For this post, GiveWell staff members and contributors wrote up the thinking behind their personal donations for the year. We made similar posts in previous years (2013, 2014, 2015, 2016). Staff and contributors are listed in order of their start dates at GiveWell.
The GiveWell Blog
Questioning the evidence on hookworm eradication in the American South
Summary
- Four of GiveWell’s top charities support deworming—the mass distribution of medicines to children in poor countries to rid their bodies of schistosomiasis, hookworm, and parasites.
- GiveWell’s recommendation relies primarily on research from western Kenya finding that deworming in childhood boosted income in adulthood. GiveWell has also placed weight on a study by Hoyt Bleakley of the hookworm eradication effort in the American South 100 years ago.
- I reviewed the Bleakley study and reach a different conclusion than he did: the deworming campaign in the American South did not coincide with breaks in long-term trends that would invite eradication as the explanation.
- GiveWell research staff took the conclusions of this post into account when updating their recommendations for the 2017 giving season. GiveWell continues to recommend deworming charities.
- I also reviewed a separate Bleakley study of the impacts of malaria eradication in the United States, Brazil, Colombia, and Mexico. My reading there is more supporting. I’m finalizing the write-ups now and will share them soon.
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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.
How GiveWell and mainstream policymakers compare the “good” achieved by different programs
In a previous blog post, we described how we use cost-effectiveness analyses when deciding which charities to recommend to donors.
Today, we published a report that discusses how GiveWell and other actors, such as governments and global health organizations, approach one of the most subjective and uncertain inputs into cost-effectiveness analyses: how to morally value different good outcomes.
Interim update on GiveWell’s money moved and web traffic in 2016
In 2016, we tracked a total of $91.6 million given to our top charities as a direct result of our research.
In addition to this $91.6 million, we also directed $13.3 million to our Incubation Grants program.