[Added August 27, 2014: GiveWell Labs is now known as the Open Philanthropy Project.] This year, GiveWell has been evolving in a couple of significant ways: We’ve been exploring giving opportunities that may involve restricted/project-specific funding (as opposed to unrestricted support of charities), as well as giving opportunities that could be relatively speculative, hard to…
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Updated thoughts on our key criteria
For years, the 3 key things we’ve looked for in a charity have been (a) evidence of effectiveness; (b) cost-effectiveness; (c) room for more funding. Over time, however, our attitude toward all three of these things – and the weight that we should put on our analysis of each – has changed. This post discusses…
Surveying the research on a topic
We’ve previously discussed how we evaluate a single study. For the questions we try to answer, though, it’s rarely sufficient to consult a single study; studies are specific to a particular time, place, and context, and to get a robust answer to a question like “Do insecticide-treated nets reduce child mortality?” one should conduct –…
How we evaluate a study
We previously wrote about our general principles for assessing evidence, where “evidence” is construed broadly (it may include awards/recognition/reputation, testimony, and broad trends in data as well as formal studies). Here we discuss our approach to a particular kind of evidence, what we call “micro data”: formal studies of the impact of a program on…
Our principles for assessing evidence
For several years now we’ve been writing up our thoughts on the evidence behind particular charities and programs, but we haven’t written a great deal about the general principles we follow in distinguishing between strong and weak evidence. This post will Lay out the general properties that we think make for strong evidence: relevant reported…
Revisiting the 2011 Japan disaster relief effort
Last year, Japan was hit by a severe earthquake and tsunami, and we recommended giving to Doctors Without Borders specifically because it was not soliciting funds for Japan. We reasoned that the relief effort did not appear to have room for more funding – i.e., we believed that additional funding would not lead to a…