Three members of GiveDirectly‘s board of directors (Paul Niehaus, Michael Faye, and Chris Hughes) are planning to start a for-profit technology company, Segovia, aimed at improving the efficiency of cash transfer distributions in the developing world. Segovia plans to sell software to developing-country governments for use in implementing their cash transfer programs. This development was…
The GiveWell Blog
All posts by Elie
A journalist visits GiveDirectly villages in Kenya
In February, Jacob Kushner, a journalist living in Kenya, contacted us. We have long been interested in seeing more substantive coverage of philanthropy, so we were excited to talk to him. As a pilot project, Mr. Kushner decided to visit villages in which GiveDirectly had distributed some of its earliest cash transfers. We spoke with…
Nothing But Nets
In 2014, we prioritized Nothing But Nets (http://nothingbutnets.net) as a potential GiveWell top charity because it funds insecticide-treated nets to prevent malaria, one of our priority programs. In early 2014, we contacted Nothing But Nets to explain our process and to invite it to apply for a recommendation. Nothing But Nets provided brief responses to…
Finding giving opportunities in malaria control/elimination
[Added August 27, 2014: GiveWell Labs is now known as the Open Philanthropy Project.] As part of our work on GiveWell Labs, we retained Dr. Steven Phillips as a consultant to source giving opportunities in malaria control/elimination. This post lays out: The work that Dr. Phillips did for us in order to source giving opportunities….
Our work on outreach
One of the core questions we’ve faced throughout GiveWell’s history has been whether to allocate our time to research (i.e., identifying and evaluating outstanding giving opportunities) or outreach (i.e., increasing the number of donors who are aware of GiveWell and use our research, and the amount of money we move to top charities). The question…
The first case study from our history of philanthropy project
[Added August 27, 2014: GiveWell Labs is now known as the Open Philanthropy Project.] Benjamin Soskis, who has been working for us on our history of philanthropy project, has completed a case study (.docx) of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation-Pew Memorial Trust Health Care for the Homeless (HCH) program. We have found this case study…