All of CatherineHollander's Comments + Replies

Thanks for your question! I work at GiveWell. 

The initial calculation we shared in the blog post is a simple one, intended to give a rough sense of the cost-effectiveness of each opportunity given the current limited investigation we’ve done of RTS,S. You're correct that it doesn't account for how RTS,S might interact with LLINs and SMC and the funding needs for those interventions; it's possible that interventions will be layered atop one another, rather than an "either/or" situation.

We expect we would estimate the marginal value if we were deeply in... (read more)

Thanks for raising these questions! I work at GiveWell, and we're planning to update the EA Global Health and Development Fund page to make the distinction between it and the Maximum Impact Fund clearer—we think we can do better to explain the difference.

Here's a quick summary:

• The Maximum Impact Fund is granted regularly to the highest-value funding opportunities we see among GiveWell's recommended charities. This is a great option for donors who want to support GiveWell's top charities and are open to their funding being used wherever it can do the most g

Hi Brendon and Tharun,

Catherine from GiveWell here. Thanks for your post - it's generated some good discussion! 

First, I want to confirm a few aspects of our banking that have been discussed here:

• A large proportion of the funding that we hold at any point in time is for making grants to our recommended charities. We typically grant those funds within 2-5 months of receiving them. Therefore, our balance fluctuates throughout the year as funds are received and granted.
• The vast majority of donations to GiveWell are made in December, which means that both

Hi Peter,

Catherine from GiveWell here. We appreciate the dialogue this piece has generated. We agree that economic growth is an important area to consider evaluating, due to its potential for significant and positive impacts on well-being.

Today, our top charities list comprises charities implementing programs that have been studied via randomized controlled trials (RCTs). By pointing to these trials (and the monitoring conducted by our charities), we can serve our donors by making a public, vettable case for our recommendations and demonstrating their like... (read more)

Hi HStencil,

"I’m also curious about when the GiveWell/CEA teams realized that the old EA Funds webpage’s description of the Fund’s scope might reasonably be read to exclude the One for the World grant." We realized this when prompted by your comments here.

"With that in mind, would GiveWell support One for the World in taking steps to clarify the nature of its relationships with GiveWell on its website?" We have shared this feedback with One for the World and understand they plan to update their site accordingly.

Hi HStencil,

Thank you for sharing these concerns. We're sorry that this grant came as a surprise, and that you would prefer that it wasn't made via this EA Fund.

Some context on the fund may be helpful in explaining the decision to make this grant. The Centre for Effective Altruism set the original scope of the fund and asked Elie to serve as the manager to recommend grants to the fund. Elie thought that a grant to One for the World may be better in expectation than GiveWell's top charities (the broad mandate for the fund) and staff at the Ce... (read more)

Hi HStencil, we just published the grant write-up. It is available here: https://www.givewell.org/about/impact/one-for-the-world/october-2019-grant

Thanks, HStencil - I've passed your feedback on timing of information sharing to the team for consideration.

We hope to publish the One for the World grant write-up soon, but are not sure of the precise timing.

I'm glad to share some quick context for why this grant was made through the Global Health and Development Fund. The scope of the fund, as indicated in the "Fund scope" section here (https://app.effectivealtruism.org/funds/global-development), is to support activities whose ultimate purpose is to serve people living in the poorest ... (read more)

Hi Raemon,

I work at GiveWell; thanks for your question. There are a few key differences with the Open Philanthropy Project:

1. Approach. While this work is still new and we're unsure exactly how we'll approach it, we continue to see our core activity as intensive critical assessment of specific giving opportunities to maximize the return of the funds we direct. By contrast, the core activity of the Open Philanthropy Project is intensive cause selection followed by intensive selection of Program Officers to lead grantmaking in those causes, and heavy

(Continued from previous comment)

(2) Market humbly.

We agree that not everyone has an accurate view of GiveWell's work, and that we should continue to improve our communications around the kinds of opportunities we recommend. Publishing information about our reasoning and goals on our website and blog is one way we aim to do this, as is speaking with the media and donors who use our research, but we agree there is room for improvement. In my experience working on GiveWell's outreach, it has been particularly challenging to effectively communicate around the... (read more)

Hi Ben,

Thanks for the post! I wanted to reply to a couple ideas you raised for GiveWell:

(1) Assess outcomes.

Many of the points you raised, such as making empirical after-the-fact estimates, relate to the question of why GiveWell isn't putting more effort into collecting and examining post-hoc data demonstrating the impacts of our top charities.

We provide an estimate of the impact of a donation to each of our top charities, in humanitarian terms, here: http://www.givewell.org/charities/top-charities/impact. As you note, this is based on the expected impact ... (read more)