Every month we send an email newsletter to our supporters sharing recent updates from our work. We publish selected portions of the newsletter on our blog to make this news more accessible to people who visit our website. For key updates from the latest installment, please see below!
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Casting a Wider Net for Cost-Effective Programs
Most of GiveWell’s grantmaking sits in a small number of areas we’ve studied for years—malaria, nutrition, vaccines, water, and livelihoods. But as our research team’s capacity has grown, so has the range of cause areas we investigate. We believe there could be other highly cost-effective interventions, and our new areas research subteam is working hard to find them.
Take amoxicillin, a common antibiotic used to treat childhood pneumonia. In many health facilities in low- and middle-income settings, medicine stock is still tracked by hand and counted about once a month, so staff often don’t know a drug has run out until a child needs it and it isn’t there. One of the grants featured in a recent GiveWell podcast episode aims to prevent shortages before they happen by funding an electronic supply chain management system to track medicine supplies in real time in Laos.
In the episode, GiveWell co-founder and CEO Elie Hassenfeld speaks with Senior Program Officer Dan Brown, who leads our new areas research subteam. They discuss the grant in Laos and two others: the first provides early support for a new, low-maintenance device that produces medical oxygen, and the second funds two studies that will help us better understand a program that trains caregivers in practices that support newborn health in India.
The three grants look very different, but they are grounded in the same principles of rigor and truth-seeking that apply to all our work. By focusing on cost-effectiveness, evidence, and learning, we think the work of our new areas research subteam could lead to many more lives saved and improved over time. Read more on our blog.
Scaling Our Impact, with Support from a $1 Billion Commitment
Halfway through this year, we’ve already surpassed our 2025 grantmaking total, with more than $400 million in grants committed so far to save and improve lives. We anticipate our total grantmaking is likely to approach, and potentially exceed, $1 billion this year, and our team is working toward a future in which our grantmaking could be several times this year’s scale.
This growth is possible because of years spent building a research team that can