Last Updated: November 2022; 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 in line with our transparency value. 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, former top charities, former standout charities, or other 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 Chief Executive Officer that pre-dated GiveWell-based relationships between same. (For example, people who were friends with GiveWell's Chief Executive Officer 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
- 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.
Former staff and Board members
- IDinsight. We hired Dr. Neil Buddy Shah, IDinsight’s Founding Partner and CEO, as GiveWell’s Managing Director in late 2019. He served in that position from July 2020 to April 2022. 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. Buddy remains a member of IDinsight's Board of Directors.
- Clinton Health Access Initiative. Dr. Neil Buddy Shah was appointed CEO of CHAI in April 2022. Prior to that, he was GiveWell’s Managing Director. We conducted a grant investigation to support a new incubator at CHAI and made a $10.4 million dollar grant in August 2022. Buddy and other CHAI leadership were consulted during our grant investigation and informed our decision to make this grant.
- Evidence Action. Evidence Action is the parent organization of Deworm the World Initiative, a former top charity, and Dispensers for Safe Water, a former standout charity, and is a GiveWell Incubation Grant recipient. Michael Eddy, who was a GiveWell staff member at the time, rented an apartment from Evidence Action board member Christina Riechers from June 2019 through May 2020.
- 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.
- GiveDirectly. GiveDirectly is a former top 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 former top charity that supports deworming programs. When GiveWell added the END Fund to our list of top 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 Open Philanthropy. 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 Open Philanthropy.) 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.
Consultants
- In October 2021, we recommended a grant of up to $25 million to IRD Global to support its mobile phone-based conditional cash transfer program and Sindh Electronic Immunization Registry. Since 2015, GiveWell consultant Karen Levy has had a professional relationship with the leadership of IRD Global (including Aamir Khan, Executive Director, and Subhash Chandir, Senior Epidemiologist and Director). Since March 2022, Karen has been providing strategic advisory services to IRD through her firm, Fit for Purpose. Karen has been a consultant for GiveWell since February 2020.