In addition to evaluations of other charities, GiveWell publishes substantial evaluation on itself, from the quality of our research to our impact on donations. This page summarizes two key metrics: (a) donations to top charities directly through our website, and (b) web traffic.
Money moved
The chart below shows GiveWell's annual "money moved" against its operating expenses. "Money moved" refers to donations to our recommended giving opportunities that we can confidently attribute to our research (more detailed definition below).
Overall money moved includes all donations driven by GiveWell, including grants made by Good Ventures that are driven by GiveWell's recommendation, which in 2012 included grants to our top charities, a co-funding grant to PSI Myanmar, and a "quick grant" to the U.S. Cochrane Center.
The table below it shows GiveWell's money moved by charity.
| Charity | 2012 | 2011 | 2010 | 2007-2009 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Against Malaria Foundation | $5,829,514 | $2,562,372 | $247,244 | $129,985 |
| GiveDirectly | $1,329,359 | $187,381 | $0 | $0 |
| Schistosomiasis Control Initiative | $1,111,548 | $862,766 | $6,200 | $0 |
| VillageReach | $61,849 | $622,866 | $1,202,123 | $337,357 |
| Nyaya Health | $46,348 | $170,442 | $0 | $0 |
| Small Enterprise Foundation | $35,639 | $129,966 | $14,178 | $125,000 |
| Pratham | $23,481 | $95,696 | $10,835 | $12,600 |
| Innovations for Poverty Action | $17,724 | $86,279 | $0 | $0 |
| Knowledge is Power Program | $16,245 | $116,278 | $45,351 | $56,890 |
| Nurse-Family Partnership | $2,173 | $16,585 | $61,471 | $49,234 |
| Village Enterprise Fund | $0 | $8,831 | $2,334 | $125,000 |
| Stop TB Partnership | $0 | $26,490 | $73,520 | $123,830 |
| Population Services International | $0 | $2,800 | $69,860 | $161,273 |
| Co-funding - PSI Myanmar | $1,000,000 | $0 | $0 | $0 |
| Quick grant - U.S. Cochrane Center | $100,000 | $0 | $0 | $0 |
| Other | $0 | $31,822 | $50,760 | $89,266 |
| Total | $9,573,880 | $4,920,5741 | $1,783,876 | $1,210,435 |
Notes:
- Because the vast majority of GiveWell's money moved comes in during December of each year, we only update these figures annually.
- Because donations tend to be clustered in late December and early January, grouping these donations together provides a more accurate picture of annual growth. In the table and chart above, each year covers February 1 to January 31, e.g. "2012" refers to February 1, 2012 to January 31, 2013.
Web traffic
The chart below shows our web traffic over time, as measured by unique visitors each month. There are seasonal spikes each December when interest in charitable giving peaks (circled in the chart below).
More detail
More detail is available for each year in our annual self-reviews.
What we count as "money moved"
- Donations made to top charities directly through our website. Though some of these donations go directly to top charities, we are able to track them and verify that they went through our website.
- Donations that our recommended charities report back to us as being attributable to GiveWell. We have a high standard for this - we count only cases where (a) the donor explicitly stated that their donation was on the strength of GiveWell's recommendation; (b) the donor gave to Nurse-Family Partnership or Against Malaria Foundation and stated that they heard about it from a Nicholas Kristof column; Mr. Kristof has informed us that he included NFP in the column on our recommendation, and cited GiveWell in his column as his reason for recommending AMF; or (c) the donor gave to Against Malaria Foundation and stated that their donation was on the strength of Giving What We Can's recommendation as this recommendation is based on GiveWell's research.
- Donations that donors report to us (informally or using our donation report form) as donations that they made on the strength of our recommendation. We cross-reference our data with recommended charities' data, when necessary, to eliminate double-counting.
- Donations made directly to GiveWell and earmarked for re-granting. We count donations made and restricted in year X, and then granted in year Y, as "money moved" for year X, not year Y.
- 1.
When we reported our 2011 money moved, we included a $1 million line item for GiveWell Labs. At the time, donors had committed these funds to projects we expected to identify in the future. As of March 2013, we expect the donors who committed funds to GiveWell Labs to support the projects we identify in the future, but we don't view these future grants as fulfilling this committment and therefore have removed the $1 million from our 2011 money moved.