We put a lot of effort into making our research process and reasoning transparent so that anyone can understand and vet the thinking behind our charity recommendations. Consistent with this, we will be holding a conference call on December 8, 7p Eastern, open to anyone who registers via our online form. Staff will take questions…
The GiveWell Blog
All posts by Holden
Top charities for holiday season 2011: Against Malaria Foundation and Schistosomiasis Control Initiative
GiveWell has published our annual update on how to accomplish as much good as possible with your donations. Our top two charities – out of hundreds we’ve examined – are (1) the Against Malaria Foundation, which fights malaria using insecticide-treated bednets, and (2) the Schistosomiasis Control Initiative, which treats children for intestinal worms. Our update…
New charity recommendations forthcoming by December 1; blog posts on hold until then
As we wrote previously, we’re expecting to have a substantially revised set of charity recommendations by December 1. We’re currently in the final stages of writing up our cases for top contenders and discussing which will be top-rated. Because of this, we plan to suspend our blog posts (which are normally at least weekly) until…
Maximizing cost-effectiveness via critical inquiry
We’ve recently been writing about the shortcomings of formal cost-effectiveness estimation (i.e., trying to estimate how much good, as measured in lives saved, DALYs or other units, is accomplished per dollar spent). After conceptually arguing that cost-effectiveness estimates can’t be taken literally when they are not robust, we found major problems in one of the…
Some considerations against more investment in cost-effectiveness estimates
When we started GiveWell, we were very interested in cost-effectiveness estimates: calculations aiming to determine, for example, the “cost per life saved” or “cost per DALY saved” of a charity or program. Over time, we’ve found ourselves putting less weight on these calculations, because we’ve been finding that these estimates tend to be extremely rough…
GiveWell is aiming to have a new #1 charity by December
Our current top-rated charity is VillageReach. In 2010, we directed over $1.1 million to it, which met its short-term funding needs (i.e., its needs for the next year or so). VillageReach still has longer-term needs, and in the absence of other giving opportunities that we consider comparable, we’ve continued to feature it as #1 on…