This page logs mistakes we've made, strategies we should have planned and executed differently, and lessons we've learned.

Because we are a startup organization working in areas we have little experience with, it is particularly important that we constantly recognize and learn from our shortcomings. We make this log public so as to be up front with any potential supporters about ways in which we need to improve.

A full review of progress to date – both accomplishments and shortcomings - is available here.

Please contact us with other items that should be listed here.

Major issues

12/2007: overaggressive and inappropriate marketing

How we fell short: As part of an effort to gain publicity, GiveWell's staff (Holden and Elie) posted comments on many blogs that did not give adequate disclosure of our identities (though we did use our real first names); in a smaller number of cases, we posted comments and sent emails that deliberately concealed our identities. Our actions were wrong and rightly damaged GiveWell's reputation. More detail is available via the page for the board meeting that we held in response.

Given the nature of our work, it is essential that we hold ourselves to the highest standards of transparency in everything we do. Our poor judgment caused many people who had not previously encountered GiveWell to become extremely hostile to it.

Steps we have taken to improve: We issued a full public disclosure and apology, and directly notified all existing GiveWell donors of the incident. We held a Board meeting and handed out penalties that were publicly disclosed, along with the audio of the meeting. We increased the Board's degree of oversight over staff, particularly with regard to public communications.

July 2009 to November 2010: quantitative charity ratings that confused rather than clarified our stances

How we fell short: between July 2009 and November 2010, we assigned zero- to three-star ratings to all charities we examined. We did so in response to feedback from our fans and followers - in particular, arguments that people want easily digested, unambiguous “bottom line” information that can help them make a decision in a hurry and with a clean conscience. Ultimately, however, we decided that the costs of the ratings - in terms of giving people the wrong impression about where we stood on particular charities - outweighed the benefits.

Steps we have taken to improve: by December 2010 we will replace our quantitative ratings with more complex and ambiguous bottom lines that link to our full reviews.

More information:

• September 2010 blog post on the problems with quantitative charity ratings
• October 2010 blog post on why these ratings don't fit with our mission

February to November 2010: excessive resources allocated to U.S. Equality of Opportunity report

How we fell short: In February 2010, we wrote that we believed we could do an in-depth report on U.S. equality of opportunity, without needing to allocate substantial resources (particularly co-Founders' time). We therefore believed that this report represented a good use of resources even though we didn't find the cause to be among the most promising.

As it turned out, we had substantially underestimated the complexity and difficulty of this report, which we eventually published in November 2010. As we wrote shortly afterward, we believe that there is relatively little value in research reports on causes we don't find to be among the most promising. Thus, we ended up putting a large amount of time and effort into a report that we don't consider highly valuable to our mission.

Steps we have taken to improve: we feel we have learned that it is never simple to do a first-time in-depth report on a given charitable sector. Going forward, we do not intend to research new sectors except as a means to finding the best giving opportunities possible, (see our February 2010 post for our reasoning). The one exception we've made is for disaster relief due to the substantial media attention around it.

Ongoing: tone issues

How we fell short: we continue to struggle with an appropriate tone on our blog, one that neither understates nor overstates our confidence in our views (particularly when it comes to charities that we do not recommend). A recent example of a problematic tone is our December 2009 blog post, Celebrated Charities that we Don't Recommend. Although it is literally true that we don't recommend any of the charities listed in that post, and although we stand by the content of each individual blog post linked, the summaries make it sound as though we are confident that these charities are not doing good work; in fact, it would be more accurate to say that the information we would need to be confident isn't available, and we therefore recommend that donors give elsewhere unless they have information we don't.

We wish to be explicit that we are forming best guesses based on limited information, and always open to changing our minds, but readers often misunderstand us and believe we have formed confident (and, in particular, negative) judgments. This leads to unnecessary hostility from, and unnecessary public relations problems for, the groups we discuss.

Steps we have taken to improve: we do feel that our tone has slowly become more cautious and accurate over time. At the time of this writing (July 2010), we are also resolving to run anything that might be perceived as negative by the group it discusses, before we publish it publicly, giving them a chance to make any corrections to both facts and tone. (We have done this since our inception for charity reviews, but now intend to do it for blog posts and any other public content as well.)

5/2008-12/22/2008: failed to track website traffic/statistics

How we fell short: We discovered on 12/22/2008 that we had not been tracking any visits to our site since May of that year. At the time, we were not emphasizing website traffic as a metric, and so had not been checking up on it regularly. Failing to do so meant that we lost valuable data that could have been used to measure our progress over time. Over a year later, our attempts to review our progress have been hampered by the fact that this data is missing.

Steps we have taken to improve: we reinstituted tracking immediately upon discovering our error, and have since checked up on the tracking more regularly. Going forward, we plan to review key website metrics on a quarterly basis.

6/2008-9/2008: business plan over-focused on marketing, under-focused on research

How we fell short: after completing our first year of research, we agreed that the focus of our second year should be on increasing the "money moved" by our research. (Details here.) After several months focusing on this goal, we felt that we were spending insufficient time on research - the core of our mission - and weren't getting enough return out of the time we were spending on marketing. (Details here.) We now believe that we over-focused on marketing, at a stage in our development where doing so was premature, and as a result did not make as much progress during these months as we should have.

Steps we have taken to improve: we created a new business plan that shifted our focus primarily to research; this business plan, along with companion documents that lay out the reasons for our change of direction, is available here.

6/2007: poorly constructed "causes" led to suboptimal grant allocation

How we fell short: For our first year of research, we grouped charities into causes ("Saving lives," "Global poverty," etc.) based on the idea that charities within one cause could be decided on by rough but consistent metrics: for example, we had planned to decide Cause 1 (saving lives in Africa) largely on the basis of estimating the “cost per life saved” for each applicant. The extremely disparate nature of different charities' activities meant that there were major limits to this type of analysis (we had anticipated some limits, but we encountered more).

Because of our commitment to make one grant per cause and our overly rigid and narrow definitions of "causes," we feel that we allocated our grant money suboptimally. For example, all Board members agreed that we had high confidence in two of our Cause 1 (saving lives) applicants, but very low confidence in all of our Cause 2 (global poverty) applicants. Yet we had to give equal size grants to the top applicant in each cause (and give nothing to the 2nd-place applicant in Cause 1).

Steps we have taken to improve: We have shifted our approach to "causes" so that they are defined more broadly. This gives us more flexibility to grant the organizations that appeal to us most. We now explore broad sets of charities that intersect in terms of the people they serve and the research needed to understand them, rather than narrower causes based on the goal of an “apples to apples” comparison using consistent metrics. For example, our recent research report addresses the broad area of international aid.

6/2007-11/2007: set overly ambitious deadlines for completing our research

How we fell short: In July 2007, when we mailed out grant applications to charities, we told them that we would award grants by December 2007. We did not finish all necessary research by December 2007, and thus only paid out 3 of our planned 5 grants by the agreed upon date. We paid the last two grants in early March of 2008.

What we are doing to improve: Setting deadlines was particularly difficult for our first year, as we had no previous experience with grantmaking. With the first year behind us, we have a better sense of how time-consuming research is, and we have since set more conservative expectations. Our 2008-2009 report on international aid was delivered by the deadline we had set.

6/2007-5/2008: research process relied excessively on open-ended grant applications

How we fell short: In our first year, we focused our time and effort overwhelmingly on getting information from applicants, as opposed to from academic and other independent literature. Applicants found this process extremely time-intensive and burdensome, particularly given the size of the grants. We also found that much of the information we found essential in making informed decisions was not submitted through grant applications (rather, we found it through independent research).

Steps we have taken to improve: We have modified our research process. Our basic process now (for the latest implementation, see our research process for international aid is to (a) search independent research to identify particularly promising approaches; (b) use heuristics to identify charities that are both transparent (i.e., sharing substantial information) and promising; (c) contact charities with specific and targeted questions. We feel that this process leads both to better information and to a lower burden on charities.

Smaller issues

November 22, 2010: website down during time with media attention

How we fell short: On November 21, 2010, New York Times columnist Nicolas Kristof wrote a column mentioning GiveWell which resulted in significant traffic to the GiveWell website. Due to a recent change to the GiveWell website, we knew that some visitors would see the www.givewell.org/your-charity page displayed incorrectly. On November 22, our web developer attempted to fix this. He made an error and at approximately 10:40am EST, the website went down. Because all of GiveWell staff were living in India at this time, no staff members noticed the problem. Several GiveWell fans emailed us to note that the site was down, but because we were in India, it was during the night, and we did not see them. Overall, the site was down for 10.5 hours and we estimate that we lost a total of approximately 450 visitors to our website. (Note that the website was not "down" it was just displaying a blank page, so our system that notifies us of website outages did not send us a message.)

Steps we have taken to improve:

• We do not ask our developer to make changes to the website during times when we expect increased traffic.
• We have informed our board members and others close to the project that any visible problems with the GiveWell site is a major issue and they should take whatever steps are necessary (i.e., email, call, text) to make sure we're aware of the problem and are working to address them.

Late 2009: misinterpreted a key piece of information about a charity to which we gave a $125,000 grant

How we fell short: When reviewing Village Enterprise (formerly Village Enterprise Fund) in late 2009, we projected that they would spend 41% of total expenses on grants to business groups, because we misinterpreted a document they sent us which projected spending 41% of total expenses on business grants and mentorship expenses. We do not know what mentorship expenses were expected to be so we do not know the magnitude of our error. Village Enterprise ended up spending 20% of total expenses on business grants in FY 2010. We caught this mistake ourselves when we were updating the review in August 2011. Village Enterprise plans to spend 28% of total expenses on business grants in FY 2012.

Steps we are taking to improve: We are not yet sure. We will post an update here by February 1, 2012.

8/1/2009-12/31/2009: Grant process insufficiently clear with applicants about our plans to publish materials

How we fell short: Between 8/1/2009-12/31/2009, we accepted applications for $250,000 in funding for economic empowerment programs in sub-Saharan Africa. We attempted to be extremely clear with charities that we planned on sharing the materials they submitted, and that agreeing to disclosure was a condition of applying, but in a minority of cases, we failed to communicate this. We conceded these cases and gave the charities in question the opportunity to have their materials - and even the mention of the fact that they had applied for funding - withheld.

We try to avoid keeping materials confidential unless absolutely necessary, and in this case our unclear communications led to confrontations and to confidentiality situations that could have been avoided.

Details at this blog post.

Steps we have taken to improve:

• We offered the minority of charities with whom we'd been unclear the option not only to have their materials omitted, but to have us not disclose the fact that they applied for funding from us.
• We added clarificatory language to the top of our charity reviews, in order to clarify what a "0-star rating" means.
• In the future, we may publicly publish pages on charities we consider before we accept materials from them, in order to make our intentions about disclosure and public discussion absolutely clear.

11/25/2009: mishandling incentives to share information

How we fell short: a blog post discussing the Acumen Fund paraphrased information we'd been given during Acumen's application for funding from us. An Acumen Fund representative told us this had come off as a "bait and switch": using the grant application as a pretense for gathering information that we could use for a negative piece. (This was not the case; we had invited Acumen to apply in the hopes that they would be a strong applicant, and would have written a similar blog post afterward if they had simply declined to speak with us.)

We try to avoid creating incentives for charities to withhold information, given how little is available currently. Therefore, we are generally careful with how we use any substantive information that is disclosed, and generally check with the charity in question before publishing anything that could be construed as "using it to make a negative point." (An example is our post on microfinance repayment rates, which uses voluntarily disclosed information to raise concerns about the repayment rate while attempting to be clear that the organization in question should not be singled out for this disclosure. We checked with the organization discussed before making this post.)

In this case, we published our post without such a check, reasoning that we were not sharing any substantive materials (only paraphrasing general statements from representatives). Doing so gave the impression that sharing more information can result in more negative coverage.

We continue to struggle with the balance between disclosing as much information as possible and avoiding disincentives to share information. We will not find a solution in every case, but feel that we mishandled this one.

Steps we have taken to improve: we have let Acumen Fund know that we regret this incident and resolved to be more careful about quoting from representatives and grant applications in the future.

5/20/09-8/27/09 and 10/25/2009-11/11/2009: carelessness with updates to website; broke email update signup form

In 2009, we made multiple changes to our website with the help of a contractor, and we were not sufficiently careful about checking all changes to make sure they retained all functionality. As a result, website visitors lost the ability to sign up for email updates (from the front page - other forms worked) between 5/20/09 and 8/27/09 and between 10/25/2009 and 11/11/2009.

Steps we have taken to improve: we try to make all changes on a "mirror site" first (we had a mirror site at the time but were bypassing it for multiple small changes). When we make a change directly to the live site, we test relevant functionality immediately afterward.

5/2009-8/2009: excessive time spent on policies and procedures

In the process of our 2008 financial audit, we decided to draft a comprehensive set of internal policies, employee manual, etc.

Doing so turned out to be beyond our capacity as a small organization. We ultimately decided to maintain only the most essential policies, which are now posted online. All in all, the process ended up costing us significant time, and we struggled to file our return by the final deadline (although we did do so).

1/2009-3/2009: poor research strategy

While conducting research for our 2008-2009 international aid report, we found ourselves very impressed with the Carter Center, and put a large amount of time into understanding - and writing up - its programs that most appealed to us. However, we had neglected to first establish the question of how its funding was allocated between programs. We had a general sense that the programs that appealed to us were also the largest programs, but after further investigation we found ourselves continually unable to verify this. As of November 2009, we still had not gotten the basic information we needed to have confidence in the Carter Center.

If we had focused on the basics (on which programs does the Carter Center focus?) first, we would have saved the substantial time we put into its review.

Steps we have taken to improve: we have become more disciplined about the order in which we ask questions about a charity. First, we need to understand where its funds are going and what it does; only then do we decide which programs to investigate deeply.

1/2008-9/2008: paying insufficient attention to professional development and support

How we fell short: at our board meeting in January 2008, we agreed to explore options for professional development and mentoring, in light of the relative youth and inexperience of our staff. GiveWell staff put a lower priority on this than more time-sensitive goals, and while we explored a few options, we made little progress on it between January and September. At the September Board meeting, the Board criticized this lack of progress and reiterated the need for professional development and mentoring.

Steps we have taken to improve: we now have two highly regular mentoring relationships, and two more in a "trial phase." We have also stepped up Board oversight through a monthly conference call (attendance is optional but has generally been high) and more regular calls with Board Vice-President Lindy Miller. An update on professional development was presented at our July 2009 Board meeting.

6/2008: overly aggressive time estimates

How we fell short: The timeline presented in our year-2 plan (published 6/19/2008) called for us to finish a round of both marketing (raising GiveWell Pledges) and research (publishing our full report on developing-world aid) in December 2008. We had little to go on in forming this estimate, and largely chose this target date because of the significance of the holiday season in giving (rather than based on quantified time estimates).

Steps we have taken to improve: we have been recording our hours since January of 2008, and have gradually been improving the detail of our timesheets. We now have enough data on how our time is spent to make more detailed estimates. Our 2008-2009 international aid report was published on 7/1/2009, consistent with the goals we had set at the end of 2008.

2/2008-5/2008: premature hiring

How we fell short: In an attempt to increase our research capacity, we hired our strongest volunteer in January 2008, but terminated the relationship at the end of May. We mutually agreed that, at that stage of our development, we couldn't provide the training and management necessary for someone of his skill set to add significant value.

Steps we have taken to improve: We paused recruiting with the intent of picking it back up when we had a more systematized process. We went through a series of hires in early 2009, but at that time we still did not have a systematized enough process, and relationships were terminated fairly quickly. In mid-2009, we again reassessed our situation and made two hires who lasted substantially longer. One worked for us from May through December of 2009, added significant value, and left in December 2009 for an opportunity in the consulting industry; another started work in early July 2009 and is still with us (and adding significant value) as of March 2010.

12/2007-12/2009: website not sufficiently engaging, generated too little substantive feedback

How we fell short: For the early years of our project, our reviews, while thorough, were overly dense and difficult to engage with. Feedback from our supporters often included this theme. In addition, we received less critical engagement with our analysis than we would have liked from those not directly involved in the project. We received many emails offering general support or asking us to consider a particular charity, but the number of people who critiqued the content of our reviews – through email, survey, discussion forum, or our blog – remained low.

Steps we have taken to improve: We devoted substantial time over the 8/2009-12/2009 period to revamping our website (for example, making summary information by topic easier to find) and to making frequent posts on our blog that present our research in more accessible ways. We have also actively sought out feedback from relevant experts. The level of feedback has improved.

12/2007-5/2008: research process should have incorporated more and earlier discussions with charities' staff members

How we fell short: We undervalued the discussions with staff during our first year; speaking directly with staff gives us the opportunity to get a clear picture of how an organization views itself, and therefore what sorts of information we should seek to get a picture of whether its approach works as intended. Applicants encouraged us to put more of our time into personal visits, so that we could “get to know” organizations rather than thrusting pre-defined questions on them.

Steps we have taken to improve: We now begin any charity evaluation (once the initial heuristics have been passed and we've learned what we can from the website) with discussions with staff.