I recently read Better by Atul Gawande, and found myself particularly struck – and reminded of our own situation – by his analysis of hospital care. According to Dr. Gawande, conventional wisdom has long been that the vast majority of hospitals provides top-notch, quality care, and only a fraction treats their patients incompetently. This implies…
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Reinventing the wheel
I think the following comment, from Andrea, is broadly representative of a common criticism we receive. One thing Givewell is missing, and has been criticized for in the past, is that people are already working on these issues, and that one small organization like Givewell can’t solve this “problem” where all others have failed. For…
Quick update
I’m going out of town for the next week and will have only sporadic internet access. A few odds and ends: At our Board meeting on Tuesday the 4th, we officially named our grantees in Causes 3 (Nurse-Family Partnership) and Cause 4 (KIPP). We think both are excellent options for donors. Our writeups on these…
Flip-flopping
A little over a year ago, we ballparked the cost to save a life from malaria at $200. Now we think it’s closer to $1000. Last August, I wrote that K-12 education is my favorite cause. A week ago, I owned up to moving it to the bottom of my list, and far preferring global…
Don’t take our breadth away
For our first round of grantmaking, we chose to investigate five broad causes, two in the developing world (saving lives and fighting poverty) and three in the developed world (early childhood care; K-12 education; employment assistance). This decision – doing five causes, instead of narrowing our scope from the outset – had serious costs. Even…
Bear with us
We got more attention today than we can handle. We have a tremendous volume of questions, comments, concerns, and requests and it’s going to take us a while to dig through them. We have no customer service dept – it’s just me, Elie, and Teel – but we will get it done. So if you…