One of the goals we do not have is the goal of being “fair” to charities, in the sense expressed in this comment: You are right on in your focus on provable results, but some areas are much easier to evaluate than others … A bad charity to me is one that is misleading, not…

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GiveWell has teamed up with Saundra Schimmelpfenig of Good Intentions Are Not Enough to produce Think Before You Give, a podcast aimed at helping to empower and educate donors. We enjoy Saundra’s work and are happy to be working with her on this. The Think Before You Give website now has the first podcast available….

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We are thrilled to announce a partnership with GuideStar via its new feature, TakeAction @ GuideStar. TakeAction allows donors to select a cause that interests them and see general information as well as recommended charities, with content provided by GiveWell, Philanthropedia, and Great Nonprofits. To date, GuideStar has provided only basic information, and only information…

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I previously expressed concerns about diversion of skilled labor: the possibility that nonprofits are outbidding the local private sector for top local talent. John de Wit of the Small Enterprise Foundation emailed us with a response: On the question of whether we divert skilled labour from other potentially productive pursuits let me try to comment…

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I was talking with a friend of mine recently about how he decides which charities to support, and he said: I really like the GiveWell approach, but there are two reasons it’s not practical for me to base most of my charitable decisions on it. First, you just haven’t covered a lot of the areas…

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Tactical Philanthropy has an interesting discussion of “non-optimized giving”: New Philanthropy Capital CEO Martin Brookes “confesses” to “wasting charitable funds” on a cause he doesn’t believe is the best, and Sean responds that “Under your logic, we should all feel guilty about all of our giving that does not go to the single best charity…

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