For several years now we’ve been writing up our thoughts on the evidence behind particular charities and programs, but we haven’t written a great deal about the general principles we follow in distinguishing between strong and weak evidence. This post will Lay out the general properties that we think make for strong evidence: relevant reported…
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Quick update: New way to follow GiveWell’s research progress
There are two types of materials we publish periodically throughout the year: We frequently speak with charity representatives or other subject matter experts. We ask permission to take notes during these conversations so that we can publish them to our conversations page. We publish new charity review or intervention report pages. We’ve set up a…
Recent conversation with Bill Easterly
We recently sat down for a conversation with Bill Easterly, on the subject of how to improve the value-added of academic research. Prof. Easterly posted highlights from our public notes from the conversation; we thought we’d share our thoughts on his views. Points of agreement: we believe we agree with Prof. Easterly on many core…
KIPP Houston update
In 2011, we recommended KIPP Houston as our top recommendation for donors interested in giving to a United States-focused charity. Our recommendation was based on KIPP’s strong track record and KIPP Houston’s funding gap (caused by education funding cuts passed by the Texas state legislature). We recently checked in with KIPP Houston to update our…
The worst killer of invisible children is not Joseph Kony
Joseph Kony is evil and should be stopped. He has allegedly abducted 30,000 children in his long military campaign. Malaria kills hundreds of thousands of children every year. Joseph Kony has committed atrocities that make me furious. But malaria makes me angrier. Why? Because malaria deaths really do happen just because Americans don’t care enough….
More errors in widely-cited figures: The case of mothers2mothers
Note: mothers2mothers has provided a response to this post that can be viewed below. Summary: mothers2mothers, a well-respected group that focuses on HIV programs in Africa, published figures on its website that we have recently come to believe are erroneous. We feel this finding is important not because of what it says about mothers2mothers, but…