We want to thank the people who have invested the most of their own time and/or money to date. We’re lucky to be working on a project that brings out the passion and energy of such great people. Our donors and GiveWell Pledgers. Now including not only former coworkers, but ~60 people with no previous…
The GiveWell Blog
Month: November 2008
We’re hiring
We are looking to hire a Research Analyst to help us collect and analyze data on several hundred international charities, and ultimately identify the ones that can best use donations to change lives. If you believe you are a good fit – or know someone who is – please send a resume to info@givewell.net. About…
Banerjee/Duflo interview
Philanthropy Action (co-maintained by Board member Tim Ogden) has an interview up with Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo, principals of the Poverty Action Lab (one of our favorite groups). This quote (from Esther Duflo) particularly resonated with me: There is no evaluation yet of the impact of a microfinance loan – we have the first…
Finally, a competitor!
This week, The Chronicle of Philanthropy wrote an article about the creation of the Alliance for Effective Social Investing. We wholeheartedly applaud Steve Butz and other members of the Alliance for their efforts, and really hope they succeed. There are too few organizations focusing on the effectiveness of charitable programs, and we’re excited to see…
Is volunteering just a show?
To me, the most interesting part of the recent discussion of FORGE (see the last several posts on Tactical Philanthropy) is the disclosure that moving to a more effective model directly caused a loss of revenue, because it lowered volunteer involvement. In a nutshell, FORGE runs programs for refugee communities; it shifted from having volunteers…
General questions about international aid
In addition to our charity-specific investigations, we’re looking to review as much literature as possible on the following questions. Note that these were originally posted to our email list, before it went public. What is the evidence that aid works/has worked at all? That it has caused reductions in infant mortality, economic growth, or anything…