The GiveWell Blog

GiveWell’s annual charity recommendations refresh

As we do every year, we’re planning to release updated charity recommendations by December 1st. We’re currently weighing what we’ve learned about the organizations that could receive our top ratings. Currently, the contenders for top spots are Against Malaria Foundation (AMF) (our current #1 charity), Schistosomiasis Control Initiative (SCI) (our current #2 charity), and GiveDirectly…

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Quick update: New way to follow GiveWell’s research progress

There are two types of materials we publish periodically throughout the year: We frequently speak with charity representatives or other subject matter experts. We ask permission to take notes during these conversations so that we can publish them to our conversations page. We publish new charity review or intervention report pages. We’ve set up a…

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GiveWell’s issues log: VillageReach analysis

Recently, we’ve been reflecting on and evaluating our past analysis of VillageReach. We’ve undertaken this analysis and published what we’ve learned because we feel that our process performed suboptimally, and careful consideration of what caused this may lead to improvement on our part. Broadly, we categorize the problems below as “questions we could have asked…

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Rethinking VillageReach’s pilot project

Background Over the past 3 years, VillageReach has received over $2 million as a direct result of our recommendation. VillageReach put these funds towards its work to scale up its health logistics program, which it implemented as a pilot project in one province in Mozambique between 2002 and 2007, to the rest of the country….

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Update on GiveWell’s web traffic / money moved: Q1 2012

In addition to evaluations of other charities, GiveWell publishes substantial evaluation on itself, from the quality of its research to its impact on donations. We publish quarterly updates regarding two key metrics: (a) donations to top charities and (b) web traffic. The charts below present basic information about our growth in money moved and web…

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VillageReach update

Context: VillageReach focuses on health-system logistics in the developing-world. It was our top-rated charity from July 2009-November 2011, and GiveWell donors contributed over $2 million to it. These funds have primarily been directed towards a scale-up of VillageReach’s approach to health supplies in Mozambique. We have been posting regular updates on VillageReach’s progress. In addition…

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