The GiveWell Blog

All GiveWell’s grantmaking Posts

Building our Safe Water Grantmaking: Apply to the DIV Fund’s RFP

| by GiveWell Staff

GiveWell has granted $5 million to the DIV Fund to identify and support promising water quality and access innovations. Our grant aims to build a pipeline of high-potential, cost-effective opportunities that GiveWell could consider for future funding. If you’re working on piloting or testing an early-stage water intervention, or know someone who is, please apply to the DIV Fund’s newly launched request for proposals (RFP) or share it with your network. Applications are now open and are being accepted on a rolling basis.

Why We’re Funding the Search for New Water Innovations

Unsafe water results in more than 750,000 deaths each year, most of them in Africa and Asia. Though water is a newer cause area at GiveWell, we’ve directed more than $150 million to water quality interventions since 2022. As our research capacity continues to grow, so does our ability to explore new opportunities and types of grants to prevent deaths through safe water access.

We encourage organizations with water quality and access projects to apply to the DIV Fund, which we hope will surface promising programs that we can evaluate for future funding. We are particularly interested in water quality programs, as we believe this is where donors’ contributions can save and improve lives the most.

GiveWell has historically focused its water funding on chlorination programs, and we remain confident that these are among the most cost-effective water interventions available. We also hope this support to the DIV Fund helps reveal a wider breadth of high-impact water opportunities where we can direct donations.

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How We’re Searching for the Best Ways to Help in 2026

(updated on: ) | by GiveWell Staff

This year, our research team is focused on two primary goals. The first is to rapidly scale our capabilities so we’re able to move much more donor funding to highly cost-effective programs in the near future. The second is to grant at least $500 million to the best opportunities we can find this year to save and improve lives.

Over the past several years, GiveWell has doubled the size of our research team to deepen and broaden our search for highly impactful programs. Our 60 researchers are now distributed among 11 subteams that cover a number of global health and development cause areas, as well as core research needs.

Below you’ll find a summary of the key approaches each subteam is using this year to find new opportunities to help people in need as much as we can.

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Podcast Episode 29: Behind the Analysis — Assessing Past Malaria Nets Grants

(updated on: ) | by GiveWell Staff

GiveWell’s research doesn’t end once we’ve made a grant. We evaluate a subset of completed grants, comparing what we thought would happen to what actually took place, then try to use what we learn to improve our future funding decisions. Over the past year, we’ve formalized and expanded this work, publishing comprehensive “lookbacks” for select grants.

A recent lookback on grants GiveWell made to fund insecticide-treated net distributions supported by the Against Malaria Foundation (AMF) in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) illustrates the growing capacity of GiveWell’s research team. We drew on multiple independent data sources, funded qualitative interviews to gather more information, and conducted a novel empirical analysis to deepen our confidence.

In this episode, based on a conversation originally aired on GiveWell’s internal podcast for staff*, GiveWell’s co-founder and CEO Elie Hassenfeld provides additional context while GiveWell’s Chief Research and Program Officer Teryn Mattox dives deep into the details with Program Director Alex Cohen and Researcher Steven Brownstone, examining how we conducted the lookback, what we found, and how what we learned may shape our future nets grantmaking.

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GiveWell Opens RFI for Malaria Pilots and Research

| by GiveWell Staff

GiveWell is launching a new request for information (RFI) to expand and strengthen our malaria grantmaking in Africa and help our donors make a greater impact. Expressions of interest can be submitted through one of two tracks, the first for malaria chemoprevention and vector control pilot programs and the second for research and evaluation. Submissions are due June 24.

Malaria kills around 600,000 people annually, mostly children under five in Africa. To date, GiveWell has directed more than $1 billion in donations to malaria prevention programs. As our research capacity grows, this RFI aims to pilot promising malaria prevention strategies and generate evidence to address a range of questions in malaria prevention and epidemiology.

We’d like to reach as many organizations as possible—please share with your network and consider applying!

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GiveWell Launches RFIs for Targeted Vaccination Outreach in Three Countries and Anemia Control Programs in Africa

| by GiveWell Staff

GiveWell is launching two new requests for information (RFI) to expand GiveWell’s funding for vaccination outreach and anemia control programs. We’re excited to replicate the success of last year’s water chlorination RFI and explore how to reach even more people in low- and middle-income countries with programs to save and improve lives.

The first RFI seeks organizations that would like to implement targeted vaccination outreach or mobile vaccination programs in Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Nigeria, or Somalia. The second seeks programs that reduce iron deficiency anemia through large-scale food fortification, targeted iron supplementation, and iron biofortification in Africa.

These RFIs are just one component of our expanding efforts to find and fund high-impact ways to help people in need. We’re making them public in an effort to reach as many organizations as possible, and we encourage you to share them with your networks. Submissions for both RFIs are due March 27.

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Help Us Respond to an Uncertain Future for Global Health

(updated on: ) | by GiveWell Staff

It has been a tumultuous year for global health. In early 2025, the US government cut billions of dollars in foreign aid, affecting millions of people around the world and creating substantial uncertainty that continues to ripple through health and development programs around the world.

Drawing on almost two decades of cost-effectiveness research and analysis, GiveWell assessed the effects in real time and identified funding gaps where donors’ contributions could have exceptional impact. Our actions were guided by our core principles:

  • Search for highly cost-effective giving opportunities, even in uncertain circumstances.
  • Rigorously evaluate those opportunities and share our research publicly, while acknowledging that timely action sometimes requires accepting higher uncertainty.
  • Direct funds to where we think they’ll do the most good, considering both immediate needs and long-term implications.

Our response so far

Donut chart with categories corresponding to the percentage of response funding for each program area
In response to funding shortfalls, we funded time-sensitive opportunities to ensure that cost-effective programs could continue. And in response to substantial uncertainty and in expectation of growing needs, we engaged in efforts to research new areas and prepare ourselves for the future. You can read some examples of our response later in this post.

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