GiveWell’s latest webinar took a close look at a critical step in our research process: how we’re working to evaluate past grants to understand what happened, why, and how we can use what we learn to improve our grantmaking over time.
Our research spans the full lifecycle of grants. Before we approve funding for a grant, our research team reviews academic evidence, builds cost-effectiveness models, and consults with experts to estimate the program’s expected impact. When programs near the end of their funding, we investigate whether a grant achieved the impact we initially projected. In 2025, our growing research capacity enabled us to expand this final step for select grants and publish comprehensive evaluations that we call “lookbacks.”
During the webinar, GiveWell co-founder and CEO Elie Hassenfeld moderated a discussion with Program Directors Alex Cohen and Julie Faller and Senior Program Officer Adam Salisbury. They covered four examples of grant lookbacks—discussing what we’ve learned and how these lessons are informing our work—and answered questions from the audience live.