Elie Hassenfeld on 2 big picture critiques of GiveWell's approach, and 6 lessons from their recent work

Abstract

GiveWell is one of the world’s best-known charity evaluators, with the goal of “searching for the charities that save or improve lives the most per dollar.” It mostly recommends projects that help the world’s poorest people avoid easily prevented diseases, like intestinal worms or vitamin A deficiency. But should GiveWell, as some critics argue, take a totally different approach to its search, focusing instead on directly increasing subjective wellbeing, or alternatively, raising economic growth? Today’s guest — cofounder and CEO of GiveWell, Elie Hassenfeld — is proud of how much GiveWell has grown in the last five years. Its ‘money moved’ has quadrupled to around $600 million a year. Its research team has also more than doubled, enabling them to investigate a far broader range of interventions that could plausibly help people an enormous amount for each dollar spent. That work has led GiveWell to support dozens of new organisations, such as Kangaroo Mother Care, MiracleFeet, and Dispensers for Safe Water. But some other researchers focused on figuring out the best ways to help the world’s poorest people say GiveWell shouldn’t just do more of the same thing, but rather ought to look at the problem differently.