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   Skip to main content       Home        Enter your keywords           Top charitiesAgainst Malaria Foundation Schistosomiasis Control Initiative Deworm the World Initiative GiveDirectly Other standout charities All charities considered  ResearchProcess Criteria Open Philanthropy Project Research FAQ Research discussions Site visits Conversations Intervention Reports  CredibilityReputation Transparency Evaluations Impact  Mistakes Blog AboutAbout GiveWell Stay updated Progress to date Our story Our people Jobs Official records Common questions Donate to us Submit a charity Contact Us  Donate          Home Menu ↓   Top charitiesAgainst Malaria Foundation Schistosomiasis Control Initiative Deworm the World Initiative GiveDirectly Other standout charities All charities considered  ResearchProcess Criteria Open Philanthropy Project Research FAQ Research discussions Site visits Conversations Intervention Reports  CredibilityReputation Transparency Evaluations Impact  Mistakes Blog AboutAbout GiveWell Stay updated Progress to date Our story Our people Jobs Official records Common questions Donate to us Submit a charity Contact Us  Donate      Home > About GiveWell         Our Story   Print Email           You can get a more detailed, referenced version of our story here.

 GiveWell started with a simple question: where should I donate?

 As a group of eight friends, employed in the finance industry and researching these questions in our spare time, we discovered that it isn't a part-time job. The issues charities address - from fighting disease in Africa to improving education in the U.S. - are extremely complex, and useful information about what different charities do and whether it works isn't publicly available anywhere. When we asked private foundations to share what they'd found and help us with our decisions, they refused. We believe that information about how to help people should never be secret.

 We also believe that small donors matter. Big foundations make the headlines, but individual donors give over 70 times as much as the Gates Foundation and over 5 times as much as all foundations combined. If we can help even a small portion of them, we can have more impact than any mega-donor. If we can create dialogue and openness about what charities do, we can get the world's best minds working on its biggest problems. And ultimately, we can change the rules of the game: we picture a market that rewards charities for their ability to help people, not just for their marketing.

 In 2007, two of us, Holden Karnofsky and Elie Hassenfeld (bios), left our jobs, raised $300,000 in startup funds from former coworkers who believed in us and our mission, and started GiveWell as a full-time project. 

 The full history of our progress and business plans, detailing our efforts since then, is available on our progress page.

              Charity research  Top charitiesAgainst Malaria Foundation Schistosomiasis Control Initiative Deworm the World Initiative GiveDirectly Other standout charities All charities considered  ResearchProcess Criteria Open Philanthropy Project Research FAQ Research discussions Site visits Conversations Intervention Reports  GiveWell's credibilityReputation Transparency Impact  Mistakes Blog About GiveWellProgress to date Stay updated Our story Our people Jobs Official records Donate to us Common questions Submit a charity Contact us      Other resources  Giving 101 Do-it-yourself evaluation           Stay updated  Want to stay updated on GiveWell's research? Follow us by email, RSS, Twitter, or Facebook       Latest blog posts  New posts on the Open Philanthropy Blog: our approach to grantmaking so far, and the launch of the Alliance for Safety and Justice New post on the Open Philanthropy Blog: David Roodman on whether there’s been a notable recent crime wave The importance of “gold standard” studies for consumers of research Update on GiveWell’s web traffic / money moved December 2015 update on GiveWell’s funding needs           Home Contact FAQ RSS Site map Stay updated Jobs      GiveWell, aka The Clear Fund (a tax-exempt 501(c)(3) public charity) This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License              try { clicky.init(78566); }catch(e){} 

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