We search for the charities that save or improve lives the most per dollar.
Our goal is to produce the world's top research on where to give. Free, for everyone. We recommend a small number of charities that do an incredible amount of good.
The gold standard for giving.
How we maximize your gift's impact:
Our Research Process
We extensively research each charity before recommending it. We continue evaluations each year after.
Independent evidence
We look at independent studies of charity programs, such as randomized controlled trials, to understand their effectiveness.
Modeling cost-effectiveness
We build in-depth models to analyze charities' cost-effectiveness. We refine this throughout our charity evaluation process, based on their budget and monitoring, to estimate impact per dollar spent.
Interviews and site visits
We conduct extensive interviews with charity staff. We visit charities in the field to see their work on the ground.
Budget reviews
We review charities' past spending and forecast their future spending, to better understand their track record and expected impact.
Charities' data
We ask charities to share their data showing how well their programs reach the intended beneficiaries so we can better understand how successful charities' programs have been.
Ongoing reviews
We continually assess the work, progress, and future plans of our recommended charities. We will remove a charity recommendation if we no longer believe the organization meets our criteria.
As seen in
More than 110,000 donorsiBased on our records of donors who've contributed either to GiveWell or to our recommended charities.
— Learn more have trusted GiveWell to direct their donations. Together, they have given over $1 billioniBased on our records of the money we've directed to our recommended charities since 2011.
— Learn more to the organizations we recommend.
These donations will save over 150,000 lives.iBased on our cost-effectiveness analysis and our records of money we've directed to our recommended charities since 2009.
— Learn more
Check our work.
It's right to ask questions of any charity that promises incredible impact. It's hard to do incredible things.
We publish the full details of our analysis so you can fully vet our reasoning. We also share mistakes we've made which are relevant to evaluating our work.
Why our top charities work in lower-income countries.
Helping people in high-income countries is expensive, and the gains can be more marginal. People living in low-income countries face many problems that have ready solutions, such as children dying from malaria or suffering from parasitic worms.
Donating internationally is the most cost-effective way to provide lifesaving help.
