Cost to save a child's life
Our cost-effectiveness analysis estimates that Malaria Consortium's seasonal malaria chemoprevention (SMC) program, which distributes preventative anti-malaria medication to children who live in places where malaria is highly seasonal, can (in expectation) save a child's life with a donation of less than $2,500. This estimate takes into account all of the costs we see associated with distributing SMC, including delivery costs, the cost of the medicine, and costs borne by governments. It also incorporates our understanding of how effectively Malaria Consortium delivers SMC treatments, the efficacy of SMC treatment at reducing malaria, and other inputs. View our cost-effectiveness analysis here.
Cost to send a child to a better school for a year and a half
On average, across the Knowledge Is Power Program (KIPP) network, it costs about $1,855 of philanthropic (non-governmental) funding to put a child through a year of a charter school. We use KIPP as a comparison because when GiveWell first started out and was looking into many different cause areas (including causes in the United States), KIPP was one of the best options we found within the United States. Evidence-Based Programs summarizes two randomized controlled trials of students attending KIPP schools saying that "[these] schools produced sizable, statistically-significant effects on reading and math achievement – increases of between 5 and 10 percentile points (compared to the control group) – as measured two to three years after random assignment."
GiveWell has not reviewed United States-focused programs in many years. When we did, we relied on Evidence-Based Programs' analysis and summaries (more here). View our cost calculations here.
Number of donors
According to our records, as of July 2019, over 55,000 people have donated to GiveWell or our recommended charities, either by donating through GiveWell or by reporting that a direct-to-charity donation was influenced by GiveWell. This represents individual donors who have given to GiveWell or our top charities as a direct result of our research. It does not include anonymous donors.
Money moved to recommended charities
From 2011-2018, we directed more than $519,000,000 to our top and standout charities. View that breakdown here.
Lives saved
We estimate that GiveWell-directed donations to our recommended charities since 2011 will avert over 77,000 deaths. This calculation is based on our estimates of the cost per death averted by each of our top charities that implement interventions whose primary impact is averting deaths — the Against Malaria Foundation, Malaria Consortium's seasonal malaria chemoprevention program, and Helen Keller International's vitamin A supplementation program — and our records of the money we've directed to these charities since 2011. It doesn't include deaths averted through standout charities (such as Development Media International and Living Goods), through Incubation Grants (such as New Incentives and Results for Development), or through charities we've recommended in the past but no longer recommend (such as VillageReach). See more detail here.
Cash grants given
We estimate that GiveWell-directed donations to GiveDirectly, a charity we recommend which gives unconditional cash transfers to very poor households, will cause about $92 million in cash grants to be delivered to recipients. See more detail here.
