The News Stand

How GiveWell Picks the Best Charities to Fund

GiveWell is an organization that helps people donate money to charities that do the most good. They have strict rules for picking which charities to recommend. First, they only choose charities that have strong evidence showing their programs actually work. This means the charity's work has been studied by researchers multiple times. Second, they look for charities that save lives or help people for the least amount of money - getting the biggest impact for each dollar donated. Third, they make sure the charity can actually use more money effectively, not just collect it. Fourth, they require complete transparency - charities must be open about their work, successes, and failures. For their top charity recommendations, GiveWell has even stricter rules. They must have given the charity at least $10 million and supported them for at least one year to see how they operate. They also want high confidence that the charity will have substantial impact, not just a small chance of huge impact. Most of their recommended charities focus on global poverty and health because a dollar goes much further helping poor people in developing countries than in wealthy countries like the US. GiveWell publishes detailed reports about every charity they review so donors can make informed decisions.