The following statements are true: “GiveWell is a nonprofit dedicated to finding outstanding giving opportunities through in-depth analysis. Thousands of hours of research have gone into finding our top-rated charities.” GiveWell recommends four deworming charities as having outstanding expected value. Why? Hundreds of millions of kids harbor parasitic worms in their guts[1]. Treatment is safe,…
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Our updated top charities for giving season 2016
We have refreshed our top charity rankings and recommendations. We now have seven top charities: our four top charities from last year and three new additions. We have also added two new organizations to our list of charities that we think deserve special recognition (previously called “standout” charities). Instead of ranking organizations, we rank funding…
Deworming might have huge impact, but might have close to zero impact
We try to communicate that there are risks involved with all of our top charity recommendations, and that none of our recommendations are a “sure thing.” Our recommendation of deworming programs (the Schistosomiasis Control Initiative and the Deworm the World Initiative), though, carries particularly significant risk (in the sense of possibly not doing much/any good,…
Weighing organizational strength vs. estimated cost-effectiveness
A major question we’ve asked ourselves internally over the last few years is how we should weigh organizational quality versus the value of the intervention that the organization is carrying out. In particular, is it better to recommend an organization we’re very impressed by and confident in that’s carrying out a good program, or better…
Mid-year update to top charity recommendations
This post provides an update on what we’ve learned about our top charities in the first half of 2016. We continue to recommend all four of our top charities. Our recommendation for donors seeking to directly follow our advice remains the same: we recommend they give to the Against Malaria Foundation (AMF), which we believe…
What we’ve learned about SCI this year
In past years, we’ve written that we had significant concerns about the financial reporting and financial management of the Schistosomiasis Control Initiative (SCI), one of our top charities since 2011. Our concerns have included: We had not been able to learn important and basic financial information about SCI. Despite substantial effort, before 2016 we were…