Our goal with hosting quarterly open threads is to give blog readers an opportunity to publicly raise comments or questions about GiveWell or related topics (in the comments section below). As always, you’re also welcome to email us at info@givewell.org or to request a call with GiveWell staff if you have feedback or questions you’d prefer to discuss privately. We’ll try to respond promptly to questions or comments.
You can view previous open threads here.
Comments
Back in 2020, you wrote: “Fistula Foundation is one of the charities we’re planning to prioritize highly for further evaluation.” I’d be very interested in any update, especially in light of the BMC Health Services Research paper on their work [https://rdcu.be/d2HKY]. Thank you!
Hi Ellen,
Thanks for your question! In 2021, we published a review of surgery to repair obstetric fistula. At the time, we funded IDinsight to work with Fistula Foundation to estimate the cost of a fistula surgery in its program in Kenya. Based on that data, we estimated that the program was below our current cost-effectiveness funding bar and planned no further work. A back-of-the-envelope cost-effectiveness calculation for this intervention is available here.
However, we recently received an update from Fistula Foundation that their costs have decreased, so we hope to reevaluate the cost-effectiveness of their program in the future.
In 2023, you posted this: https://blog.givewell.org/2023/04/10/expected-funds-raised-through-2025/ regarding funding projections and I have a couple of multipart follow up questions.
First, how has funding raised compared to those projections? It looks to me like the 10th percentile estimate for funds raised in 2023 was about 400 million.
This recent post: https://blog.givewell.org/2024/12/12/givewells-fundraising-and-grantmaking-in-2023/ states that in 2023, 355 million was raised.
Am I understanding correctly that actual funding raised in 2023 was less than the 10th percentile estimated projection (I realize that the exact values of the estimates were very fuzzy)?
If so, do you have any insight into why that was?
Second, would it be possible to have a follow up post to last year’s post discussing the state of funding in 2024 and projections for the future?
Last year’s post described GiveWell as being funding constrained (I’m assuming that meant even at the 10x cash bar, but please correct me if it meant something else). Would it be correct to assume, then, that GiveWell remains funding constrained (let’s say, at the same 10x cash bar, ignoring the recent increase in the estimated value of cash itself)?
Thanks for the work you do!
Hi Arnold,
Thanks for your question! You are correct that our funds raised for metrics year 2023, $355 million, was below our 10% percentile estimate from our April 2023 blog post. We knew our forecasts were quite uncertain (80% confidence interval), and, looking back, we see two primary reasons that our forecasts were incorrect.
First, we were optimistic about the growth of non-Open Philanthropy funding. Our funds raised in 2023 from sources other than Open Philanthropy was $255 million, which is about at our 10% percentile estimate and is similar to the $253 million we raised in 2022 from sources other than Open Philanthropy (see the bottom chart in the blog post). We’ve continued to expand our outreach team, with a focus on retaining our existing donors and bringing in new donors, and we believe these investments will produce results over the longer term.
Second, Open Philanthropy committed $300 million in October 2023 and gave us flexibility to spend it over three years. We chose to allocate $100 million to 2023, 2024, and 2025, which is less than the $250 million we had forecast for 2023.
We discuss our current funding situation in a recent blog post about our approach to grant deployment timelines. We remain funding constrained at our current cost-effectiveness bar. Raising more money remains our single most important lever for maximizing impact—if we have more funding, we’ll be able to make more grants to cost-effective programs that save and improve lives.
Dear GiveWell Team,
What are your thoughts on expanding your presence in Europe? As a German, I get the impression that knowledge of GiveWell remains quite limited here. I’d be interested in learning more about your current outreach, awareness, and donor growth considerations.
Similarly, I’m sure the idea of offering your website in alternative languages—such as Spanish, French, German, or Dutch—has been considered. I’d be curious to hear your perspective on this and whether you see value in establishing even a partially localized website presence as a first step.
Looking forward to your insights,
Jonas
I don’t work for GW, but for now it may be worth highlighting some relevant European sites.
One German one is this: https://effektiv-spenden.org/effektive-entwicklungszusammenarbeit/ which discusses the sort of considerations that a group like GiveWell makes, and mentions GiveWell by name and allows Germans to donate to it or to GiveWell’s Top Charities.
One Dutch one is this: https://doneereffectief.nl/aanpak/givewell/ which discusses GiveWell and allows Dutch donors to donate to the charities included in GW’s All Grants Fund or to individual charities from GW’s Top Charities.
One French one is this: https://www.altruismeefficacefrance.org/blog/methodologie-de-givewell which discusses GW’s methodology and: https://www.altruismeefficacefrance.org/organisations-recommandees which discusses which of its top charities are tax deductible in France:
One Swedish site which discusses GW’s recommendations and facilitates donations to them is this: https://geeffektivt.se/global-halsa.
Another (old) Swedish site with a lengthier discussion of Effective Altruism, which includes a discussion of GiveWell is this: https://dndebattbetyg.wordpress.com/2015/03/05/effektiv-altruism-rorelsen/.
Also useful if looking for relevant sites to share with speakers of various languages is GiveWell’s index of tax-deductibility by country: https://www.givewell.org/about/donate/tax-deductibility which includes links to sites from many countries.
Of course, none of these are as extensive as the material found on GiveWell’s own site, but they may be useful for now.
Hi Jonas,
Thanks for asking! You’re right that our presence in Europe is more limited than in the US. We do have a GiveWell UK registration, and we’re open to expanding our international reach in the future. However, establishing legal entities in other countries is a significant undertaking, and we’d want to ensure it’s worthwhile in terms of both resources and impact.
As Arnold mentioned above, there are several effective altruism-aligned groups across Europe that are growing, including Effektiv Spenden in Germany. These groups generally have a broader focus than GiveWell, but they use our research and raise significant funds for our recommendations.
Regarding website localization into additional language—our research relies heavily on highly precise language, so any large-scale translation project would require substantial oversight to maintain accuracy and clarity. Because of this, and given the considerable scope of translating our entire site, we haven’t prioritized it thus far.
Interesting discussion. In a similar line, the ability to donate in euros through local payment methods (e.g. iDeal in NL) instead of US dollars via credit cards, would also lower the barrier of donating or setting up recurring donations. There are payment providers like Adyen and Stripe that take care of most of the complexity involved with supporting all these payment methods.
An additional nice-to-have there, from the donor’s perspective, is that monthly donations are more predictable since they don’t fluctuate based on currency valuations.
Curious to hear your thoughts on this.
Hi Leon,
Thanks for sharing these thoughts! We have looked into these options, but they would require significant technological and financial changes on our end. Because of this, we’re not currently planning to add local payment options to our donation form, but it’s possible that we’ll revisit this in the future if the interest is great enough.
It looks to me like GiveWell’s cost effectiveness estimates are forward looking. Meaning, for example, that if a program was preventing cases of a disease whose fatality rate was declining over time, then the program’s cost effectiveness estimate would also tend to decline over time. Could you please confirm whether this is the case, and also comment briefly on the difficulties and uncertainties in doing this. For example, I imagine that it could take a number of years before new data becomes available on things like disease prevalence rates and fatality rates meaning that cost effectiveness estimates could be less accurate when things are changing rapidly. This seems like a particularly important issue for programs targeting malaria, given the development of vaccines etc.
Hi Rick,
Thanks for your question! Yes, GiveWell’s cost-effectiveness estimates are forward looking in the sense that they focus on a program that has yet to be implemented. However, these estimates are for a specific funding opportunity in a particular location, not the program in general. We do factor in assumptions about how an intervention’s impact might change over time (e.g., due to declining case-fatality rates), but because data on disease prevalence and mortality are not always immediately updated—especially in areas where conditions can change rapidly—there is inherent uncertainty in these forecasts. We update our cost-effectiveness analyses whenever we obtain new information that materially affects an intervention’s estimated impact, and each new grant opportunity or shift in a program’s scope triggers a fresh look at the relevant assumptions, though there is always a lag between the real world changing and updated estimates being published.