I’ve decided to give a little more than double what I normally give to charity this year, and skip giving next year. I see many reasons to give a larger-than-normal gift this year, and no countervailing reasons. If it weren’t for some idiosyncratic factors in my situation, I would roll my next three years of…
The GiveWell Blog
All posts by Holden
New posts on the Open Philanthropy Blog: Our early farm animal welfare grants, philosophy of hits-based giving
We are now posting content relevant to the Open Philanthropy Project to the Open Philanthropy Blog, rather than the GiveWell Blog. For a period of time, we will be posting notices here when new content appears, in order to ease the transition. We encourage those interested in the Open Philanthropy Project to follow it via…
Seeking feedback on alternative, more persuasion-oriented potential format for evidence reviews
This was an April Fool’s joke. To date, GiveWell writeups have focused on being detailed, nuanced, thoroughly cited, and clear. Something we’ve consciously not prioritized is making them “accessible”: easy and fun to read, emotionally compelling, memorable, and strongly persuasive to casual readers. Writing accessibly isn’t a natural strength of ours, and it can be difficult…
New post on the Open Philanthropy Blog: David Roodman on whether there’s been a notable recent crime wave
We are now posting content relevant to the Open Philanthropy Project to the Open Philanthropy Blog, rather than the GiveWell Blog. For a period of time, we will be posting notices here when new content appears, in order to ease the transition. We encourage those interested in the Open Philanthropy Project to follow it via…
The importance of “gold standard” studies for consumers of research
There’s been some interesting discussion on how the world of social science experiments is evolving. Chris Blattman worries that there is too much of a tendency toward large, expensive, perfectionist studies, writing: each study is like a lamp post. We might want to have a few smaller lamp posts illuminating our path, rather than the…
Suggestions for individual donors from Open Philanthropy Project staff
The Open Philanthropy Project looks for outstanding giving opportunities, but its target audience is large institutional donors – unlike GiveWell’s top charities work, which targets individual donors. Some individuals have expressed interest in hearing whether there are any organizations we’ve come across, in our work on the Open Philanthropy Project, that they might consider donating…