The GiveWell Blog

Challenges of transparency

When we first started GiveWell, we wondered why major staffed foundations didn’t write more about the thinking behind their giving (and the results of it), in order to share their knowledge and influence others. We’ve tried to counterbalance normal practice by making transparency one of our core values. Our commitment to transparency is as strong…

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David Roodman’s draft writeup on immigration and current residents’ wages

As discussed previously, we are investigating the cause of labor mobility as a potential focus area within U.S. policy. Much of our investigation is focused on outlining potential giving opportunities; concurrently, we are interested in reviewing the academic literature on the merits (and possible drawbacks) of the policy changes that we would be working toward….

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Partnership with The Pew Charitable Trusts

Throughout the post, “we” refers to GiveWell and Good Ventures, who work as partners on GiveWell Labs. [Added August 27, 2014: GiveWell Labs is now known as the Open Philanthropy Project.] We have agreed to a major partnership with The Pew Charitable Trusts as part of our work on criminal justice reform. Good Ventures will…

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The moral value of the far future

A popular idea in the effective altruism community is the idea that most of the people we can help (with our giving, our work, etc.) are people who haven’t been born yet. By working to lower global catastrophic risks, speed economic development and technological innovation, and generally improve people’s resources, capabilities, and values, we may…

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Potential global catastrophic risk focus areas

Updated Sept. 12, 2014 to change “GiveWell Labs” to “Open Philanthropy Project,” in line with our August 2014 announcement.Throughout the post, “we” refers to GiveWell and Good Ventures, who work as partners on the Open Philanthropy Project. This post draws substantially on our recent updates on our investigation of policy-oriented philanthropy, including using much of the same…

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