The GiveWell Blog

Strategic cause selection

(updated on: ) | by Holden

[Added August 27, 2014: GiveWell Labs is now known as the Open Philanthropy Project.]

Our picture of how most major foundations work is as follows:

  1. First, broad program areas or “causes” – such as “U.S. education” and “environment” – are chosen. This step is almost entirely “from the heart” – no systematic review is conducted, but rather the philanthropist (or foundation President) chooses areas s/he is passionate about.
  2. Foundation staff speak to relevant people in the field and lay out a foundation strategy. This process may lead to direct identification of potential grantees or to RFPs/guidelines for open applications.
  3. Foundation staff continually work with and evaluate grantees and potential grantees.

(Our recent conversation with Paul Brest of the Hewlett Foundation, which funds GiveWell, gives one example.)

Steps #2 and #3 make sense, and seem likely to lead to at least reasonable results if carried out by people who listen well and keep their minds open. We see some potential room for improvement in terms of documentation and transparency – we believe that our own commitment to writing up and sharing our reasoning and results (rather than just discussing them internally) leads us to better-considered decisions and generates information that can inform other givers as well.

However, our working hypothesis is that the biggest room for improvement lies in step #1 – picking causes. This is where existing philanthropists seem to be least thoughtful and to ask the fewest critical questions; yet this is where we’d guess the bulk of variation in “how much good a philanthropist accomplishes” comes from.

So as we work on GiveWell Labs, we’re interested in seeing whether we can approach the “What cause should I work on?” question in a more systematic, thoughtful way, and get better results (in terms of overall good accomplished). This is what we refer to as “strategic cause selection.” We have just started this effort, and we expect a long time and multiple iterations before we feel we have a truly strong and effective approach; this post lays out our approach so far, as a starting point.

Key investigations for strategic cause selection
We’ve started our work on strategic cause selection by trying to understand the following two things:

  • The history of philanthropy. What are philanthropy’s biggest success stories, and why did they succeed? What has gone well and what has gone poorly, and why? Are there patterns what successful philanthropy looks like?We have previously posted our analysis of the single best source we know of on this question, a set of 100 “philanthropic success stories” published as a companion volume to The Foundation: a Great American Secret. We’ve been looking for all the books we can find on the history of philanthropy (there don’t seem to be many, which itself suggests that there isn’t much interest today in strategic cause selection) and intend to review several of them.
  • The current state of philanthropy. What are the causes that today’s major foundations work in? What sort of work are they doing in these causes?We are currently examining data from the Foundation Center’s database of foundation grants, and will be publishing our analysis in the future. We are also systematically reviewing the websites of the top 100 foundations (looking at what their causes are and how they describe them) and will be discussing this as well.

What makes a good philanthropic cause?
Reflecting on the examinations above, we’ve started to maintain a list of qualities that seem, logically, to make for a “good philanthropic cause.” We expect this list to evolve significantly in the future. For the moment, here are the qualities we look for in a philanthropic cause:

  • An articulable vision for the world as it could and should be, and a large gap between this and the world as it is now. (This quality may seem obvious, but we include it for completeness; one can think of it as a measure of how “big” or “ambitious” a cause is.) For example, the cause of global health and nutrition involves the following gap: it should be the case that the vast bulk of the world’s population receives adequate nutrition (certainly enough to prevent being clinically underweight or stunted), as well as any medical treatment/preventive measures that are relatively cheap and effective. We know that this vision of the world is possible, because it describes large parts of the world (such as the U.S.) today. Yet we also know that today’s world is very far from this vision – there is a lot of room for improvement, which philanthropy can pursue. Other causes involve a vision of the world that may or may not be possible (e.g., a world in which no one dies of cancer).
  • A shortage of “constituents” who can achieve change through non-philanthropic ends. As we’ve written before, most of the good in the world is accomplished through methods other than philanthropy. A good cause should be accompanied by a clear explanation of why the sought-after change cannot happen through for-profit work (people who need help pay for it directly), constituent-led government work (people who need help exercise political pressure to get it), or local philanthropy.As we noted previously, philanthropy commonly works on (a) helping the people with the least money and power; (b) basic research, top-level education reform, and other global public goods with long time horizons. Both of these seem to lack non-philanthropic constituents.
  • A shortage of strong other philanthropic actors. We have been told before that a philanthropist wishes to stay away from global health, since the Gates Foundation is probably finding most of the best opportunities and the ones it doesn’t fund are likely to be worse. This reasoning is partly valid, though mitigated by the point below.
  • Good performance by the other strong philanthropic actors. If the other strong funders in a cause area seem to be consistently funding excellent projects and/or getting excellent results, this gives some reason to believe that there is room for more strong philanthropy in the cause.

In future posts, we will list some of the causes we find most promising; we will also give our views on some of the most popular causes in today’s philanthropy.

Microfinance and cookstoves

(updated on: ) | by Holden

Two interventions that command a lot of attention are microfinance (financial services, particularly small loans, for the very poor) and improved cookstoves (with the hope of reducing air pollution). We’ve recently seen a couple of helpful summaries of relevant research:

  • David Roodman summarizes the most rigorous research on microfinance. There are now five randomized controlled trials on microlending that have at least published some preliminary results; it looks like there is very little in the way of direct poverty reduction or wellbeing improvements, though there is positive impact on “stimulating enterprise.”
  • Charles Kenny discusses a recent study that randomized heavy subsidies of cookstoves in India, and found that “Households failed to use the stoves regularly or appropriately, did not make the necessary investments to maintain them properly, and use ultimately declined further over time,” leading to no significant positive impact. According to Mr. Kenny, this result is consistent with previous literature on the matter. On the other hand, Aid Thoughts points to another study in Senegal reporting, after one year, that “households receiving an improved cooking stove used less wood, spent less time cooking meals, reported better indoor air quality and (for women, who presumably did all the cooking) were significantly less likely to have respiratory disease symptoms, eye problems. Nearly all recipients of a stove used it at least seven times a week.” We note that the latter study discusses only one-year effects, while the India study found “a meaningful reduction in smoke inhalation in the first year [but] no effect over longer time horizons.” Note that we haven’t carefully examined these papers and that cookstoves are not a focus of ours, but since the recent studies are both fairly rigorous we thought it was worth noting them and their conflicting results for interested readers.

Update on the Schistosomiasis Control Initiative: Our current #2-ranked charity

(updated on: ) | by Natalie Crispin

Since GiveWell recommended the Schistosomiasis Control Initiative (SCI) in November 2011, SCI has received about $1.4 million in unrestricted funds ($500,000 of which we directly attribute to GiveWell’s recommendation), of which $1.1 million remains to be spent. We have spoken with and met with SCI to discuss its plans for using these funds.

Funds spent to date

  • SCI has made grants of $100,000 and $80,000 to Yemen and Senegal respectively for deworming drug delivery.
  • SCI has granted about $25,000 to Tanzania to treat 153,000 children in one region.
  • As part of discussions with the government about starting a national deworming program, SCI spent approximately $13,000 to support a conference on the deworming in Ethiopia.
  • SCI has spent about $99,000 of the unrestricted funding on various organizational expenses such as travel and one staff member’s salary.

Plans for funds raised due to GiveWell’s research

SCI is currently planning to fund the delivery of donated schistosomiasis drugs to 1.5 million children in two regions of Ethiopia, and support disease mapping in other parts of the country. SCI is currently waiting on a budget from Ethiopia, but we estimate this project will cost a few hundred thousand dollars. SCI has told us that it expects these treatments to be delivered by the end of 2012.

SCI has also committed $100,000 to fund treatment of adults in one district of Burundi.

SCI is exploring the possibility of supporting deworming programs in Zimbabwe and the Democratic Republic of Congo. In addition, it may use unrestricted funding to provide additional treatments in Tanzania and Malawi, which are primarily supported by a large grant from the British government.

Comparing current plans to past plans

In November 2011, SCI told us that it would primarily use additional funds to expand deworming programs in Mozambique, Malawi, and Senegal. Recently, SCI told us that these are no longer the countries it expects to focus on with the funds raised through GiveWell. What has changed:

  • SCI told us that it raised sufficient funding from other sources to support the Senegal program and that it never intended to expand the program beyond paying for delivery of drugs that were already available from the World Health Organization. We had been under the impression that SCI would expand this program further if it raised the money to do so, but it appears that we had a miscommunication with SCI on this point.
  • In 2010, SCI received funding from the British government to support deworming programs in 8 countries, including Mozambique and Malawi. SCI recently decided that programs planned for two of the countries weren’t feasible, and shifted the money it expected to spend in these two countries to the Mozambique program.
  • There may be other changes that we are not including here. We are not confident in our understanding of why SCI changed its plans.

Comments on SCI’s plans

First, SCI expects to spend almost all of the funds it has received due to GiveWell’s recommendation for a single round of treatment (save 15% of the funds, which it will hold for future treatments). Because multiple deworming treatments appear necessary for long-term impact (though the evidence on how many treatments are needed is thin), we are concerned that spending nearly all the funds now, could reduce SCI’s expected impact.

Second, our position is that treating children accounts for the majority of impacts from deworming. We are not confident in the impact of treating adults in Burundi.

How not to be a “white in shining armor”

(updated on: ) | by Holden

Edited April 2024 to fix several broken links.

This post inspired by the upcoming Day Without Dignity online event

GiveWell’s current top-rated charities focus on proven, cost-effective health interventions. These interventions appear to solve certain problems (malaria, parasites) quite well, while making no direct attempt to solve other problems (economic growth, education, gender equity, and more). One of the common lines of objection we get to these recommendations goes something like: “Why should I put all my money into fighting malaria, ignoring other important problems? Isn’t it unethical to ignore the other essential needs?”

We believe this objection commits the common fallacy of viewing the developed-world donor as the only person who can improve things for the beneficiaries. One term for taking this mentality too far is “Whites in Shining Armor” – often, in the media and in nonprofits’ communications, global poverty is presented as a simple fight between local problems and developed-world heroes. The problem is that as outsiders, we often have very poor understanding of the true dynamics behind overseas problems – and by attempting to solve problems that we understand poorly, we can make things worse.

We fundamentally believe that progress on most problems must be locally driven. So we seek to improve people’s abilities to make progress on their own, rather than taking personal responsibility for each of their challenges. How can we best accomplish this?

Locally driven projects
A common and intuitively appealing answer is letting locals drive philanthropic projects. This answer has some appeal for us; we have written before about, and given a small amount of money to, “low-insulation charities” that seem adaptive, locally connected, and overall driven by local needs rather than donors’ plans. At the same time, we have noted some major challenges of doing things this way. Which locals should be put in charge? There are inherent risks that the people who least need help will be best positioned to get involved with making the key decisions. In our reflections on our visit to India, we noted that some organizations seemed to consist simply of local elites making ad-hoc decisions, and that to truly reach those who most need help seemed to require being “systematically bottom-up,” a more complex and difficult approach.

Global health and nutrition
Another approach to “putting locals in the driver’s seat” is quite different. It comes down to acknowledging that as funders, we will always be outsiders, so we should focus on helping with what we’re good at helping with and leave the rest up to locals.

Here I think an analogy to helping friends and family is somewhat illustrative. I try to help my friends and family in domains that I’m relatively knowledgeable about (for example, computer issues) and I tend not to put much effort into helping in other areas I’m not so knowledgeable about (for example, picking clothes) even if the latter are more important issues for them. I know I appreciate when my friends and family deal with me this way, and I don’t appreciate people who are determined to help me in domains that they don’t understand very well (even if these domains are very important to me).

We believe that the track record of outside aid points to health and nutrition as the areas that developed-world outsiders understand best and are best-positioned to help with.

It’s not that we think global health and nutrition are the only important, or even the most important, problems in the developing world. It’s that we’re trying to focus on what we can do well, and thus maximally empower people to make locally-driven progress on other fronts.

Cash transfers
One more approach to “putting locals in the driver’s seat”: give to GiveDirectly to support unconditional cash transfers. We feel that global health and nutrition interventions are superior because they reach so many more people (per dollar), but for those who are even more concerned than we are about the trap of “whites in shining armor,” this option has some promise.

Update on GiveWell’s web traffic / money moved: Q1 2012

(updated on: ) | by Elie

In addition to evaluations of other charities, GiveWell publishes substantial evaluation on itself, from the quality of its research to its impact on donations. We publish quarterly updates regarding two key metrics: (a) donations to top charities and (b) web traffic.

The charts below present basic information about our growth in money moved and web traffic thus far in 2012.

Website traffic tends to peak in December of each year (circled in the chart below). Growth in web traffic has remained strong.

Growth in money moved has remained strong as well. The majority of the funds GiveWell moves comes from a relatively small number donors giving larger gifts. These larger donors tend to give in December, and we have found that growth in donations from smaller donors throughout the year tends to provide a reasonable estimate of the growth from the larger donors by the end of the year.

Below, we show two charts illustrating growth among smaller donors.

Thus far in 2012, GiveWell has directed $228,351 to our top charities from donors giving less than $10,000. This is approximately 3x the amount we had directed at this point last year.

Most donors give less than $1,000; the chart below shows the growth in the number of smaller donors giving to our top charities.

Overall, 760 donors have given to GiveWell’s top charities this year (compared to 274 donors at this point last year).

In total, GiveWell donors have directed $631,879 to our top charities this year, compared with $456,567 at this point in 2011. For the reason described above, we don’t find this number to be particularly meaningful at this time of year. One major difference between 2011 and 2012 is that in 2011, Ken Jennings allocated the $150,000 he won participating in a Jeopardy! contest against IBM’s Watson to VillageReach.

VillageReach update

(updated on: ) | by Elie

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 to a summary of our update (below), we have also published:

  1. A full, detailed update on VillageReach’s progress
  2. A guest post from John Beale, VillageReach’s Director of Strategic Development and Group Lead, Social Business.

We’ve just published an update on VillageReach’s progress. This post provides highlights from that update. In brief, progress has been discouraging on multiple fronts; VillageReach has made significant changes to its project plan and budget as a result; its resulting cost-effectiveness is likely to be substantially less strong than originally anticipated. All of these observations are made possible by VillageReach’s continuing transparency and commitment to collecting meaningful data. We always prefer discouraging observations to no observations.

VillageReach’s scale-up of its pilot project has hit multiple setbacks:

  • Obstacles getting the program running. The program has run into significant obstacles in the two provinces in which VillageReach has been operating since late-2010/early-2011. The primary problem has been accessing funds from non-VillageReach sources to pay the health workers who implement the program. Lack of funding for these workers led them to stop implementing the program and no vaccine deliveries were made in either province for several months in the mid-to-late 2011. Work in two additional provinces has begun but is now significantly behind schedule. VillageReach has decided, going forward, to step in and provide funding itself when necessary; it reports that in the four months following this change, distributions occurred to all health centers on time.
  • Increased expected costs. Actual costs have been higher than expected and VillageReach now projects roughly twice the costs it initially did. This is a primarily a function of (a) actual costs exceeding expectations and (b) increased expected costs due to VillageReach’s deciding to fill gaps, when necessary, left by other funders to ensure the project runs smoothly.
  • Scaled-back future plans. Because of these problems, VillageReach has significantly scaled back its plans for the project, intending for the time being to work in 4 provinces rather than 8.

We now believe that VillageReach has room for more funding of approximately $1.5 million for 2012. This represents a change from our October 2011 statement that VillageReach did not have short-term room for more funding; the change is primarily due to the passage of time and some changes in the timing of expected expenditures rather than to any major change in VillageReach’s total projected costs.

We have not yet determined where VillageReach should rank on our top charities list. Its commitment to transparency and meaningful data collection – which have allowed the discouraging observations above – are major points in its favor, in our view, and we will likely attempt to ensure that it continues to have enough funding (something we believe we have ample time to do at the moment).

We are also more deeply examining the original evidence of effectiveness for VillageReach’s pilot project. Our standards for evidence continue to rise, and our re-examination has raised significant questions that we intend to pursue in the coming months. The deeper examination comes about because:

  • Our research process has changed. In 2009 and 2010, VillageReach’s impact assessment was the best we had ever seen from a charity. Our research process has evolved, and there are now questions we would have asked of VillageReach in 2011 that we did not ask back in 2009-2010. For instance, we have always known that factors other than VillageReach’s work may have led to the increase in immunization coverage in Cabo Delgado between 2003 and 2008, but our investigation of this question was limited to (a) asking VillageReach whether other NGOs had significant operations that might have caused this and (b) looking at country-level immunization rates across Africa to see whether the change was part of a general trend. We now place more weight on other factors – particularly province-level government commitment – that could have led to this change. We intend to investigate this question and learn more about what else might have been happening in Cabo Delgado during the period of VillageReach’s pilot project.
  • New information is available. This data includes: (A) health surveys released in 2010 that measure immunization rates in Mozambique. These surveys offer another source for data relevant to VillageReach’s project that was not available when we first assessed the pilot project. (B) In preparation for its scale-up, VillageReach returned to Cabo Delgado (the province in which it ran its pilot project) and conducted its own survey of immunization rates there. The newest survey raises questions about the impact of the pilot program and we will be conducting and publishing further analysis in the coming months. So far, we’ve conducted a re-analysis of VillageReach’s stockout and vaccination rate data.

As the first charity we directed significant funding to, VillageReach represents one of our best available learning opportunities. This is particularly true due to VillageReach’s continuing transparency and commitment to collecting meaningful data – qualities we believe are rare and outstanding. We intend to continue to take full advantage of this learning opportunity, even if it means publishing more discouraging news.