Every month we send an email newsletter to our supporters sharing recent updates from our work. We publish selected portions of the newsletter on our blog to make this news more accessible to people who visit our website. For key updates from the latest installment, please see below!

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Our Evolving Research Approach

For much of GiveWell’s history, finding new high-impact programs primarily meant searching through our networks—relying on referrals, long-standing partnerships, or the occasional cold outreach. But this approach had limitations. It meant that organizations doing promising work might never come across our radar, particularly in new grantmaking areas, and that capable organizations might not even know we were looking.

We’ve spent the last several years focused on growing and deepening our research team’s expertise. With a more specialized team, we’re able to more precisely articulate what we’re looking for and broaden our reach to find highly cost-effective organizations doing that work. This is just one of the many ways that our purposeful research growth is now reshaping and strengthening our work.

When we recently ran requests for proposals for vaccine outreach and water chlorination programs, we heard from hundreds of organizations, including many groups based in low- and middle-income countries that we likely wouldn’t have reached in the past. This has already led to more than a dozen pilot grants, which will help us learn what works so we can direct more funding more effectively in the years ahead.

In our latest podcast episode, GiveWell CEO and co-founder Elie Hassenfeld and Senior Program Officer Julie Faller discuss some of the ways we’ve been evolving our research team and what the resulting momentum means for the future of GiveWell’s grantmaking.

Testing Our Assumptions through Local Insights

GiveWell has built its reputation on rigorous desk research, and we’ve been enhancing that work in recent years by supplementing it with more information gathered directly from the people who live and work in the countries where we fund programs.

In this podcast episode, GiveWell CEO and co-founder Elie Hassenfeld speaks with Principal Researcher Alex Cohen about GiveWell’s work to gather local insights to check our assumptions and figure out what we might be missing.

Elie and Alex cover:

• Testing key hypotheses about the data GiveWell relies on: We’re working to improve the inputs in our decision making, including checks on coverage data, more information about how programs work in practice, and assessing whether estimated program effects are plausible.
• Addressing the limitations of global health data: We’re employing multiple approaches to build better context for the data we use, including funding independent survey firms, conducting site visits, hiring local consultants, and strengthening our network.
• Balancing the benefits of local and desk research: Desk research will continue to make up the vast majority of our work, but we believe that complementing that research with additional information we gather from local sources could meaningfully improve our grantmaking.

Grant Spotlight

Our grantmaking supports programs and research that aim to save and improve lives the most per dollar. Here’s a look at one recent example:

Where: Nigeria and India
What: Research on usage and acceptance of automated water chlorination systems
Who: Researchers at University of California, Berkeley and University of Michigan
Amount: $2.1 million
How it works: This grant will fund two main activities: (1) a pilot randomized controlled trial in two Nigerian states measuring usage rates of in-line chlorination devices, which automatically chlorinate water instead of relying on user behavior change such as adding chlorination tablets, and (2) taste preference experiments in Nigeria and India to determine optimal chlorine doses that users will accept.
Why this grant: The findings from this research will inform our future water chlorination grantmaking by providing data on device performance, optimal dosing, and infrastructure compatibility. It will also address key questions needed to assess whether a study measuring the effect of water chlorination on child mortality would be successful.
Funded by: Donations to GiveWell’s All Grants Fund

To learn more, check out the grant page.

Partner Roundup

• See Against Malaria Foundation’s 2025 impact with 21 million insecticide-treated nets distributed in nine campaigns across two countries!
• Follow a community mobilizer helping to reach under-immunized children in partnership with New Incentives’ program.
• Read about Helen Keller Intl’s new research impacting vitamin A supplementation in Côte d’Ivoire.

Comments or Questions?

We’re always looking for fresh perspectives on our research. If you have comments or questions on our work, we want to hear from you! Reach out to us at info@givewell.org.