Review GiveWell Analyses

One of the organizations that helped form the Effective Altruism movement is GiveWell. GiveWell is a charity evaluator focused on measuring the altruistic return on your charitable dollar.

GiveWell was founded by Holden Karnofsky and Elie Hassenfield et. al. in 2007 as a way to determine where they could donate while ensuring that they were actually doing good in the world. They developed a new framework for evaluating the work of charities, and these analyses were influential in bringing together many donors to high quality causes, especially in developing world public health.

In 2018, GiveWell moved $65 million to their top charities, including many donations from local south bay EAs. Staying connected to why we trust GiveWell and the actual work on the ground being done is important both for connecting us personally to the good we do, and for ensuring that our standards remain high.

In this spirit, we will be reviewing some of GiveWell’s analyses of its current top charities.

If you would like to do some reading in advance, find a random number from 1-5 on random.org, then read the corresponding analysis:

1. https://www.givewell.org/charities/malaria-consortium
2. https://www.givewell.org/charities/deworm-world-initiative
3. https://www.givewell.org/charities/helen-keller-international
4. https://www.givewell.org/charities/Schistosomiasis-Control-Initiative
5. https://www.givewell.org/charities/sightsavers