The GiveWell Blog

Challenges of passive funding

[Added August 27, 2014: GiveWell Labs is now known as the Open Philanthropy Project.] Something I think about a lot is the spectrum from “passive funding” to “active funding.” By “passive funding,” I mean a dynamic in which the funder’s role is to review others’ proposals/ideas/arguments and pick which to fund, and by “active funding,”…

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Donating to Gates – against its will

With all the people and organizations out there who would like more money, there’s something remarkable about the fact that the Gates Foundation is specifically asking people NOT to give to it (PDF) – and still couldn’t keep away over $10 million in donations in 2008. Why the Gates Foundation doesn’t want your money First…

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Can the Green Revolution be repeated in Africa?

In his Annual Letter, Bill Gates describes the “Green Revolution”: Almost every country that has become wealthy started with a huge increase in farming productivity. Chart 4 shows the increase in output per acre for various grains, including wheat, corn, and rice, in the United States, India, China, and Africa since 1961. This dramatic increase…

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