The GiveWell Blog

Potential U.S. policy focus areas

Throughout the post, “we” refers to GiveWell and Good Ventures, who work as partners on GiveWell Labs. [Added August 27, 2014: GiveWell Labs is now known as the Open Philanthropy Project.] Previously, we laid out our basic framework and reasoning for selecting U.S. policy causes to focus on for GiveWell Labs. This post goes through… Read More

A journalist visits GiveDirectly villages in Kenya

In February, Jacob Kushner, a journalist living in Kenya, contacted us. We have long been interested in seeing more substantive coverage of philanthropy, so we were excited to talk to him. As a pilot project, Mr. Kushner decided to visit villages in which GiveDirectly had distributed some of its earliest cash transfers. We spoke with… Read More

Narrowing down U.S. policy areas

Throughout the post, “we” refers to GiveWell and Good Ventures, who work as partners on GiveWell Labs. [Added August 27, 2014: GiveWell Labs is now known as the Open Philanthropy Project.] As part of our work on GiveWell Labs, we’ve been exploring the possibility of getting involved in policy-oriented philanthropy (see our previous posts on… Read More

Nothing But Nets

In 2014, we prioritized Nothing But Nets (http://nothingbutnets.net) as a potential GiveWell top charity because it funds insecticide-treated nets to prevent malaria, one of our priority programs. In early 2014, we contacted Nothing But Nets to explain our process and to invite it to apply for a recommendation. Nothing But Nets provided brief responses to… Read More

Update on GiveWell’s web traffic / money moved: Q1 2014

In addition to evaluations of other charities, GiveWell publishes substantial evaluation of itself, from the quality of its research to its impact on donations. We publish quarterly updates regarding two key metrics: (a) donations to top charities and (b) web traffic. The table and chart below present basic information about our growth in money moved… Read More

The importance of committing to causes

Updated Sept. 12, 2014 to change “GiveWell Labs” to “Open Philanthropy Project,” in line with our August 2014 announcement.Throughout the post, “we” refers to GiveWell and Good Ventures, who work as partners on the Open Philanthropy Project. In our work on the Open Philanthropy Project, we’ve consistently found that the level of interest we show in a… Read More