GiveWell is a nonprofit dedicated to finding outstanding giving opportunities and publishing the full details of our analysis to help donors decide where to give. More than 125,000 donors have trusted GiveWell to direct their donations.
Cost-effectiveness: We attempt to estimate figures such as the total "cost per life saved" or "cost per total economic benefit to others, normalized by base income" for each of the charities we consider. We seek out charities running programs that perform well on metrics like this. Low-income people in the developing world have dramatically lower standards of living than low-income people in the U.S., and we believe that a given dollar amount can provide more meaningful benefits when targeting the former.