The GiveWell Blog

A quick, free way to support GiveWell

Over 150 projects have been submitted for the NetSquared conference at the end of May, and only 20 will get to go. The winners will be determined by an online vote, open until this Saturday afternoon … and you know what that means: 1. This is a popularity contest, and given how likable I am…

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Announcing the Clear Fund

The goal of GiveWell is to make thorough analysis of charities (the kind currently exclusive to large grantmakers) available, useful, usable, and criticizable for any donor, large or small, who cares. This has been our goal since last August, but we have come a long way in terms of strategy. Originally, our strategy was to…

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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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