We ask you, as a donor, to turn down some great pitches – “Your interest-free loan will help this person escape poverty forever,” “You can give a cow to a poor family for Christmas,” etc. – and give instead to charities that aren’t terribly good at storytelling. Why? It comes down to this. We think…
The GiveWell Blog
Month: December 2009
VillageReach
VillageReach currently holds the top slot in our top charities list. While I will be donating to the Stop Tuberculosis partnership (discussed yesterday), Elie’s donation this year went to VillageReach. VillageReach consults on health system logistics in high-poverty, remote areas to help life-saving supplies get to those who need them. It may not be the…
Stop Tuberculosis Partnership
The Stop Tuberculosis Partnership is one of our top-rated charities and the one I will personally be giving to this year. Like most charities, the Stop Tuberculosis Partnership has an admirable goal. It uses donations to fund grants of tuberculosis drugs to governments, and also assists them with (and monitors their implementation of) the WHO-recommended…
UPenn Center for High-Impact Philanthropy
Before giving season ends, we wanted to make sure to put in a good word for the UPenn Center for High-Impact Philanthropy (which we have mentioned before). We have carefully reviewed the Center’s reports on malaria and U.S. education, both of which overlap heavily with the research we have done. We consistently find their statements…
Celebrated charities that we don’t recommend
Note added April 2024: As we explain on our mistakes page, the tone of this blog post, which was written much earlier in our organizational history, fails to convey our uncertainty about the impact of these programs. It also doesn’t indicate that our research involves forming best guesses based on limited information, and that we…
Gifts of livestock (e.g., Heifer International)
It seems particularly hard to find information about the past impact of “gifts of livestock” programs (such as those promoted by Heifer International). I’ve been thinking about such programs conceptually, though, and I have a lot of trouble understanding the reasoning behind these programs. Two key points: It seems like giving out livestock brings with…