The GiveWell Blog

Allocation of discretionary funds from Q2 2018

In April to June 2018, we received $1.2 million in funding for making grants at our discretion. In addition, GiveWell’s Board of Directors voted to allocate $2.9 million in unrestricted funds to making grants to recommended charities. In this post we discuss:

  • The decision to allocate the $4.1 million to the Against Malaria Foundation (AMF) (70 percent) and the Schistosomiasis Control Initiative (SCI) (30 percent).
  • Our recommendation that donors give to GiveWell for granting to top charities at our discretion so that we can direct the funding to the top charity or charities with the most pressing funding need. For donors who prefer to give directly to our top charities, we continue to recommend giving 70 percent of your donation to AMF and 30 percent to SCI to maximize your impact.
  • Why we have allocated unrestricted funds to making grants to recommended charities.

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Allocation of discretionary funds from Q1 2018

In the first quarter of 2018, we received $2.96 million in funding for making grants at our discretion. In this post we discuss:

  • The decision to allocate the $2.96 million to the Against Malaria Foundation (AMF) (70 percent) and the Schistosomiasis Control Initiative (SCI) (30 percent).
  • Our recommendation that donors give to GiveWell for granting to top charities at our discretion so that we can direct the funding to the top charity or charities with the most pressing funding need. For donors who prefer to give directly to our top charities, we continue to recommend giving 70 percent of your donation to AMF and 30 percent to SCI to maximize your impact.

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Allocation of discretionary funds from Q4 2017

In the fourth quarter of 2017, we received $5.6 million in funding for making grants at our discretion. In this post we discuss:

  • The decision to allocate the $5.6 million to the Schistosomiasis Control Initiative (SCI).
  • Our recommendation that donors give to GiveWell for granting to top charities at our discretion so that we can direct the funding to the top charity or charities with the most pressing funding need. For donors who prefer to give directly to our top charities, we continue to recommend giving 70 percent of your donation to AMF and 30 percent to SCI to maximize your impact.

We noted in November that we would use funds received for making grants at our discretion to fill the next highest priority funding gaps among our top charities. We also noted that our best guess at the time was that we would give 70 percent to the Against Malaria Foundation (AMF) and 30 percent to SCI.

Based on information received since November, described below, we allocated the $5.6 million to SCI, rather than dividing these funds between AMF and SCI, as previously expected. GiveWell’s Executive Director, Elie Hassenfeld, the fund advisor on the Effective Altruism Fund for Global Health and Development also recommended that the fund grant out the $1.5 million that it held to SCI.

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Our top charities for giving season 2017

This year, we added two new top charities, Evidence Action’s No Lean Season program and Helen Keller International’s vitamin A supplementation program, and retained our seven top charities from 2016. We also added Evidence Action’s Dispensers for Safe Water program to our list of standout charities.

We recommend that donors give to GiveWell for granting to top charities at our discretion so that we can direct the funding to the top charity or charities with the most pressing funding need. For donors who prefer to give directly to our top charities, we recommend giving 70 percent of your donation to the Against Malaria Foundation (AMF) and 30 percent to the Schistosomiasis Control Initiative (SCI) to maximize your impact. We expect Good Ventures, a foundation with which we work closely, to provide significant support to each top charity; our recommendation to give to AMF and SCI is based on how much good we believe additional donations can do.

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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…

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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…

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