[Added August 27, 2014: GiveWell Labs is now known as the Open Philanthropy Project.] As discussed previously, GiveWell and Good Ventures have identified several philanthropic causes that seem like promising candidates for “deep dives” – investigations deep enough to be headed toward major giving recommendations. (In this post, as in the previous one, “we” should…
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GiveWell’s funding needs
Building GiveWell’s staff has long been one of our top priorities, and one of our most difficult challenges. In 2013, we’ve seen progress on this front like never before. Our staff currently stands at 10 full-time (not “trial”) employees, compared to 5 at the start of 2013 and a maximum of 7 at any point…
GiveWell Labs update
[Added August 27, 2014: GiveWell Labs is now known as the Open Philanthropy Project.] GiveWell and Good Ventures have made substantial progress since our last update on GiveWell Labs, and we’re now ready to take a major new step: moving beyond “shallow” and “medium-depth” investigations of causes to “deep dives” that are likely to involve…
Balancing support from Good Ventures vs. individuals
GiveWell is growing quickly, and we have been wrestling with the question of how we should be seeking to fund our expansion. We are currently working closely with Good Ventures. Good Ventures is a major foundation, and it is interested enough in our work on strategic cause selection – for its own purposes in choosing…
Principles and practices of capacity building
I previously wrote about the challenges of capacity building – hiring, training, and managing a team. We thought we would share some of the principles and practices we’ve come to believe are important to this goal, so that others can both learn from/consider them and provide their thoughts. As in the previous post on this…
Debating philanthropy
Over the past few weeks, we’ve seen something that we see too rarely: a debate over philanthropy. Bill Schambra, at the invitation of the Hewlett Foundation (a funder of GiveWell), attacked the idea of “strategic philanthropy” presented in Money Well Spent (a book co-authored by Paul Brest, former Hewlett President). He characterized Money Well Spent…