Last Updated: May 2020; Published: December 2013
This page discloses personal relationships involving GiveWell's staff that GiveWell's audience may wish to consider in evaluating GiveWell's recommendations or GiveWell as an organization. In general, we will disclose relationships we judge to be highly important in many places (e.g., on our top charities page); relationships that appear only on this page are judged by us to be relatively unimportant, but still worth publishing for consideration. Note that no relationships to date have fit in the former category.
On this page, we disclose the following sorts of relationships:
- Social, romantic, family or financial relationships between (a) GiveWell staff and (b) people at our top charities, standout charities, or GiveWell Incubation Grant recipients.
- Romantic, family or financial relationships between (a) GiveWell Board members and (b) GiveWell staff.
- Social relationships between (a) GiveWell Board members and (b) GiveWell's Executive Director that pre-dated GiveWell-based relationships between same. (For example, people who were friends with GiveWell's Executive Director prior to joining GiveWell's Board.)
- Other relationships we feel are worth disclosing.
As of the most recent update of this page, these relationships consisted of the following:
Current staff and Board members
- Evidence Action. Evidence Action is the parent organization of two GiveWell-recommended charities and is a GiveWell Incubation Grant recipient. Michael Eddy, who is a GiveWell staff member, rented an apartment from Evidence Action board member Christina Riechers from June 2019 through May 2020.
- One for the World. We recommended a grant to support One for the World in August 2018. In April 2019, Stephanie Stojanovic joined GiveWell as a Major Gifts Officer. Stephanie was involved in organizing One for the World events; her husband, Steve Hind, was Chair of One for the World's Advisory Board and Executive Committee at the time we made the grant.
- Instiglio. We recommended a grant from the Effective Altruism Global Health and Development Fund to support Instiglio in April 2019. Michael Eddy, who co-founded Instiglio, joined GiveWell as a Senior Advisor in June 2019.
- IDinsight. We hired Dr. Neil Buddy Shah, IDinsight’s Founding Partner and CEO, as GiveWell’s Managing Director in late 2019. He is expected to start at GiveWell in the summer of 2020. We made a $150,000 grant to IDinsight in April 2020 to support its work in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. At the time we made this grant, Buddy remained an employee of IDinsight and provided input that shaped our decision to make the grant.
Former staff and Board members
- GiveDirectly. GiveDirectly is a GiveWell-recommended charity; Paul Niehaus is its Co-Founder and Co-Executive Director.
Timothy Telleen-Lawton (who was a GiveWell staff member between April 2013 and January 2017) has been friends with Paul Niehaus for many years. When Timothy met Holden Karnofsky (GiveWell's Co-Founder, Board member, and former Co-Executive Director as of June 2017) in April 2011, he suggested that GiveWell look into GiveDirectly and introduced Holden and Paul by email. GiveWell later recommended GiveDirectly as a top charity in November 2012, before Timothy was on GiveWell staff.
Starting in January 2013, Holden started living in a shared house with Timothy, around the same time Timothy started a trial to work at GiveWell. Paul has visited and stayed at the shared house several times.
Holden had not met Paul, or interacted significantly with Paul or Tim, prior to moving to San Francisco in January 2013. Tim was not responsible for evaluative work on GiveDirectly.
- END Fund. The END Fund is a GiveWell-recommended charity that supports deworming programs. When GiveWell added the END Fund to our list of top-recommended charities, Sarah Marchal Murray served as its Chief Operating Officer. Sarah was previously the Director of Institutional Advancement at the Center for Global Development. Michael Kremer, the co-author of a key paper on deworming, is a non-resident fellow at the Center for Global Development.
David Roodman is a Senior Advisor at the Open Philanthropy Project. He conducted an in-depth review of the evidence for deworming for GiveWell in the fall of 2016 and has performed subsequent work for GiveWell related to deworming. He was employed at the Center for Global Development from 2002 to 2013.
Sarah left the END Fund in 2017 and performed work for GiveWell as a consultant in 2018.
- Rob Reich. Professor Rob Reich served on GiveWell's Board of Directors from December 2013 to April 2019. Professor Reich had a pre-existing friendship with GiveWell employee Alexander Berger, who was one of his students when in college. (As of June 2017, Alexander is an employee of the Open Philanthropy Project.) Professor Reich is also co-director of the Stanford Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society, for which Cari Tuna (another GiveWell Board member, and President of Good Ventures) was previously a member of the Advisory Board.
