GiveWell

Founding

GiveWell was founded in 2007 by Elie Hassenfeld and Holden Karnofsky, two of eight members of an informal group of finance workers who studied how to maximize the impact of philanthropy in their spare time. The organization was established with $300,000 donated by co-workers. ²

Effective Altruism

GiveWell is considered part of the Effective Altruism (EA) movement. EA activists seek to optimize philanthropy by empirically researching the impact of dollars spent on particular charities and domains. To that end, EA participants and GiveWell prioritize the outcome of charitable contributions on recipients over the effects on the giver, like prestige or feelings. EA participants and GiveWell emphasize using a scientific approach to evaluate charities and being open to changing views based on emerging empirical evidence. In a blog post, GiveWell acknowledged that “effective altruism is unusual and controversial” compared to traditional charitable approaches that emphasize compassion over objective analysis. ¹

Research

GiveWell conducts research on optimizing charitable giving. The group conducts in-depth research into charities to evaluate the per-dollar value of money given to them. The best of these charities are then rated on GiveWell’s Top Charities Fund. Nonprofits that have received this designation from GiveWell include New Incentives, Helen Keller International, the Against Malaria Foundation, the Malaria Consortium, and SightSavers. ³

GiveWell’s evaluation of charities differs from more well-known charity evaluators like GuideStar or Charity Navigator which generally evaluate charities based only on publicly available information. GiveWell’s evaluations are based on its assessment of outcomes of charitable projects. ⁴

The organization’s best-known research work is on “How Much Does It Cost To Save A Life?” which attempts to calculate the cheapest charitable means of saving a single human life. GiveWell concludes that a $3,000 donation can save a life in Nigeria by purchasing anti-malaria protections such as mosquito nets. ⁵

Donations

GiveWell directs its charitable donations to three funds that give to groups of charities based on its research. Most of GiveWell’s top-rated charities engage in disease prevention and poverty relief in low-income countries. By GiveWell’s charity evaluation metrics, these areas have the highest per-dollar value for charitable donations. ^{6 7}

The Top Charities Fund makes donations to charities evaluated by GiveWell as having “to the highest-priority funding needs” at any given moment. Funds are distributed “on a rolling basis toward the highest-priority funding gaps we’ve identified among our top charities.” ⁶

The All Grants Fund distributes charitable funds to all charities GiveWell ranks as being highly effective. The All Grants Fund is broader and more general than the Top Charities Fund. ⁶

The Unrestricted Fund is the most flexible GiveWell’s funds. The Unrestricted Fund’s assets can go to any charity on GiveWell’s effective charity lists as well as to GiveWell itself for operating expenses. ⁶

GiveWell also facilitates funds from donors to specific charities on GiveWell’s charity list, bypassing GiveWell’s funds. ⁶

Open Philanthropy

In 2011, GiveWell partnered with Cari Tuna and Dustin Moskovitz to launch a project known as the Open Philanthropy Project, another nonprofit foundation in the Effective Altruist movement. In 2017, the project spun off as an independent charity called Open Philanthropy. As of September 2025, Open Philanthropy has given $4 billion in grants to charities rated as highly effective. ^{8 9}

USAID

GiveWell opposed cuts to the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) carried out by the second Trump administration. In response, GiveWell rallied donors to contribute to funds and causes losing funding from the government. As of September 2025, in response to cuts that started in January 2025, GiveWell had contributed $31 million on donations to charities that lost USAID funding, including charities devoted to malaria prevention and vaccines. ¹⁰

Criticisms

The Happier Lives Institute, another organization affiliated with the Effective Altruist Movement, has made critiques of GiveWell’s research evaluations of philanthropic endeavors. For instance, in November 2022, the Institute published a critique of twelve of GiveWell’s “cost-effectiveness analyses” mostly regarding malaria prevention, cash transfers, and deworming. ¹¹

GiveWell CEO Elie Hassenfeld has acknowledged critiques of the GiveWell model from economists who claim that anti-poverty philanthropy is less effective at reducing suffering in the long run than increasing the economic growth of low-income countries. In response, Hassenfeld adjusted GiveWell’s model somewhat to research economic growth, but GiveWell maintains that economic growth is highly unpredictable while anti-poverty relief efforts produce more predictable benefits. ¹²

On its website, GiveWell maintains a running tally of its own acknowledged mistakes. This includes everything from an instance of “overaggressive and inappropriate marketing” to “failure to prioritize hiring an economist.” ¹³