What do you do if you’re in the very fortunate position of having more money than you need to meet your own immediate needs? You might find new things to buy. You might stockpile it for a rainy day. You might donate it to cost-effective global health programs. Or you might do some combination of the three.

GiveWell thinks about that same question.

First, a bit of context: All donations made to GiveWell’s Top Charities Fund, All Grants Fund, and specific Top Charities go to the programs we recommend. (We do not take a percentage of donations made to recommended organizations through GiveWell’s website, nor do we receive any fees from organizations for being featured on our site.)

Our own organizational needs are met by donors who choose to direct funding to GiveWell’s operations (by giving to our Unrestricted Fund). In other words, we are supported only by donors who explicitly choose to support GiveWell itself through unrestricted donations.

But what happens when we receive more unrestricted donations than we need? We could choose to spend the funds on something new for the organization. We could squirrel those funds away, building an endowment to cover future needs. Or, like you, we could donate to cost-effective global health programs.

When we have more than we need as an organization, we think carefully about how we can maximize the impact of those funds.

Our “excess assets” policy helps us do this. It balances our need to ensure organizational stability with our goal of maximizing global well-being. In simple terms, the excess assets policy guides us to hold enough unrestricted funding to ensure that, after conservatively accounting for additional expected revenue and projected expenses, GiveWell will be able to continue operating for two years into the future. The way we do this is by projecting expenses and revenue, then aiming to hold at least 12 months of reserves in each of the next 12 months (more detail here). Any remaining funds are then used to make grants to the same kinds of giving opportunities we recommend to donors.

We have another related policy, which we call the “single donor cap,” to ensure that we avoid relying too much on any single source of support. The single donor cap means that any person or entity may cover no more than 20 percent of our projected operating expenses each year; donations above that amount are reallocated for grantmaking. We believe this helps us maintain the independence and objectivity of our research, and that diversifying our funding sources also increases our organizational stability.

We implemented these two policies a number of years ago to guide us as we seek to carefully steward our resources and maximize our impact, just like our donors do!

From 2018 through 2023, our annual operating budget grew from $4.6 million to $18.8 million. Over that same period, as a result of the excess assets policy and single donor cap, we reallocated more than $140 million—more than twice as much as our total operating expenses during that time—from our unrestricted funding to global health programs that save and improve lives. We’re grateful for all the donors who trust us enough to provide full flexibility with their giving, and we’re glad to have a principled way to steward those funds so they can have the greatest impact!