The GiveWell Blog

FAQ: What qualifies us to issue evaluations?

We are not health experts, education experts, or social science experts, and we don’t pretend to be. We are donors, working through – and communicating about – the decisions all donors must work through. We do not see our role as designing, managing, improving, or measuring charitable programs; we see our role as understanding these…

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FAQ: What are our criteria?

You can see the criteria we have used so far on our website. Furthermore, all of our reviews should be explicit about why they say everything they say, and where every rating comes from. If you don’t believe they are, we want to hear about it. There is an understandable desire for universal, “objective” criteria…

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Introducing FAQs, blog style

Beyond Giving asks us several questions on important topics that we’ve talked about a lot but haven’t written about yet. The new “FAQ” subcategory on this blog is for posts that directly answer a common question about our project. Here are Beyond Giving’s questions: 1) What’s your evidence that you can accomplish your stated goal…

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I am not a flake

I said we would update this blog every Tuesday and Saturday. It says so right over there on the left. Today I am swamped, and I might not be able to give you the Tuesday masterpiece I’m sure you’re addicted to. I have more pet peeves than anyone else I know, and one of the…

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