The GiveWell Blog

GiveWell’s plan for 2011: Specifics of research

This is the fifth post (of five) focused on our self-evaluation and future plans. A previous post outlined our top-level priorities for 2011. The most important priority is finding more top charities. This post lists our potential tactics for finding top charities; we are particularly interested in feedback on this topic. These tactics are listed…

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GiveWell’s plan for 2011: Top-level priorities

This is the fourth post (of five) we’re planning to make focused on our self-evaluation and future plans. In previous posts, we discussed the progress we’ve made, where we stand, and how we can improve in core areas. This post focuses on the latter, and lays out our top-level strategic choices for the next year….

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Global Fund: Best failure disclosure we’ve seen yet?

Over the last year or so, The Global Fund has disclosed instances of apparent fraud in Zambia, Mali, and Mauritania among other countries. This week, The Associated Press reported on these disclosures with the hostile headline: “Fraud plagues global health fund.” The Global Fund has been defended with the valid observation that the total fraud…

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Free legal services – helpful or harmful?

The Harvard Legal Aid Bureau provides free legal services, via volunteer Harvard Law students, to “low-income people in civil (non-criminal) matters in order to ensure equal access to justice and to remove legal barriers to economic opportunity.” It’s about as intuitive an intervention as any. Good legal services are expensive; the services provided by Harvard…

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Disaster relief report published; Doctors Without Borders, Partners In Health, and Direct Relief International stand out

Our new report grades major disaster relief organizations on their transparency and accountability to donors. It provides detailed reports on each charity, a summary table with our conclusions, and the full details of our process. We conclude that Doctors Without Borders, Partners in Health and Direct Relief International stand out for the clarity with which…

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Assessing disaster relief organizations

Over the past year, we have been examining disaster relief organizations, with particular attention to the quality of the information they provide on their work in the 2004 Asian tsunami and the 2010 Haiti earthquake. We don’t think disaster relief is the best cause for impact-oriented donors and we are unable (details below) to apply…

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