The GiveWell Blog

How we work, #2: We look at specific opportunities, not just general interventions

This post is the second in a multi-part series, covering how GiveWell works and what we fund. The first post, on cost-effectiveness, is here. Through these posts, we hope to give a better understanding of our research and decision-making.

Looking forward, not just backward

When we consider recommending funding, we don’t just want to know whether a program has generally been cost-effective in the past—we want to know how additional funding would be used.

People sometimes think of GiveWell as recommending entire programs or organizations. This was more accurate in GiveWell’s early days, but now we tend to narrow in on specific opportunities. Rather than asking whether it is cost-effective to deliver long-lasting insecticide-treated nets in general, we ask more specific questions, such as whether it is cost-effective to fund net distributions in 2023 in the Nigerian states of Benue, Plateau, and Zamfara, given the local burden of malaria and the costs of delivering nets in those states.

Geographic factors affecting cost-effectiveness

The same program can vary widely in cost-effectiveness across locations. The burden of a disease in a particular place is often a key factor in determining overall cost-effectiveness. All else equal, it’s much more impactful to deliver vitamin A supplements in areas with high rates of vitamin A deficiency than in areas where almost everyone consumes sufficient vitamin A as part of their diet. Similarly, one of our top charities, New Incentives, has chosen to operate in northern Nigeria largely because relatively low baseline vaccination rates mean its work is especially impactful there.

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Our updated top charities for giving season 2016

We have refreshed our top charity rankings and recommendations. We now have seven top charities: our four top charities from last year and three new additions. We have also added two new organizations to our list of charities that we think deserve special recognition (previously called “standout” charities). Instead of ranking organizations, we rank funding…

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Trying (and failing) to find more funding gaps for delivering proven cost-effective interventions

There are interventions that we believe are – or may be (pending a literature review) – very well supported by evidence, that we’ve been unable to find charities focused on. In 2012, we put a significant amount of effort into trying to find ways donors could pay for further delivery of these interventions, even if…

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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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GAVI appears to be out of room for more funding (good news)

We’ve always been interested in GAVI, a large funding vehicle for immunizations (which we consider to be one of the best interventions out there for accomplishing good). Until recently, GAVI projected a need for $3.7 billion between 2011-2015 (archived). However, yesterday there was an announcement that GAVI had raised $4.3 billion, more than enough to…

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Update on how to help Japan: No room for more funding. We recommend giving to Doctors Without Borders to promote better disaster relief in general

The situation in Japan is tragic and worrying, and our hearts continue to go out to those affected and responding. On Friday, we recommended that donors wait to see how the situation unfolds before giving. At this point we are ready to make a recommendation, though of course this is subject to change as the…

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