The GiveWell Blog

Finally, a competitor!

This week, The Chronicle of Philanthropy wrote an article about the creation of the Alliance for Effective Social Investing. We wholeheartedly applaud Steve Butz and other members of the Alliance for their efforts, and really hope they succeed. There are too few organizations focusing on the effectiveness of charitable programs, and we’re excited to see…

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Back Monday

We’re on a pledge-raising trip in CA, and our schedule has been tighter than anticipated. We’ll be back on the blog Monday.

The GiveWell Pledge

The goal of GiveWell is to help a large chunk of individual giving to become more effective (i.e., to help people more). As such, the two most important questions about our project are: 1. Can we produce useful, actionable research for donors? 2. Will donors use it? Our first year was focused on #1. We…

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New material

We’ve been releasing a lot of new material over the last few weeks, and I want to make sure that our blog readers are aware of it. GiveWell.net now includes: New research reports and charity recommendations on three causes. Global Poverty: includes a thorough review of the logical and empirical case for microfinance. We have…

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The biggest giver: Individuals

This week, Giving USA released their 2007 estimate of U.S. charitable giving. Its data forms one of our favorite figures, and one of the biggest factors behind our decision to start GiveWell. Taken together, individuals account for 75% of total US giving; that’s 6x as much as all foundations combined. (In fact, it makes more…

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