The GiveWell Blog

A promising study on the long-term effects of deworming

This year, Dr. Kevin Croke, a post-doctoral fellow at the Harvard School of Public Health, released a study that we consider an important addition to the evidence for deworming children. The study (Croke 2014) followed up on a randomized controlled trial (RCT) of a deworming program in Uganda and found higher scores on tests of…

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Update on GiveDirectly

Three members of GiveDirectly‘s board of directors (Paul Niehaus, Michael Faye, and Chris Hughes) are planning to start a for-profit technology company, Segovia, aimed at improving the efficiency of cash transfer distributions in the developing world. Segovia plans to sell software to developing-country governments for use in implementing their cash transfer programs. This development was…

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Against Malaria Foundation finalizes distribution agreement for ~676,000 nets

The Against Malaria Foundation (AMF) was our top-rated charity for approximately two years, before we suspended our recommendation last November for room for more funding related reasons. We are happy to see that it has recently finalized an agreement to fund 676,000 nets – at a total cost of ~$2 million – in the Democratic…

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Good Ventures matching gift to GiveDirectly and grants to top charities

Good Ventures has announced: Grants to our top charities: $2 million to GiveDirectly, $1.5 million to Deworm the World Initiative, $750,000 to Schistosomiasis Control Initiative. A match, up to $5 million total and $100,000 per donor, on donations made to GiveDirectly from today through January 31, 2014. Good Ventures spells out its reasoning here. We…

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GiveWell’s top charities for giving season 2013

Our top charities for this giving season are GiveDirectly, Schistosomiasis Control Initiative (SCI), and the Deworm the World Initiative (DtWI) (led by Evidence Action). The first two have been recommended previously. The third is a new addition, and we encourage readers to see our full review. We’ve had extensive internal discussions about how to rank…

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Responses to objections on cash transfers

Since our recommendation of GiveDirectly last year, we’ve seen a fair amount of pushback and skepticism. We’ve recently been speaking with donors who have supported our other top charities – and not GiveDirectly – to get a better sense of what their reservations are. This post lays out what we see as the most common…

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