In the wake of the recent Giving Pledges, we’ve been discussing what advice we’d give a major philanthropist (aside from our usual plea to conduct evaluations and share them publicly). For the most part, our recommendations and criteria are aimed at individual donors, not major philanthropists. We stress the value of given to proven, cost-effective,…
The GiveWell Blog
All posts by Holden
Philanthropy vouchers
We focus on finding charities that are doing demonstrably good work already, rather than on proposals for new sorts of projects. This post is an exception: we’ve been tossing around an idea for “philanthropy vouchers” that we think could be worth trying in a broad variety of contexts, and we’re interested in others’ thoughts. The…
Slow spending
The Chronicle of Philanthropy and NPR note that charities don’t seem to have spent large percentages of the funds raised for Haiti to date. Here we (a) lay out the numbers, using the Chronicle of Philanthropy’s helpful public survey data; (b) discuss what it means for donors that most of the money raised seems to…
Alliance for Effective Social Investing survey
We are members of the Alliance for Effective Social Investing, and the Alliance is currently determining whether/how to accept new members. We are passing along the following message on the Alliance’s behalf. If you’re potentially interested in membership, please read the message below. The Alliance for Effective Social Investment is collecting feedback from current members…
Unitus and room for more funding
It seems like no one is sure why Unitus is closing its doors. That said – what can we learn from this situation if, as stated, Unitus is closing down because it has accomplished its mission and no longer needs to exist? “We have always thought of Unitus as a project, and that when we…
Against Promise Neighborhoods
We are in favor of scaling up proven programs, but against the Promise Neighborhoods initiative. As far as we know, the only evidence that the Harlem Children’s Zone (or any similar approach) has been effective is the relatively recent study showing impressive effects on test scores at its charter schools. We discussed this study in…