Though GiveWell donors typically indicate how they would like their donations to be designated – e.g., for the support of one or more of our recommended charities – we occasionally receive donations without any designation information. It is important to us that donors understand our process for handling these donations: as a general rule, we treat all undesignated donations as unrestricted gifts, which means they will most likely to be used to fund GiveWell’s operating expenses.
In this post, we will:
- Discuss undesignated donations more in-depth and outline our rationale for treating them as unrestricted gifts.
- Explain how our thinking on processing these types of donations has evolved over time to better meet our donations processing goal – to make it easy for donors to communicate their designation preferences, be transparent about where donations are allocated, and keep our administrative costs low.
- Provide information on how to make sure that, as a donor, your designation preferences are communicated to us.
If you have any questions about the designation of a future or past donation to GiveWell, please email us at donations@givewell.org.