About this page
GiveWell aims to find the best giving opportunities we can and recommend them to donors. We tend to put a lot of investigation into the organizations we find most promising, and de-prioritize others based on limited information. When we decide not to prioritize an organization, we try to create a brief writeup of our thoughts on that charity because we want to be as transparent as possible about our reasoning.
The following write-up should be viewed in this context: it explains why we determined that we wouldn't be prioritizing the organization in question as a potential top charity. This write-up should not be taken as a "negative rating" of the charity. Rather, it is our attempt to be as clear as possible about the process by which we came to our top recommendations.
A note on this page's publication date
The last time we examined Aid to Artisans was in February 2010. In our latest open-ended review of charities, we determined that it was unlikely to meet our criteria based on our past examination of it, so we did not revisit it.
We invite all charities that feel they meet our criteria to apply for consideration.
The content we created in February 2010 appears below. This content is likely to be no longer fully accurate, both with respect to what it says about Aid to Artisans and with respect to what it implies about our own views and positions. With that said, we do feel that the takeaways from this examination are sufficient not to prioritize re-opening our investigation of this organization at this time.
Published: February 2010
Aid to Artisans focuses on training and marketing for artisans.1
Aid to Artisans applied for funding through our grant application process for organizations working on economic empowerment in Sub-Saharan Africa. Aid to Artisans did not advance past our Round 1 screen because it did not meet any of the criteria below. For more information about this grant, see our overview page for this grant.
Our criteria
We looked for the following in conducting our Round 1 screen and considered further any organization that met at least one of the criteria below:
- The charity primarily transfers cash directly to poor individuals
- The charity provided a rigorous impact study demonstrating program effect
- The charity is using donations to create profitable programs
- The charity primarily runs microfinance programs and can answer our questions for microfinance charities
For more information about why we chose these, see our reasoning behind these criteria.
Sources
- Aid to Artisans. ATA Independent Organizations (XLS).
- Aid to Artisans. ATA Program Areas (DOC).
- Aid to Artisans. Audited Financial Statements (PDF).
- Aid to Artisans. Case Study: Guatemalan artisan export sector (DOC).
- Aid to Artisans. Case study of Aid to Artisans' work in Ghana, 1993-1997 (DOC).
- Aid to Artisans. Cover letter (PDF).
- Aid to Artisans. El Salvador: Selected results relating to employment/income in 2007 and 2008 (DOC).
- Aid to Artisans. What we do. http://www.aidtoartisans.org/what_we_do/ (accessed May 4, 2010). Archived by WebCite® at http://www.webcitation.org/5pTzzDVeK.
- 1.
Aid to Artisans, "What We Do."