGD) for general operating support. The grant will be $300,000 paid evenly over the next three years. This post lays out the thinking behind this grant. As mentioned previously, this…

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