Over the past several years, GiveWell has doubled the size of our research team to deepen and broaden our search for highly impactful programs. Our 60 researchers are now distributed among 11 subteams that cover a number of global health and development cause areas, as well as core research needs.

Below you’ll find a summary of the key approaches each subteam is using this year to find new opportunities to help people in need as much as we can.

• Malaria
  • Antimalarial Medicines
  • Vector Control
  • Malaria Cross-Cutting Research
• Nutrition
• Vaccination
• Water
• Livelihoods
• New Areas
• Cross-Cutting Research
• Research Support and Operations
  • Research Operations
  • Commons

Malaria

People: Marinella Capriati, Zoe Hartman

Malaria, which is caused by a parasite transmitted when people are bitten by infected mosquitoes, is a leading cause of death globally, especially for young children in Africa, who make up around 70% of the approximately 600,000 malaria deaths worldwide each year.¹See the WHO fact sheet on malaria, which states “Globally in 2024, there were an estimated 282 million malaria cases and 610 000 malaria deaths in 80 countries…the WHO African Region was home to 95% of malaria cases (265 million) and 95% (579,000) of malaria deaths. Children under 5 accounted for about 75% of all malaria deaths in the Region.” 75% * 95% = 71%. While malaria prevention has long been a focus for GiveWell, the growing capacity and specialized expertise on our malaria team are allowing us to take on this challenge now in a way that would not have been possible even a few years ago. Our malaria research subteam, with 15 people, is the largest of our research teams and is divided into three subteams.

Antimalarial Medicines

People: Sarah Tougher, Robin Dey, Sam Aman

The Antimalarial Medicines subteam focuses on medicines that either prevent or treat infections from malaria parasites. Prevention and treatment are managed as an integrated portfolio because they use the same products, and programming and policy decisions in one area have direct implications for the other. For example, decisions about which antimalarial to use in one intervention may have potential implications for drug resistance in another. In 2026, the team plans to focus on the following:

• Streamlining research on Malaria Consortium’s seasonal malaria chemoprevention (SMC) program.This is one of our Top Charities, which are highly cost-effective programs that we know well. As a result, we only plan to focus on a small number of high-value questions in our upcoming investigations. By doing so, we hope to reserve capacity for expansion in other areas.
• Looking for cost-effective opportunities to diversify our SMC portfolio. We plan to continue to work with Malaria Consortium for the majority of SMC programming we support, while exploring opportunities to expand coverage and learn more about the relative strengths and weaknesses of different partners.
• Identifying promising chemoprevention approaches outside the Sahel. The team recently launched a request for proposals that will likely include pilots of perennial malaria chemoprevention, post-malaria discharge, and intermittent preventive treatment in school-aged children as well as strategies to optimize the delivery of SMC.
• Finding cost-effective ways to support malaria treatment. Prior to changes to the global funding landscape last year, we had believed that cost-effective opportunities to support malaria case management were largely covered by existing funding streams. Since that time, we have identified and funded existing gaps to support case management, and we will continue to look for cost-effective opportunities to bolster access to treatment.

Malaria Vector Control

People: Alex Bowles, Jenna Amlani, Rosie Bettle, Sarah Eustis-Guthrie, Nat Puapattanakajorn

The Malaria Vector Control subteam researches and funds cost-effective programs that prevent malaria infections and deaths by targeting the mosquitoes that transmit the disease. To date, most of the subteam’s work has supported the procurement and distribution of insecticide-treated nets through campaigns. The team plans to focus on the following:

• Looking for large potential gaps in insecticide-treated net coverage in areas with high malaria burden. We are focusing on potential cost-effective nets campaigns in high-burden areas, where we believe that aid cuts may have increased existing gaps. We will continue to work with Against Malaria Foundation, one of GiveWell’s Top Charities, while considering additional implementers, such as Malaria Consortium, whom we have funded to support net campaigns in parts of Nigeria.
• Identifying promising vector control approaches beyond net campaigns that could eventually absorb significant funding. We plan to investigate routine net distribution, spatial repellents, and potentially insecticide-treated baby wraps. While we do not expect these efforts to result in large grants this year, we may scale support for cost-effective programs in the future.
• Conducting assessments of the organizational capabilities of our key implementing partners. This includes Malaria Consortium and Against Malaria Foundation. We will also review our approach to grant investigations to ensure efficient and effective processes. As we ramp up our annual grantmaking, we are looking for ways to streamline our research while maintaining our rigor.

Malaria Cross-Cutting Research

People: John Macke, James Watson, Kartik Sharma, Lucy McNamara, Giselle Gray

The Malaria Cross-Cutting Research subteam aims to improve GiveWell’s malaria grantmaking by asking high-level research questions, particularly focusing on ways that our current approach may be wrong and other strategies we could try. The team plans to focus on the following:

• Soliciting high-quality research and pilot opportunities across malaria that we wouldn’t be able to find through normal grantmaking channels. We have launched a request for proposals looking for cost-effective opportunities in vector control, antimalarial medicines, and cross-cutting malaria research.
• Looking for promising malaria interventions beyond nets and SMC. We will explore a number of opportunities, such as a malaria rebound study and market shaping for rapid diagnostic tests. We will also conduct quick evidence assessments on interventions we are less familiar with and work with the CHAI Incubator to develop new opportunities.
• Seeking to improve the accuracy of our cost-effectiveness estimates for nets and SMC. Because most of our significant modeling insights in the past emerged from new perspectives rather than refinements to specific parameters, we will focus this year on sourcing outside perspectives and alternative strategies for addressing our uncertainties.
• Working to articulate and defend the key premises behind our malaria grantmaking in a way that invites external feedback. We aim to publish three reports on important uncertainties or big-picture questions, such as why malaria hasn’t declined despite more than $1 billion in GiveWell funding for malaria prevention.

Nutrition

People: Alice Redfern, Andrew Martin, Catherine Hollander, Jack Clift, Jordan Hebert, Madison Stieg, Stephan Guyenet, Zach McLeod

Nutritional deficiencies are common in low- and middle-income countries and can cause a variety of symptoms, including increased susceptibility to infection and death. The Nutrition subteam researches and funds cost-effective programs to address problems like vitamin A deficiency, anemia, and acute malnutrition. We expect that up to half of the team’s grantmaking in 2026 will be renewal grants; the rest will be new grantmaking in areas where we are in the process of developing program pipelines. The team plans to focus on the following:

• Considering opportunities to expand vitamin A supplementation (VAS). VAS programs in most countries where it is cost-effective (because of high vitamin A deficiency and child mortality rates) are already funded by us or other donors. We plan to explore remaining promising locations to determine whether to expand or shift to steady-state renewals of existing cost-effective programs. We’re also exploring ways to improve our estimates of VAS impact through surveys or a new trial.
• Looking for cost-effective opportunities to reduce the burden of anemia in Africa. We currently fund programs in India that provide iron supplements or fortify staple foods with iron. While Africa also has a high anemia burden, we are concerned that supplementation could be less effective because of higher baseline inflammation in the region or could worsen malaria infections. We’re completing research to address these concerns and determine whether to seek opportunities in Africa or expand support in South Asia. After receiving results related to iron bioavailability, we will consider grantmaking for multiple micronutrient supplementation.
• Pursuing ways to reduce the cost of acute malnutrition treatment without compromising effectiveness. While there is a very large unmet need for malnutrition treatment, most programs we have identified fall below our cost-effectiveness threshold. We plan to conduct a listening tour with implementers and other funders to identify promising approaches for reducing costs and expect to fund some pilot grants to test them.
• Exploring opportunities in other areas, such as cardiovascular disease prevention. Given capacity constraints, we’re taking a light-touch approach to pursuing these opportunities, such as following existing leads and outsourcing scoping work. We see this work as building a pipeline for grantmaking in future years.

Vaccination

People: Natalie Crispin, Isabel Vasquez, Sarah Carson, Vicky Yu

Vaccines are very effective at preventing deadly diseases and they receive substantial global funding. Because of this, in most low- and middle-income countries the vaccines children need are available, yet not all children receive them. We currently have one Top Charity, New Incentives, focused on providing caregiver incentives and a growing portfolio of grants supporting programs that provide vaccination outreach to remote communities. We expect to use what we learn from the operational and impact data generated by those programs to improve our grantmaking and identify opportunities where additional funding can meaningfully increase vaccination rates and save lives. The team plans to focus on the following:

• Supporting vaccination outreach programs to reach the lowest coverage communities. Our 2025 request for proposals confirmed that there are organizations ready to implement large-scale programs to send vaccinators to difficult-to-reach communities, and we made grants to start five new programs in five countries. In 2026, we have run a new request for proposals and plan to make at least as many grants to outreach programs in 2026 as we did in 2025. We’ll assess the impact of these programs through independent third-party coverage surveys.
• Looking for cost-effective vaccination programs that provide caregiver incentives. New Incentives, a GiveWell Top Charity, has shown that small cash incentives for caregivers can meaningfully increase coverage. We would like to expand to additional implementers, so we plan to launch a request for information seeking pilot programs that could iterate on operational design and build implementer experience.
• Exploring support for malaria vaccines and other vaccination opportunities. We also expect to explore whether there are cost-effective opportunities to support the rollout of malaria vaccines and, if capacity allows, to pursue some other early-stage ideas, such as addressing supply chain gaps and research and development on improved technology for vaccine delivery.

Water

People: Erin Crossett, Karin Mason, Megan Morris

More than a billion people around the world lack access to uncontaminated drinking water, and according to the World Health Organization, more than 500,000 people die each year from diseases caused by contaminated water.²See the WHO fact sheet on drinking water, which states “Microbiologically contaminated drinking water can transmit diseases such as diarrhoea, cholera, dysentery, typhoid and polio and is estimated to cause approximately 505 000 diarrhoeal deaths each year.” This year, we expect to pivot from a narrow focus on chlorination to explore alternative treatment technologies and delivery models. This means accepting higher uncertainty in exchange for the potential to unlock high-impact opportunities that need substantial amounts of funding. Our strategy is intentionally fluid; we’re prioritizing rapid learning through quick evidence assessments and expert consultations. The team plans to focus on the following:

• Looking for promising alternative water treatment technologies or delivery models. We’re investigating alternatives such as inline ultraviolet light purification, filtration, and direct delivery of clean water (often called water kiosks). While we expect to continue to fund chlorination programs, we plan to invest more time searching for other promising areas. Depending on what we find, we may run another request for information to identify implementers for a given intervention area.
• Partnering with multilateral development banks to add water quality treatments onto existing infrastructure projects. The goal of this strategic partnership is to determine if we can include water quality treatment as part of existing or planned large-scale piped water infrastructure projects. If this works, it could be a very large funding channel.
• Investing in measurement and market shaping. We’re supporting “enablers” of impact. For example, we plan to fund programs to improve chemical contamination testing strips and to use prizes to incentivize the development of low-cost, accurate chlorine sensors, which could potentially increase the cost-effectiveness of our in-line chlorination portfolio.
• Seeking new funding mechanisms. We will look for new ways to move money that set us up well for future years by building out our early-stage pipeline. We’re exploring regranting opportunities and establishing a water program incubator to scope and pilot new interventions.
• Improving adherence and cost-effectiveness of chlorination grants. Chlorination still seems intuitively promising—it’s cheap, widely available, averts mortality, and neglected relative to water access—but we received significant negative updates on adherence from external coverage surveys of Evidence Action’s water quality programs in Uganda and Malawi. Our chlorine pilots are ongoing, with results expected in 2027. If results from external monitoring and evaluation of these programs are promising, there could be sizable cost-effective opportunities to expand.

Livelihoods

People: Adam Salisbury

In late 2025, we began to focus more attention on programs that increase the economic well-being of people in extreme poverty. Our goal for the next two years is to test the hypothesis that GiveWell ought to expand its portfolio of livelihoods grants. We’re planning to cover a lot of ground in 2026, prioritizing program areas that could unlock significant funding opportunities if the general case for philanthropic investment seems promising. The team plans to focus on the following:

• Evaluating the broader economic effects of cash transfers. Cash transfers entail giving cash support to households in extreme poverty to help them meet their basic needs. In low-income countries, there’s robust evidence that these programs improve food consumption and housing quality, and more recent evidence suggests they can also benefit the local economy.³See more on cash transfers in our GiveDirectly Cash for Poverty Relief intervention report here. We will assess how those effects, including effects on prices and wages, relate to the optimal size, frequency, and saturation of cash transfers across different implementation contexts.
• Generating evidence on and seeking to support the expansion of cost-effective ultra-poor graduation programs. Ultra-poor graduation programs typically deliver a bundled intervention of productive assets, training, a short-term cash stipend, and access to savings vehicles with the aim of creating a sustainable path out of poverty. RCT evidence shows that the programs, while expensive, improve short-run consumption and that the gains persist after the intervention ends.⁴See key evidence for ultra-poor graduation programs in Banerjee et al. 2021 and Banerjee et al. 2015. We’re interested in whether we can generate evidence on and support the scale-up of newer, more cost-effective variants.
• Assessing whether new ways to deliver or target microfinance programs are cost-effective. RCTs of microfinance programs in the 2000s showed only small average effects on business profits and income. However, recent evidence suggests more promising results from newer programs, such as those earmarked for productive assets. We plan to investigate the possibility of generating additional evidence and explore whether philanthropic funding for microfinance programs is viable.

New Areas

People: Dan Brown, Daniel Issing, Dilhan Perera, Kim Vidal, Meika Ball, Rachel Mitchell

The New Areas subteam researches and funds cost-effective programs in global health and development that fall outside the scope of the other research subteams, such as diarrhea treatment and screening, and treatment for tuberculosis or syphilis. This year, the subteam aims to increase its grantmaking by about 20% over 2025 while broadening the cause areas and types of intervention that GiveWell funds. To accomplish this, we will be intentionally accepting higher levels of risk and uncertainty. We believe doing so will reduce the chance of missing highly cost-effective programs that need significant future funding and will provide additional opportunities to learn. The team plans to focus on the following:

• Expanding support for cause areas we’ve identified as promising. We will look for additional highly cost-effective opportunities to support programs in areas we have already identified as core to our work, such as HIV treatment, family planning, and health systems strengthening. In each of those areas, we see promising fundamentals: a range of potentially highly cost-effective programs, strong implementers, and significant funding gaps exacerbated by global funding uncertainties. We also will consider renewing and scaling programs in other areas we’ve previously funded, such as oral rehydration solution and zinc to treat diarrhea.
• Searching for highly cost-effective programs in cause areas GiveWell hasn’t previously funded much or at all. We’re spending significantly more time on emerging cause areas in 2026 compared to 2025. This could include medical oxygen, tuberculosis, AI applications to global health, drug quality, and noncommunicable diseases including hypertension.
• Considering additional grant and partnership types. We’re exploring funding mechanisms that are less familiar to GiveWell, such as contributing to pooled funding and supporting market shaping instruments. We’ll also consider partnering with additional organizations to develop incubators to diversify and strengthen our pipeline of new programs.

Cross-Cutting Research

People: Alex Cohen, Brendan Phillips, Brian Gill, Jane Fortson, Katie Skoff, Mark Walsh, Steven Brownstone

The Cross-Cutting team supports research quality across GiveWell. As the organization scales this year—making more grants to more programs—we’re working to maintain the quality of our work and respond to important research questions that apply across our grantmaking. The team plans to focus on the following:

• Hiring and training new researchers. GiveWell plans to substantially increase the number of people on its research team in 2026. Our top priority for the year is leading training to ensure new hires meet high standards and become productive quickly. Everything else GiveWell intends to accomplish depends on having enough well-trained people.
• Conducting grant lookbacks. Our growing research capacity has recently enabled us to expand this step in our research process and publish comprehensive evaluations for select grants. Through this work, we aim to advance our understanding of the true impact of our funding, transparently share what we learn, and continue improving the cost-effectiveness of donations.
• Gathering local insights in Nigeria. We are currently running four pilots in Nigeria to pressure-test our desk research with local insights that can validate or challenge our research. In 2026, we’ll analyze these pilots and decide what to continue supporting. If the Nigeria work proves useful, we may expand our local insights work to DRC.
• Supporting monitoring and evaluation efforts. In 2025, we pressure-tested our monitoring and evaluation efforts to identify gaps in our work for our top six grantmaking areas, including our four Top Charities, water quality interventions, and malnutrition treatment programs. In 2026, we’ll take steps to ensure that the top recommendations from that red teaming work are implemented.
• Exploring the use of AI tools. We’re rolling out AI tools for common use cases, such as conducting critical literature reviews, and enabling research team members to use AI for their own use cases. We’re also systematically tracking how well AI does at our work. Our goal is to identify concrete ways we can use AI to make our work more efficient and prepare for future jumps in AI capability.

Research Support and Operations

Two of our research subteams are devoted to supporting the smooth running of the research team as a whole. Our Research Operations subteam provides logistical and knowledge management support. Our Commons team vets research materials and provides other research support as needed.

Research Operations

People: Hannah Bell, Destiny Clark, Kaitlynn Lagman, Matt Wang

The Research Operations subteam provides support for team tools and processes, including forecasting, project tracking infrastructure, international travel, external feedback on our grant processes, and internal coordination. The subteam plans to focus on maintaining and improving research team processes and resources to accompany research team growth, including:

• Hiring and onboarding additional project managers for the research team
• Collecting, organizing, and analyzing detailed grantmaking data
• Iterating on grantmaking and research processes, with an eye toward smoothing processes at a larger scale
• Improving communication and coordination between GiveWell and external partners
• Strengthening internal knowledge management, including grants management

Commons

People: Nicole Zok, Kameron Smith, Ally Rome, Andrew Ligon, Annie Barnett, Beatrix Swanson, Brooke Reaves, Gurmukh Singh, Jack Shangraw, Meghna Ray, Peter Namie, Sophia Emmons-Bell

The Commons subteam supports grantmaking volume, quality, and transparency across GiveWell by vetting research materials, including grant pages and cost-effectiveness models, and by providing other research support. This year, the subteam will focus on:

• Hiring and onboarding additional research analysts
• Coordinating with other research subteams to unearth and prioritize high-impact opportunities for research support
• Vetting cost-effectiveness models for larger grants earlier in the grant investigation process
• Addressing the backlog of grant pages that have not yet been published
• Experimenting with AI to improve the efficiency and quality of vetting

The post How We’re Searching for the Best Ways to Help in 2026 appeared first on The GiveWell Blog.

A recent lookback on grants GiveWell made to fund insecticide-treated net distributions supported by the Against Malaria Foundation (AMF) in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) illustrates the growing capacity of GiveWell’s research team. We drew on multiple independent data sources, funded qualitative interviews to gather more information, and conducted a novel empirical analysis to deepen our confidence.

In this episode, based on a conversation originally aired on GiveWell’s internal podcast for staff,* GiveWell’s co-founder and CEO Elie Hassenfeld provides additional context while GiveWell’s Chief Research and Program Officer Teryn Mattox dives deep into the details with Program Director Alex Cohen and Researcher Steven Brownstone, examining how we conducted the lookback, what we found, and how what we learned may shape our future nets grantmaking.

Elie, Teryn, Alex, and Steven discuss:

• A more expansive and rigorous approach to evaluating past grants: This lookback draws on three independent quantitative sources—AMF’s monitoring data, a recent Demographic and Health Survey (DHS) conducted in the DRC, and an original survey commissioned by GiveWell—alongside qualitative research involving in-depth interviews with people involved in DRC’s net distribution system, from health zone administrators to village focus groups.
• Conducting a novel mortality analysis using DHS microdata: Because net campaigns roll out on staggered schedules across DRC’s provinces, we were able to use the timing of children’s births relative to the date of local net campaigns as a natural experiment. We compared mortality risk for children based on when they were born, and thus the length of time they had protection from a net, and found that the net campaigns reduced the risk of death by around a quarter. That finding provides additional support for the mortality effect estimate we use in our cost-effectiveness models.
• What qualitative research revealed: Interviewers asked people across five provinces in DRC whether households received nets and whether households were using nets—and in cases where they either didn’t receive nets or weren’t using them, why not. Although we heard some anecdotes of misuse or diversion of nets, the data suggested overall that the nets are highly valued by the communities receiving them.
• How durability data could inform campaign design: Our analysis of DHS data confirmed earlier research indicating that nets in DRC degrade before they are replaced through new distributions. As a result, it’s possible that changes in DRC like more frequent campaigns or increased support of routine net distribution through other channels may increase protection.

If you’re interested in learning more about grant lookbacks like this one—and how they’re improving our research and shaping our future funding decisions—we invite you to join our next webinar on June 9. Alex Cohen, who was featured in this episode, and Program Director Julie Faller will walk through our lookback process, what we’re learning, and how we’re applying those lessons to help more people. Learn more and register here.

This episode was recorded on April 22, 2026 and represents our best understanding at that time.

Glossary

Because the conversation in this episode first aired as part of GiveWell’s internal podcast for staff, there are a number of names, acronyms, and other terms that are not explained. To make it easier to follow along, we’ve provided a glossary below.

• all-cause mortality. All-cause mortality measures the total number of deaths from any cause in a specific group of people over a specific period of time.
• AMF. The Against Malaria Foundation, one of GiveWell’s Top Charities, collaborates with national malaria programs and other partner organizations in low- and middle-income countries to distribute insecticide-treated nets.
• CEA. We build cost-effectiveness analyses to assess how much good can be achieved by giving money to a certain program.
• Cox proportional hazards model. The Cox proportional hazards model is used to estimate how much different factors, such as time since an insecticide-treated net campaign, speed up or slow down the time to death. It assigns each factor a “hazard ratio,” which is a multiplier of the baseline risk of dying: a hazard ratio of 2 for smoking means that smokers face double the risk of death at any given moment compared to nonsmokers, all else equal.
• DHS. ​​Demographic and Health Surveys are vast, in-person surveys that ask women to recall their children’s birth and survival histories. This method provides the primary data for mortality estimates in low- and middle-income countries.
• funging. What we call “funging” (from fungibility) refers to the effect of crowding out funding that would have otherwise come from other sources.
• insecticide-treated nets. These nets have been treated with insecticide to deter and kill the mosquitoes that transmit malaria. Distributing insecticide-treated nets, which are then hung over sleeping spaces, can be a cost-effective way of preventing malaria.
• lookbacks. Lookbacks are reviews of past grants published on the GiveWell website that assess how well they’ve met our initial estimates and what we can learn from them.
• Marakuja. Marakuja Kivu Research is a nonprofit organization in DRC that we have contracted with to conduct quantitative and qualitative surveys.
• M&E. GiveWell asks organizations that we fund to share detailed monitoring and evaluation data on their programs to assess the quality of program implementation and whether it is reaching recipients as intended.
• net durability. Insecticide-treated nets decay over time, both through loss of insecticide and physical wear.
• nets team. In internal conversations, this is what we sometimes call our vector control team (see below for definition).
• OnFrontiers. OnFrontiers is a company that sets up interviews with subject matter experts around the world.
• PDM. Post-distribution monitoring data is collected by independent partners funded by AMF. These partners survey a sample of households in the areas targeted by a campaign to assess the presence, usage, and condition of nets over time.
• PLNP. The Programme National de la Lutte contre le Paludisme (or National Malaria Control Program) in DRC plans, coordinates, and implements malaria prevention and treatment strategies.
• PMI. The President’s Malaria Initiative is a US government program to fund malaria prevention and elimination programs.
• regression discontinuity. This is an econometric method that leverages the fact that if outcomes “jump” at a threshold, in this case a geographic border, then the “jump” can be considered the effect of a policy difference across the border.
• STATcompiler indicators. Some indicators derived from the Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) are available pre-calculated on a website run by the DHS called STATcompiler. Cross-referencing against these pre-calculated values is a good way to validate the analysis of the raw data from DHS surveys.
• vector control team. GiveWell’s vector control team is a research subteam within our malaria research team that focuses on interventions that prevent malaria infections and deaths by targeting the mosquitoes that transmit the disease.

The post Podcast Episode 29: Behind the Analysis — Assessing Past Malaria Nets Grants appeared first on The GiveWell Blog.

Malaria kills around 600,000 people annually, mostly children under five in Africa.¹Source: Our World in Data To date, GiveWell has directed more than $1 billion in donations to malaria prevention programs. As our research capacity grows, this RFI aims to pilot promising malaria prevention strategies and generate evidence to address a range of questions in malaria prevention and epidemiology.

We’d like to reach as many organizations as possible—please share with your network and consider applying!

What We’re Looking to Fund

The first track seeks proposals for pilot programs related to malaria chemoprevention and vector control. We are interested in funding programs that test promising interventions and include a strong research or evaluation component, with the goal of generating evidence to inform our future grantmaking.

Funding decisions will be primarily based on:

1. The likelihood of the program to meet our high cost-effectiveness threshold for funding.
2. The potential to learn from the pilot or program through accompanying monitoring, evaluation, and research.
3. The feasibility of pilot programs to be scaled or replicated in other settings.

The second track seeks standalone research and evaluation proposals with potential to improve GiveWell’s future malaria-focused grantmaking. We call these “value of information” grants—opportunities we fund to try to reduce a key uncertainty and improve our impact estimates, which in turn can inform how we direct funding and help people in need.

Through this track, we are interested in funding research and evaluation on a variety of topics that could help us improve our cost-effectiveness estimates, generate evidence on promising new interventions, or better understand effective strategies for implementing seasonal malaria chemoprevention and insecticide-treated net campaigns.

Funding decisions will be primarily based on:

1. The likelihood of the research findings to impact future funding decisions.
2. The strength and feasibility of the research or evaluation design.
3. The degree to which the proposal aims to maximize impact per dollar spent.

Both tracks focus exclusively on Plasmodium falciparum malaria in African countries with a high burden of malaria. We will not consider proposals focused on low-burden settings, settings outside Africa, or other Plasmodium species. Other decision factors, such as the team’s qualifications, experience, and partnership compatibility with GiveWell, will also be considered in funding decisions.

How to Learn More

We are hosting webinars to answer applicant questions for both RFI tracks:

• Pilot program track: Friday, May 15 at 9:00am ET.
• Research and evaluation track: Monday, May 18 at 9:00am ET.

We hope you will register and join us then! Questions can be submitted via this form or emailed to us at malariarfp@givewell.org.

The post GiveWell Opens RFI for Malaria Pilots and Research appeared first on The GiveWell Blog.

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Following Up on Our Grant to MiracleFeet

Much of GiveWell’s grantmaking focuses on preventing child deaths. But many serious health challenges in low- and middle-income countries involve disability, not death. Disability treatment is an area we’ve considered for many years, but these interventions are often complex and require specialized research. As our capacity and expertise have grown, we’ve been able to evaluate and fund programs like clubfoot treatment.

Clubfoot is a congenital condition in which children are born with one or both feet twisted inward and downward. It affects roughly one in 800 newborns globally, and in low- and middle-income countries, only about a fifth of children who need treatment receive it. Left untreated, it causes pain and loss of mobility. But when treated early with the Ponseti method—which involves a series of casts, a minor outpatient surgical procedure, and four to five years of bracing—it can be fully corrected. In 2023, we made a grant to MiracleFeet, an organization that partners with local health facilities and ministries of health to expand access to clubfoot treatment in countries where most children go untreated.

Two GiveWell staff recently traveled to Côte d’Ivoire to see the program firsthand. Over four days, they visited clinics, met with the Ministry of Health and implementing partners, and spoke with caregivers of children receiving clubfoot treatment.

“I have always known that the tangible impact of GiveWell’s work is that people are meaningfully helped out in the world; still, I was stunned by the experience of seeing actual, specific children—dozens of them—receiving transformative care.”
—Maggie Lloydhauser, Senior Philanthropy Advisor

In our latest podcast episode, CEO Elie Hassenfeld and Program Officer Meika Ball discuss what made this grant different from most we fund, what we’ve learned two and a half years in, and reflections Meika and Maggie recorded during their site visit.

Scrutinizing One of Our Longest-Funded Programs

Vitamin A supplementation is one of the programs GiveWell has supported the longest, and it has an unusually strong evidence base for reducing child mortality. Yet, as is the case for most global health programs, the evidence raises complex, unresolved questions. Over the last several years, we’ve expanded our capacity to carefully research these questions.

In our recent podcast episode, GiveWell CEO and co-founder Elie Hassenfeld speaks with Senior Researcher Stephan Guyenet about the evidence base for vitamin A supplementation and how GiveWell has improved our cost-effectiveness estimates for the program.

Elie and Stephan cover:

• The evidence base for vitamin A supplementation: Rigorous trials show that vitamin A supplementation can significantly reduce child mortality, but most of these trials were conducted 30 to 40 years ago, and a more recent large trial in India found a much smaller effect.
• How GiveWell worked through the complications: To address our questions about the existing evidence, we conducted further research, including an analysis of the specific diseases for which vitamin A supplementation reduces mortality, a novel dosing-frequency analysis with an outside statistician, and an assessment of possible publication bias.
• What this means for grantmaking: While the trials reported a 19% reduction in mortality for children 6 to 59 months old, we estimate the impact in modern settings is smaller: a 1% to 11% lower risk of death. However, treatment costs are very low, and we’ve learned how to target regions where vitamin A supplementation can be particularly cost-effective. We estimate our most recent grant to Helen Keller Intl is 25 times more cost-effective than our benchmark.

Read our episode summary for more, and subscribe to be notified of our newest episodes.

Upcoming Webinar: Looking Back to Give Better

Join us for our upcoming webinar, Looking Back to Give Better: How GiveWell Evaluates Its Grantmaking, on Tuesday, June 9. GiveWell co-founder and CEO Elie Hassenfeld will moderate a conversation with Program Directors Alex Cohen and Julie Faller about how we evaluate whether a grant achieved the impact we initially estimated—and how we use those findings to make better impact estimates over time.

Our growing research capacity has recently enabled us to expand this step in our research process and publish comprehensive evaluations for select grants, which we call “lookbacks.” Through this work, we aim to advance our understanding of the true impact of our funding, transparently share what we learn, and continue improving the cost-effectiveness of donations. Our speakers will answer questions about the methodology behind lookbacks, what we’ve learned, and how those lessons are helping shape our future grantmaking. Register here.

Grant Spotlight

Our grantmaking supports programs and research that aim to save and improve lives the most per dollar. Here’s a look at one recent example:

Where: Ituri Province, Democratic Republic of the Congo
What: Distribution of insecticide-treated nets (ITNs) to prevent malaria
Who: Against Malaria Foundation
Amount: $9.6 million
How it works: This grant will cover all distribution costs—including shipping, warehousing, distributor training, and household delivery—for a mass distribution campaign of 4.4 million ITNs in a province with an exceptionally high malaria mortality rate. The nets were procured through a separate $96 million GiveWell grant made in December 2024.
Why this grant: By funding distribution of the nets, we estimate this campaign will provide nets to approximately 819,000 children under five who would otherwise be unprotected, averting an estimated 5,700 additional deaths. While the distribution and procurement grants work together to support the full campaign, we attribute 2,600 of the lives saved to this distribution grant.
Funded by: Donations to GiveWell’s All Grants Fund and Top Charities Fund

Hiring Announcements

Featured Role: Senior Recruiters
We’re hiring Senior Recruiters to strengthen our sourcing and selection processes, improve our hiring infrastructure, and partner with leadership to build out high-performing teams.

We’re looking for people who bring the right mix of proactivity and thoughtfulness to recruiting. Hiring at GiveWell requires deep curiosity, sound judgment, and high standards. We’re hiring two Senior Recruiters for Research and one Senior Recruiter for Operations and Outreach.

By helping us hire exceptional talent, you’ll play an important role in continuing to grow GiveWell’s impact. If you’ve been looking for a high-leverage role that uses your strategic thinking, creativity, and passion for GiveWell’s work, we hope you’ll apply!

Partner Roundup

• See how Malaria Consortium’s 2025–2028 strategy is progressing as they prepare for World Malaria Day on Saturday, April 25.
• Celebrate Helen Keller Intl reaching more than 47 million children with vitamin A in 2025 to protect their vision and immune systems.
• See how GiveDirectly is testing ways to increase their cash transfer program’s cost-effectiveness through three GiveWell-funded pilots.

Comments or Questions?

We’re always looking for fresh perspectives on our research. If you have comments or questions on our work, we want to hear from you! Reach out to us at info@givewell.org.

The post April 2026 Update appeared first on The GiveWell Blog.

While most donations to GiveWell are directed to programs that reduce child mortality, our growing research capacity over the last several years has expanded what we’re able to evaluate and fund. One outcome of that work is that we’re better able to direct donations to highly cost-effective programs addressing disabling conditions, like clubfoot, and meaningfully improve quality of life.

In this episode, GiveWell CEO and co-founder Elie Hassenfeld speaks with Program Officer Meika Ball about GiveWell’s grant to MiracleFeet, an organization that expands access to clubfoot treatment. Their conversation walks through MiracleFeet’s program, how we estimated its cost-effectiveness, and Meika’s recent site visit to see the program in action in Côte d’Ivoire.

Elie and Meika discuss:

• How MiracleFeet supports clubfoot treatment: Clubfoot is treated using the Ponseti method, which involves casts to correct the foot’s position, a small surgical procedure, and a period of bracing. MiracleFeet supports this treatment by partnering with local health facilities, training healthcare workers, educating local communities about clubfoot, providing treatment materials, and working with Ministries of Health. Because of this support, treatment is provided at no cost to patients or their caregivers. GiveWell-funded independent surveys in Côte d’Ivoire and Chad indicated that very few children with clubfoot were being treated before the program, and hundreds have been enrolled since the program’s launch.
• What we learned from a recent site visit: Two GiveWell staff members recently traveled to Côte d’Ivoire to visit health facilities and see children being treated through MiracleFeet’s program. We spoke with a range of stakeholders, including healthcare workers, implementing partners, representatives from the Ministry of Health, caregivers of children receiving treatment, and disability advocates. Seeing the program in action increased our confidence that it is leading more children with clubfoot to receive treatment and is having an important impact on their lives. We also saw early signs of the program being integrated into national health systems, such as clubfoot being added to a maternal child health booklet that parents and midwives review after a child is born.
• What makes this grant different: Most of GiveWell’s grantmaking focuses on preventing child deaths from widespread conditions like malaria or diarrhea. Clubfoot is a relatively rare condition that causes disability, not death. The treatment costs more per child than many other programs we fund, such as distributing vitamin A supplements or malaria nets, and requires sustained caregiver adherence over several years. To assess this grant opportunity, GiveWell applied moral weights, or subjective valuations, for the impact of clubfoot so it could be compared with other programs’ outcomes. We also made a separate grant to support monitoring and evaluation of the program to assess how much MiracleFeet’s support increases the number of children receiving appropriate and effective treatment.

Our ability to evaluate, fund, and monitor a program like MiracleFeet’s is possible because of years of investment in our research team. This program exemplifies how our growing capacity is enabling us to expand our search for cost-effective opportunities where donors can do exceptional good.

Visit our All Grants Fund page to learn more about how you can support this work, and listen or subscribe to our podcast for our latest updates.

This episode was recorded on March 30, 2026 and represents our best understanding at that time.

The post Podcast Episode 28: Evaluating and Funding a New Kind of Grant (Clubfoot Treatment) appeared first on The GiveWell Blog.

In this episode, GiveWell CEO and co-founder Elie Hassenfeld speaks with Senior Researcher Stephan Guyenet about the evidence base for vitamin A supplementation, the complications in applying that evidence to our funding decisions, and how GiveWell has improved our cost-effectiveness estimates for the program.

Elie and Stephan discuss:

• The evidence base for vitamin A supplementation: Evidence from rigorous trials shows that vitamin A supplementation can significantly reduce child mortality. However, most of these trials were conducted 30 to 40 years ago, when infectious disease rates and vitamin A deficiency were more prevalent, and a more recent large trial in India found a much smaller effect. As a result, we worked to resolve our uncertainties about the effect of vitamin A supplementation in the contexts where we’re supporting it today.
• How GiveWell worked through the complications: To address our questions about the existing evidence, we engaged in further research. This included an analysis focused on the specific diseases for which vitamin A supplementation reduces mortality, a novel dosing-frequency analysis conducted in consultation with an outside statistician, and an assessment of possible publication bias.
• What all of this means for grantmaking: While the trials report that vitamin A supplementation reduces the risk of death by 19% on average in children 6 to 59 months old, we estimate that the impact in the modern settings we model is smaller: a 1% to 11% lower risk of death. Nevertheless, we still think vitamin A supplementation can be highly cost-effective. Using our updated cost-effectiveness analysis, we estimate our most recent grant for vitamin A supplementation to Helen Keller Intl is 25 times more cost-effective than our benchmark. This change reflects our more precise, location-specific analyses that allows us to direct funding to places where vitamin A supplementation is likely to be the most cost-effective.

GiveWell continues to scrutinize the programs we fund, including those we have supported for years. In this case, years of rigorous research have largely held up the case for vitamin A supplementation. We are continuing to review the program, funding new research to address remaining uncertainties and exploring whether a new randomized trial might be feasible. By doing so, we’ll continue to increase our confidence and refine our funding decisions to target the most cost-effective locations and do the most good we can with donors’ funds.

Visit our All Grants Fund page to learn more about how you can support this work, and listen or subscribe to our podcast for our latest updates.

This episode was recorded on March 25, 2026 and represents our best understanding at that time.

The post Podcast Episode 27: Scrutinizing One of Our Longest-Funded Programs appeared first on The GiveWell Blog.

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Our 2025 Grant Investigation Survey Results

When we investigate potential grants, we work closely with implementing organizations—gathering data, asking detailed questions, and assessing cost-effectiveness. Sometimes this results in us making a grant, and other times it doesn’t, but we want to ensure our process always reflects our core values of truth-seeking and transparency. So, for the second year in a row, we sent an anonymous survey to find out how we’re doing.

The survey was sent to organizations that participated in our grant investigation process from April 2024 through July 2025. We invited 122 individuals representing 75 organizations to participate—more than double last year’s sample—and we received 80 responses (a 66% response rate). Included in the total were 22 contacts from investigations that did not result in a grant, from which we received five responses.

The results were encouraging: overall satisfaction rose from 4.2 to 4.6 out of 5, with particularly high marks for honest communication and treating organizations as experts in their work. We also saw new themes emerge this year. Several respondents said they gained value from GiveWell beyond funding, through shared data from similar programs, connections to other implementers, and monitoring and evaluation guidance. Others appreciated our responsiveness during the US foreign aid freeze and resulting uncertainty.

The survey also pointed to areas we need to improve, including being clearer about why we’re asking for specific information, doing more to share what we’re learning with partners, and building a mutual understanding of monitoring and evaluation best practices. We’re actively working on these areas and plan to conduct the survey again in 2026 to track our progress. To learn more, check out our blog post.

Investing in Information for Greater Future Impact

In addition to our core grantmaking, GiveWell is funding an increasing number of grants designed to generate information that will help us direct more funding to highly cost-effective programs in the future. In 2025, we made 18 grants totaling approximately $39 million aimed specifically at improving future funding decisions.

In our latest podcast episode, GiveWell CEO and co-founder Elie Hassenfeld speaks with Program Director Julie Faller about these “value of information” grants.

Elie and Julie cover:

• Testing variations on cash transfers to improve cost-effectiveness: GiveWell funded GiveDirectly to pilot three variations of its flagship cash transfer program: grants to local businesses, targeted transfers to the poorest young adults, and pairing transfers with footbridge construction. The pilots will help us learn which approaches increase economic impact, potentially leading to more opportunities to help people in need.
• Testing a delivery model for diarrhea treatment: To explore whether door-to-door delivery could increase uptake of oral rehydration solution—an inexpensive, effective treatment for diarrhea-related dehydration—GiveWell funded a large randomized controlled trial with the Clinton Health Access Initiative in Bauchi, Nigeria. Initial results are promising, and we’re now considering whether to fund this model at scale.
• Collecting better data on a nutrition program in India: Fortify Health works to address widespread anemia in India by partnering with flour millers to fortify wheat flour with iron. GiveWell funded a household survey in six Indian cities to better understand how much fortified flour people are actually consuming, helping resolve some uncertainty about the program’s cost-effectiveness and inform our decision to renew funding.

Read our episode summary for more, and subscribe to be notified of our newest episodes.

Following the Data on Dispensers for Safe Water

As our research team has grown, we’ve become better able to collect and analyze data on how our grants are performing. When early data on Evidence Action’s Dispensers for Safe Water program suggested it might not be reaching as many people as estimated, we dug in deeper—funding independent surveys, supported by donations to the All Grants Fund, to understand why.

In a recent podcast episode, GiveWell CEO and co-founder Elie Hassenfeld and Senior Program Officer Erin Crossett discuss what the surveys revealed, how we changed course, and what those findings mean for our broader approach to monitoring.

Grant Spotlight

Our grantmaking supports programs and research that aim to save and improve lives the most per dollar. Here’s a look at one recent example:

Where: Niger State and Bauchi State, Nigeria
What: Vitamin A supplementation (VAS) to reduce childhood deaths from infectious disease, delivered alongside preventative malaria medication campaigns
Who: Malaria Consortium
Amount: $410,000 top-up, totaling $1.8 million
How it works: This grant supports the delivery of VAS alongside Malaria Consortium’s existing door-to-door seasonal malaria chemoprevention (SMC) campaigns, reaching children aged 6 to 59 months with two life-saving interventions at once for a very low additional cost.
Why this grant: We originally recommended a $1.4 million grant to Malaria Consortium in October 2023 to layer VAS onto existing SMC campaigns as a cost-effective model for reaching children at scale. In May 2025, we learned that the VAS + SMC campaign was at risk after SMC budgets were reduced. We recommended the $410,000 top-up grant to allow Malaria Consortium to proceed with the campaign in Niger State as planned.
Funded by: Donations to GiveWell’s All Grants Fund and an individual donation

To learn more, check out the grant page.

Partner Roundup

• Learn how a health worker in Madagascar is overcoming barriers to reach children with vitamin A through Helen Keller Intl’s program.
• Celebrate New Incentives’ 2025 impact—more than 1.8 million infants enrolled and over 9 million cash incentives disbursed for childhood vaccinations in Nigeria.
• Meet an SMC supervisor in Togo who helps ensure children receive preventative malaria medication during seasonal campaigns through Malaria Consortium.

Comments or Questions?

We’re always looking for fresh perspectives on our research. If you have comments or questions on our work, we want to hear from you! Reach out to us at info@givewell.org.

The post March 2026 Updates appeared first on The GiveWell Blog.

We’ve been able to take an even more expansive view as our research team doubled in size over the last several years. In addition to our core grantmaking, we’re now funding an increased number of grants designed to provide information that we think will help us direct more funding to highly cost-effective programs in the future. This includes things like generating research about program effectiveness, scoping new promising programs, and piloting program variations.

GiveWell has long made some grants aimed at improving our knowledge base, but this work has now grown substantially and become more systematic. In 2025, GiveWell made 18 grants, totaling approximately $39 million, that were aimed specifically at getting more information to improve future funding decisions. In our latest podcast episode, GiveWell CEO and co-founder Elie Hassenfeld speaks with Program Director Julie Faller about these “value of information” grants.

Elie and Julie discuss:

• Testing variations on cash transfers to improve cost-effectiveness: Following an initial scoping grant, GiveWell recently funded GiveDirectly to pilot three program variations aimed at increasing the economic impact of its flagship program, which provides unconditional cash transfers to very poor households. Each pilot tests a different approach to increasing impact: one provides grants to local businesses ahead of a cash transfer rollout, another targets transfers to the poorest young adults, and the third pairs transfers with footbridge construction to help remote communities access markets and services. Through these pilots, we expect to learn more about the feasibility and potential cost-effectiveness of the program variations, potentially leading to opportunities to help people in need even more.
• Testing a delivery model for diarrhea treatment: Oral rehydration solution—an inexpensive, effective treatment for diarrhea-related dehydration—is used by far fewer children than could benefit from it. To explore whether door-to-door delivery could increase uptake, GiveWell funded a large randomized controlled trial with the Clinton Health Access Initiative in Bauchi, Nigeria. Initial results are promising, indicating that 3,000 community distributors were able to reach about 80% of households with young children—and that ORS usage increased as a result. GiveWell is now considering whether to fund this model at scale, potentially with multiple implementers.
• Collecting better data on a nutrition program in India: GiveWell has supported Fortify Health, which works to address widespread anemia in India by partnering with flour millers to fortify wheat flour with iron. GiveWell recently funded a household survey in six Indian cities to better understand how much fortified flour people are actually consuming, and who in the household is eating it. The survey provided more information about several parameters that, taken together, allowed us to resolve some uncertainty about the program’s cost-effectiveness. We used what we learned to inform our decision to renew funding for the program.

These examples reflect a longer-term shift at GiveWell—from an organization that primarily evaluated existing programs to one that increasingly generates the evidence needed to improve its grantmaking and fund more impactful programs in the future.

Visit our All Grants Fund page to learn more about how you can support this work, and listen or subscribe to our podcast for our latest updates.

This episode was recorded on March 13, 2026 and represents our best understanding at that time.

The post Podcast Episode 26: Investing in Information for Greater Future Impact appeared first on The GiveWell Blog.

In July 2024, we sent out our first anonymous survey to people we’ve worked with during grant investigations. While we typically ask for candid, live feedback from the organizations we work with, we had not previously invited anonymous assessment of our grantmaking process. The survey sought to better understand the extent to which we live out our values in our interactions with external organizations. The questions focused on organizations’ experiences with our grant investigation process and post-grant follow-up.

In 2025, we repeated the process with the same survey instrument and compared results to the prior year, to see what had changed and whether our daily work is reflecting our core values and operating principles.

GiveWell’s second annual grant investigation survey was sent to organizations that participated in our grant investigation process from April 2024 through July 2025.¹We sent the same survey in two segments, one in February 2025 and one in September 2025. We invited a total of 122 individuals representing 75 organizations to participate, and we received 80 responses (66% response rate). Included in the total were 22 contacts from investigations that did not result in a grant, from which we received five responses.

What we learned

This year’s respondents rated their satisfaction with GiveWell’s investigation process higher than last year’s respondents: 4.6 out of 5 in 2025 compared to 4.2 out of 5 in 2024. Among the survey questions, GiveWell received particularly high scores for honest, professional, and transparent communication, and for showing respect to organizations and treating them as experts in their field.

While the response rates of the 2024 and 2025 surveys were similar—58% in 2024 compared to 66% in 2025—the sample size for the 2025 survey was substantially larger: 80 in 2025 compared to 32 in 2024. The larger sample size is largely a result of GiveWell’s rapidly increasing grant volume: we invited more than twice as many people to respond in the 2025 survey, one for each grant investigation we completed.

In addition to improvements in several areas, including overall satisfaction and satisfaction with the length of our grant investigations,²The average rating for satisfaction with the length of our investigations was 4.1 in 2025 compared to 3.8 in 2024; this remains a relative weak point. we noted two new themes in the 2025 results. First, five respondents (~6%) proactively reported gaining value from GiveWell and its network beyond funding or programmatic suggestions. This included instances where GiveWell shared data from similar programs, made suggestions based on monitoring and evaluation best practices, and connected organizations with experts or other implementers. Second, nine respondents (~11%) added comments expressing appreciation for GiveWell’s flexibility, speed, and responsiveness to the US aid freeze, cuts, and resulting uncertainty.

Additionally, the survey results indicate several key areas where we can continue to improve our grant investigation process, which we are actively working to address:

• Ensuring that we clearly communicate why we are asking for information and how the information will be used. This includes how information may impact our cost-effectiveness estimates, what we expect to learn from the grant, or how the information will feed into our qualitative decisions.
• Proactively finding more ways to share our knowledge with implementing organizations and to connect implementing organizations to each other, with subject matter experts, and with others in the field.
• Sharing what we’ve learned from monitoring and evaluation data with partners and building a shared understanding of best practices.
• Continuing to identify high-impact funding opportunities through requests for proposals and open funding calls (for example, our request for information for water chlorination programs), which are newer mechanisms for GiveWell.

Our next steps

We plan to conduct the survey again in 2026 and to collect feedback through other methods to identify areas for improvement. This will allow us to compare trends over time and look for patterns related to the size of grants, research areas, or other characteristics.

As we look to the future, we will keep working to improve GiveWell by refining our research, collecting information from people who live and work in the countries where we fund programs, and gathering feedback from the organizations carrying out those programs. All of these efforts are aimed at our core mission: delivering more impact to help those in need as much as we can, now and in years to come.

The post GiveWell’s 2025 Grant Investigation Survey Results appeared first on The GiveWell Blog.

But our work doesn’t stop there. When a program we’ve supported nears the end of their funding, we also regularly evaluate its results to decide whether to continue our support. This typically involves gathering and analyzing extensive monitoring data. In most cases, the results are consistent with what we expected, and we renew the programs’ support. But sometimes we decide that, even if a program is doing a lot of good, it may not be having the impact we expected. In that case, we decide not to renew our support and instead direct those funds to where we think they’ll do much more good for people in need.

In this episode, GiveWell CEO and co-founder Elie Hassenfeld speaks with Senior Program Officer Erin Crossett about the research that led GiveWell not to renew support for Evidence Action’s Dispensers for Safe Water—a program that installs chlorine dispensers at rural water points so that households can treat their drinking water and reduce waterborne disease—in Malawi and Uganda.

Elie and Erin discuss:

• How independent data revealed a significant gap in program reach: Early signals from a separate GiveWell-funded study and Evidence Action’s own internal review of the program in Kenya suggested chlorination rates were far lower than routine monitoring indicated. GiveWell then commissioned an independent survey in Uganda and Malawi to find out whether the same was true there. The survey found that only about a third as many people were using dispensers as previously estimated: roughly 2 million rather than 5 million.
• Potential reasons for the data discrepancy: We believe that no single error drove the discrepancy. Instead, there were five or six contributing issues that together caused the differences in estimated usage. For example, chlorine was measured by matching a test result to a color wheel, which can be subjective and affected by lighting. This data was collected by Evidence Action’s own staff, which may have led them to interpret the color wheel results more favorably.
• What GiveWell learned and its effect on future grantmaking: We believe that approving the initial grant in 2022 was the right decision, given what we knew at the time. We also think that we could have done better by, for example, investing earlier in independent verification. We now apply these lessons to our current grantmaking. For instance, our recent portfolio of safe water grants includes external surveys for all grants.

As we’ve developed and grown our research team over the past several years, we’ve become increasingly able to support additional data collection, analyze and learn from our grants, and reallocate resources to the most cost-effective global health and development needs we find.

Getting things right requires both honest self-assessment and grantee partners willing to open themselves to scrutiny, and we are grateful for Evidence Action’s partnership in identifying the discrepancy in usage rates. Evidence Action is now reducing its footprint in Uganda and Kenya, and winding down the program in Malawi, with a 24-month transition to help support communities and turn over operations to the governments where possible.

Dispensers for Safe Water is still a program that helps people, and our grant provided clean water to millions. GiveWell’s decision not to renew reflects our mission to direct donor funds to where they will do the most good—not to fund everything that does good. We are continuing to support chlorine dispensers in contexts where we believe they will be highly cost-effective. For instance, we are currently considering a grant to Evidence Action to pilot variations of the program in northern Nigeria, where disease burden is much higher than the countries where we had been funding the program—and therefore the impact per dollar might pass our high bar for funding.

Visit our All Grants Fund page to learn more about how you can support this work, and listen or subscribe to our podcast for our latest updates.

This episode was recorded on February 20, 2026 and represents our best understanding at that time.

The chlorine content in water is measured by matching the color on the color wheel (in the outer viewing window) to the color of the water sample (in the inner viewing window). The tester spins the wheel to change the color visible in the window; when the colors match, the tester reads the chlorine concentration in the lower viewing window. This process is subjective, as lighting and background colors can affect the reading.

The post Podcast Episode 25: Following the Data on Dispensers for Safe Water appeared first on The GiveWell Blog.