The GiveWell Blog

Key questions about Helen Keller International’s vitamin A supplementation program

One of our two new top charities this year is Helen Keller International (HKI)’s vitamin A supplementation program. We named HKI’s vitamin A supplementation program a top charity this year because:

  • There is strong evidence from many randomized controlled trials of vitamin A supplementation that the program leads to substantial reductions in child deaths.
  • HKI-supported vitamin A supplementation programs are inexpensive (we estimate around $0.75 in total costs per supplement delivered) and highly cost-effective at preventing child deaths in countries where HKI plans to work using GiveWell-directed funds.
  • HKI is transparent—it has shared significant, detailed information about its programs with us, including the results and methodology of monitoring surveys HKI conducted to determine whether its vitamin A supplementation programs reach a large proportion of targeted children.
  • HKI has a funding gap—we believe it is highly likely that its vitamin A supplementation programs will be constrained by funding next year.

HKI’s vitamin A supplementation program is an exceptional giving opportunity, but as with the case for donating to any of our other top charities, not a “sure thing.”

I’m the Research Analyst who has led our work on HKI this year. In this post, I discuss some key questions about the impact of Helen Keller International’s vitamin A supplementation program and what we’ve learned so far. I also discuss GiveWell’s plans for learning more about these issues in the future.

Read More

What we’ve learned about SCI this year

In past years, we’ve written that we had significant concerns about the financial reporting and financial management of the Schistosomiasis Control Initiative (SCI), one of our top charities since 2011. Our concerns have included: We had not been able to learn important and basic financial information about SCI. Despite substantial effort, before 2016 we were…

Read More