Doing Good Better: Effective Altruism and a Radical New Way to Make a Difference

by William MacAskill

Below are the five questions I think any donor should ask before deciding where to give. They are based on the criteria used by the charity evaluator GiveWell, which has spent the last eight years investigating which charities improve lives the most with the donations they receive: What does this charity do? How many different types of programmes does it run? For each of these programmes, what exactly is it that this charity does? If it runs more than one programme, why is that? How cost-effective is each programme area? Is the charity focused on one of the most important causes? How cost-effective does the evidence suggest the programme to be? How robust is the evidence behind each programme? What is the evidence behind the programmes that the charity runs? Are there trials showing that the programme is effective? Does the charity rigorously monitor and evaluate the success of its programmes? How well is each programme implemented? Do the leaders of the charity have demonstrated success in other areas? Is the charity highly transparent? Does it acknowledge mistakes that it’s made in the past? What are the alternative charities you could give to? Are there good reasons for supposing that this charity is better than others? Does the charity need additional funds? What would additional funding be used to do? Why haven’t other donors already funded the charity to the point it can’t use extra money?