There’s no question that “giving a goat” has caught on, as a way of getting people to support charity – rather than consumer goods – for the holidays. I certainly don’t need an iPad or a new TV, and I encourage friends and family to make donations in my name rather than sending me gifts….
The GiveWell Blog
All posts by Holden
My favorite cause for individual donors: Global health and nutrition
My favorite cause used to be U.S. equality of opportunity. But over the years since we started GiveWell, I’ve become more and more convinced that the best giving opportunities for individual donors lie in the area of global health and nutrition. Fundamentally, this area stands out because it involves a lot of interventions that have…
Give now or give later?
People sometimes ask us whether they should give now, or save their money and give (including the interest/returns they accrue on their money) later. We don’t think there’s a clear answer. Here are the major issues as I see them, when thinking about my own giving. Bottom line – my favored strategy at the moment…
Leverage in charity
The Schistosomiasis Control Initiative (SCI) told us earlier this year that it had received a donation of praziquantel (the more expensive of the drugs it uses for deworming) from World Vision. Since it already has the drugs, donations can pay just for delivery costs. Thus, SCI observed, your gift is “leveraged” – $1 in donations…
Why you shouldn’t let “donation matching” affect your giving
We know that donors love donation matching.* We know that if we could offer donation matching on gifts to our top charities this giving season, our money moved would rise. And we know that we could offer donation matching if we thought it was the right thing to do: there are donors planning six-figure gifts…
Deciding between two outstanding charities
We’ve recently published our updated charity recommendations, featuring two top charities (Against Malaria Foundation and Schistosomiasis Control Initiative) that score well on all of our criteria. In this post, we discuss how we decided which of these two charities to rank #1 and which to rank #2. Both charities are executing health programs that deliver…