We recommended a $38.8 million grant to Evidence Action to support the Indian government in providing clean water by setting up in-line chlorination in two states, Andhra Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh.
This isn’t a grant designed to directly deliver a service or commodity; instead, Evidence Action will use the funding to work in close partnership with state and local governments, providing technical assistance to support the delivery of the program. Providing all rural households with access to clean, piped water is a major priority for the Indian government. In-line chlorination, which uses a device to automatically disinfect water by adding chlorine as the water passes through a pipe, is a way to make drinking water safe.
We believe this grant may not only increase access to chlorinated water in the states it directly supports, but also inspire other states to adopt similar practices. A core part of the program’s theory of change is that governments in locations outside the grant area may take up a program they might not otherwise adopt. This is the first very large grant we’ve made where that’s been an important consideration. We think the upside is unusually high—if successful, this grant could eventually lead to tens or even hundreds of millions of additional people receiving safe water—but it’s also riskier than most of our grants, as there are a number of ways the program could fail to have the desired impact. Our hope is that this grant will reduce mortality and improve health at a very large scale.
The rest of this post describes the importance of clean water, the benefits of partnering with government, why we think this opportunity has such a large potential upside, our estimate of the program’s cost-effectiveness, and some of our uncertainties. You can read the full rationale for the grant here.
Why is clean water important?
Consuming contaminated water can lead to intestinal infections that are sometimes fatal. The evidence we’ve reviewed suggests that improving water quality also reduces mortality from causes not directly linked to water quality, such as respiratory infections (more here).
We estimate that this program will reduce overall mortality by about 4% among people reached with in-line chlorination. Given that we anticipate the program may reach tens of millions of people over the course of around a decade, the impact
Tag Archives: GiveWell’s grantmaking
Malengo: Supporting students to pursue education internationally
GiveWell recently recommended a grant of up to $750,000 to Malengo, an educational migration program. Malengo supports students from low-income countries in moving to high-income countries for university. The goal is to enable them to earn a higher income over time, benefiting both the students and their families.
GiveWell is co-funding the grant with Open Philanthropy, which is contributing an equal amount, for a total of up to $1.5 million over three years. We expect the GiveWell portion of the grant to be funded in part by individual donors and in part by the All Grants Fund.
One of our Program Officers, Erin Crossett, recommended this grant based on the belief that it could be a highly cost-effective opportunity. As a small discretionary grant, it received less scrutiny than our standard grants.
This grant provides an interesting learning opportunity for us, and it may support Malengo through a particularly challenging financial period.
The rest of this post shares why we think Malengo’s program could be cost-effective, how filling this specific funding gap might enable Malengo’s program to become more financially sustainable, and what we hope to learn next. You can read more about the full rationale for this grant on our grant page.
A small discretionary grant
Our senior grantmakers can collectively recommend a total of up to $10 million in “small discretionary grants” each year (more details here). We believe that we can increase our expected impact by occasionally funding small, promising opportunities like this one without investing a lot of time in evaluating them.
We’re writing a post about this grant because we think it’s interesting and different from our usual recommendations. But almost by definition, it’s not representative of most of our grantmaking work. Most of our funding goes to programs we’ve researched more deeply in our key focus areas of malaria, vaccines, nutrition, and water quality. However, we’re always excited to look into new areas that could be promising, including programs like Malengo’s.
Malengo’s migration program: A promising way to increase incomes
The income someone can expect to earn varies widely based on where they live. Around the world, millions of people move from lower-wage to higher-wage areas, either within their home countries or outside them, in hopes of making a better living for themselves and their families.
Many students from lower-income countries would like to
What we fund, #1: We fund many opportunities outside our top charities
This post is the fourth in a multi-part series, covering how GiveWell works and what we fund. We’ll add links to the later posts here as they’re published. Through these posts, we hope to give a better understanding of what our research looks like and how we make decisions.
How we work, #1: Cost-effectiveness is generally the most important factor in our recommendations
How we work, #2: We look at specific opportunities, not just general interventions
How we work, #3: Our analyses involve judgment calls
GiveWell aims to find and fund programs that have the greatest impact on global well-being. We’re open to funding whichever global health and development opportunities seem most cost-effective. So while our top charities list is still what we’re best known for, it’s only part of our impact; we also dedicate substantial funding and research effort to opportunities beyond top charities.
In 2022, 71% of the funds we directed supported our four current top charities, and 29% were directed to other programs.1This is based on the funding we directly recommended or granted to other organizations from February 1, 2022, to January 31, 2023, as well as funding that we believe was influenced primarily by our research and recommendations. jQuery(‘#footnote_plugin_tooltip_14734_1_1’).tooltip({ tip: ‘#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_14734_1_1’, tipClass: ‘footnote_tooltip’, effect: ‘fade’, predelay: 0, fadeInSpeed: 200, delay: 400, fadeOutSpeed: 200, position: ‘top right’, relative: true, offset: [10, 10], }); However, most of our research capacity goes toward programs other than our top charities. This is because (a) most programs we direct funding to aren’t top charities (we have four top charities but directed funding to about 40 other grantees in 2022),2See pages 15 and 16 of our 2022 metrics report.
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In this post we’ll share:
The overall scope of our grantmaking
Why we dedicate funding and research capacity to programs other than our top charities
The types of opportunities we support
You can support the full range of our grantmaking via the All Grants Fund.
The scope of our work
Our research is focused on global health and development programs. We believe this is an area in which donations can be especially cost-effective.
Much of our funding