The GiveWell Blog

Trading off upside vs. track record

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

We previously listed our five chief criteria for GiveWell Labs (a new arm of our research process that will be open to any giving opportunity, no matter what form and what sector). This post further discusses the first two of these criteria – “upside” and “high likelihood of success” – and the tradeoff between them.

Last-minute donations

Of the money moved to our top charities through our website in 2010, 25% was on December 31st alone. We know that lots of people will be looking to make last-minute donations.

If you only have five minutes but you want to take advantage of the thousands of hours of work we put into finding the best giving opportunities, consider giving to our top charities. They have strong track records, accomplish a lot of good per dollar spent, and have good concrete plans for how to use additional donations.

A couple of things to keep in mind:

  • After you give, spread the word. This is the perfect time to remind people (via Facebook sharing, tweeting, etc.) to give before the year ends. And people making last-minute gifts are likely to be receptive to suggestions.
  • If you have any questions, we’re here to help. We should be available by phone for most of the day, and responding to email when we’re not. (See our contact page). Our research FAQ may also be a good resource.

Mega-charities

We haven’t written much about mega-charities: extremely large international charities (budgets of $250+ million per year) carrying out a very wide range of activities, and commonly recognized as household names. We’re thinking of groups like UNICEF, Oxfam, Mercy Corps, Catholic Relief Services, Save the Children, World Vision, and CARE.

The main reason we haven’t written much about these groups is that we still know very little about them. They tend to publish a great deal of web content aimed at fundraising, but very little of interest for impact-oriented donors. On the occasions when we’ve engaged with these groups, we’ve come away with the feeling that they engage in a wide variety of activities, and we can’t get a concrete sense of (a) the specifics of the activities; (b) the organization-wide track record; (c) likely uses of additional funding. (We wrote in 2007 about our inability to put together bird’s-eye views of their activities).

Below are general impressions from our limited information on, and interactions with, these groups. Note that in preparing this post, we examined the websites of the 7 organizations named in the first paragraph, looking for whatever information we could find on specific projects (as opposed to broad characterizations of activities), results (technical writeups, not narratives), and financial information (any budget breakdown by project or program type, or revenue source – we tabulated our findings in this spreadsheet).

The risks of giving

Elie recently highlighted his doubts about our top charities, and a commenter responded:

Of course one ultimately never knows how much good a charity or any given donation will do. Bednets might end up saving the life of child who grows up to be the next Nelson Mandela – or the next Saddam Hussein. Everything we do is a gamble, but I’d like to make the best ones I can. These two charities look like good gambles.

I agree completely, but I’m still glad Elie emphasized these risks. Because in one specific way, supporting our top charities is riskier than supporting any other charity: if something goes wrong with one of our top charities, it will come out promptly and publicly.