Why a donation goes further when someone has compared the alternatives in public

GiveWell exists because finds high-impact charities is not a problem that solves itself. GiveWell researches giving opportunities and publishes its analysis so donors can see how recommendations are made.

It focuses on programs it believes do a great deal of good per dollar, and it explains the evidence, costs, and mistakes behind those judgments. Funds on its site direct gifts toward charities and grants that meet its criteria. The organization is not a service provider in the field. Its role is to investigate, compare, and explain, so people who want their donations to go far have a documented basis for choosing.

Support matters when the underlying conditions remain: illness, hunger, displacement, a classroom without materials, a habitat under pressure, a right that is not enforced, or a public system people cannot use. GiveWell is one organization working on that kind of condition. It is not the only one, and this page does not rank it against others.

Losing lottery tickets are a small and specific source of value. Looty Foundation's interest is that small amounts, recorded honestly and directed to an organization, are more useful than tickets that are thrown away. That is an argument for paying attention to charity evaluation work. It is not a statistic about how many people GiveWell reached this year, unless the organization itself has published that figure and this article has cited it. This article does not add numbers that were not needed to explain the mission.

GiveWell researches giving opportunities and publishes its analysis so donors can see how recommendations are made. That is point 1 in the public account behind “Why a donation goes further when someone has compared the alternatives in public.” It describes GiveWell’s own work on finds high-impact charities, which is why the page stays with this organization instead of a generic appeal about charity evaluation.

It focuses on programs it believes do a great deal of good per dollar, and it explains the evidence, costs, and mistakes behind those judgments. That is point 2 in the public account behind “Why a donation goes further when someone has compared the alternatives in public.” It describes GiveWell’s own work on finds high-impact charities, which is why the page stays with this organization instead of a generic appeal about charity evaluation.

Funds on its site direct gifts toward charities and grants that meet its criteria. That is point 3 in the public account behind “Why a donation goes further when someone has compared the alternatives in public.” It describes GiveWell’s own work on finds high-impact charities, which is why the page stays with this organization instead of a generic appeal about charity evaluation.

The organization is not a service provider in the field. That is point 4 in the public account behind “Why a donation goes further when someone has compared the alternatives in public.” It describes GiveWell’s own work on finds high-impact charities, which is why the page stays with this organization instead of a generic appeal about charity evaluation.

Its role is to investigate, compare, and explain, so people who want their donations to go far have a documented basis for choosing. That is point 5 in the public account behind “Why a donation goes further when someone has compared the alternatives in public.” It describes GiveWell’s own work on finds high-impact charities, which is why the page stays with this organization instead of a generic appeal about charity evaluation.

Continued support is a choice to keep funding the kind of effort GiveWell describes: finds high-impact charities. The organization's site is the place to see how it talks about that effort today. A Foundation profile is the place to see whether any Looty Foundation allocation has actually been recorded.

Readers who want the neighboring explanations can open the article on why this mission matters to Looty Foundation, or the article on how GiveWell describes its work. Both stay with this organization. They do not try to borrow urgency from an unrelated cause.