The GiveWell Blog

GiveWell’s issues log: VillageReach analysis

Recently, we’ve been reflecting on and evaluating our past analysis of VillageReach. We’ve undertaken this analysis and published what we’ve learned because we feel that our process performed suboptimally, and careful consideration of what caused this may lead to improvement on our part. Broadly, we categorize the problems below as “questions we could have asked…

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Rethinking VillageReach’s pilot project

Background Over the past 3 years, VillageReach has received over $2 million as a direct result of our recommendation. VillageReach put these funds towards its work to scale up its health logistics program, which it implemented as a pilot project in one province in Mozambique between 2002 and 2007, to the rest of the country….

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VillageReach update

Context: VillageReach focuses on health-system logistics in the developing-world. It was our top-rated charity from July 2009-November 2011, and GiveWell donors contributed over $2 million to it. These funds have primarily been directed towards a scale-up of VillageReach’s approach to health supplies in Mozambique. We have been posting regular updates on VillageReach’s progress. In addition…

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Guest post from John Beale at VillageReach

This is a guest post from John Beale, VillageReach’s Director, Strategic Development & Group Lead, Social Business Group. VillageReach has been reviewed by GiveWell since mid-2009, and was recommended as its #1 recommendation for two years, until November 2011. In providing this updated review of our work in Mozambique, we see a need to explain…

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GiveWell is aiming to have a new #1 charity by December

Our current top-rated charity is VillageReach. In 2010, we directed over $1.1 million to it, which met its short-term funding needs (i.e., its needs for the next year or so). VillageReach still has longer-term needs, and in the absence of other giving opportunities that we consider comparable, we’ve continued to feature it as #1 on…

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What it takes to evaluate impact

When someone asks me what makes GiveWell different from other third-party charity evaluators, I often answer by listing all the things we’ve done in order to investigate our current top-rated charity, VillageReach. We’ve done extensive background research on international aid and argued for key takeaways such as the overall promise of international aid for donors,…

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