Every month we send an email newsletter to our supporters sharing recent updates from our work. We’ve decided to start publishing selected portions of the newsletter on our blog to make this news more accessible to people who might 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.

Research updates

We’ve recently published a number of new research pages—below are a few highlights. If you’d like to sign up for email updates whenever we publish new research materials, you can do so here.

• Kangaroo mother care for low-birthweight babies in India
  • In November 2022, GiveWell made a five-year, $2.4 million grant to r.i.c.e.’s program in India for low-birthweight babies focused on kangaroo mother care (KMC), which involves skin-to-skin contact and early initiation of breastfeeding. As we describe in our KMC intervention report, there is strong evidence that KMC reduces neonatal mortality compared to conventional neonatal intensive care.¹A 2016 Cochrane meta-analysis suggests that KMC reduces neonatal mortality in low-birthweight infants by around 30% compared to conventional neonatal care, which is corroborated by reductions in morbidity and increases in early-life growth. More in our intervention report. Recently, we spoke with r.i.c.e. for a six-month update on the progress of its program. r.i.c.e has expanded the reach of its program to all premature infants using services of the hospital where it works, regardless of birth weight. It plans to hire more nurses to keep up with expanding patient capacity. It is also making progress planning an impact evaluation and updating its program protocols.
• Vitamin A Supplementation in Chad
  • In May 2023, we recommended a $6 million grant to Nutrition International to renew support for its vitamin A supplementation (VAS) program in Chad through 2025. VAS can prevent serious illness and death in children in areas where vitamin A deficiency is a problem.
• Conditional cash transfers in northern Nigeria
  • In May 2023, we recommended a $12.6 million grant to New Incentives, a GiveWell top charity, to expand and extend its conditional cash transfers for vaccination programs in northern Nigeria. This grant, along with approximately $19.6 million applied from prior grants, will support the program’s expansion in up to 47 additional local government areas (LGAs) in Nigeria and will fund existing operations in 104 LGAs for another year.
• Mobile agricultural advice program
  • In September 2022, we recommended a $286,709 bridge grant to Precision Development to allow its staff to complete scoping for potential impact evaluations of its mobile agricultural advice program, which provides smallholder farmers tailored information to increase their yields. In March 2023, we decided not to recommend funding for implementation and impact evaluations but made a one-year $700,000 grant to support Precision Development’s operations and core staff.
• Iron fortification programs in India
  • GiveWell has previously funded iron supplementation and fortification programs in India, and this is an ongoing area of investigation for potential future funding. Our research team recently spoke with Advait Deshpande, a Food Technologist who has worked for the Government of India’s Large Scale Food Fortification Program, about iron fortification in India. We reached out to Mr. Deshpande in response to a suggestion we received last year during our “Change Our Mind” contest that we may not have been thoughtfully accounting for public perceptions of iron fortification in India.

Updates from top charities

New Incentives

Svetha Janumpalli, the founder and CEO of New Incentives, recently spoke at EA Global London about the history and impact of New Incentives and the journey to become a GiveWell top charity. You can watch a recording of the talk here.

Malaria Consortium

Malaria Consortium recently updated an article that walks through the journey of seasonal malaria chemoprevention (SMC) from the factories producing the medicine to the children in sub-Saharan Africa who receive the medicine. During the malaria season in areas with highly seasonal transmission, SMC administration is one of the most effective ways to prevent malaria. The organization also shared a photo story about long-lasting insecticide-treated nets (LLINs), another effective and widely used malaria prevention strategy. GiveWell has previously funded LLIN campaigns through Malaria Consortium, though not the distribution that is pictured.

Your questions, answered

The mailbag spotlights common questions we get from donors and followers about GiveWell’s work. Got a question of your own? Email us at info@givewell.org, or post a comment to our most recent open thread.

Q: Last year, GiveWell said that it had found more cost-effective giving opportunities than it had funding for. Is GiveWell still funding-constrained?

A: Yes! This year, we don’t think we’ll raise enough funding to cover all the grants we’ll want to make. This means your donations can make a significant difference in how much impact we can achieve.

In November 2021, we wrote that we were anticipating rapid growth and aiming to influence $1 billion in giving in 2025. Now, our best guess is that we’ll raise between $400 million and $800 million in 2025. Meanwhile, our research team has grown in the past year, allowing us to find more cost-effective opportunities to support. This is great—we want to find more impactful grant opportunities!—but it means that our funding gap has persisted.

Despite uncertainty about total funds raised, finding these outstanding giving opportunities will always be a priority to ensure that we’re directing our funds as impactfully as possible. Even now, with all our recent hiring, there are many more research projects we’d like to be taking on. We’re increasing our emphasis on fundraising so that we can support all of the projects we find that we believe will cost-effectively save and improve lives—and you can help us say yes to more opportunities by donating now.