Hey—I think it’s important to clarify that EAIF is optimising for something fairly different from GiveWell (although we share the same broad aim):
Specifically, GiveWell is optimising for lives saved in the next few years, under the constraint of health projects in LMICs, with a high probability of impact and fairly immediate / verifable results.
Meanwhile, EAIF is focused on a hits-based, low-certainty area, where the evidence base is weaker, grants have longer paths to impact, and the overarching goal is often unclear.
As such, a direct/equivalent comparison is fairly challenging, with our “bar for funding” fairly different to GiveWell’s. The other caveat is that we don’t have a systematic process for retroactively classifying grants as “wins” or “losses”—our current M&E process is much more fuzzy.
Given this, any answer about the cost-effectiveness of GiveWell vs EAIF will be pretty subjective and prone to error.
Nonetheless, my personal opinion is that the mean EAIF grant is likely more impactful than the typical GiveWell grant. Very briefly, this is becuase:
I think many of our grants have / would have a >1x multiplier on donations to GiveWell top charities, if we evaluated them under this framework (as outlined here)
Further, I think there are more impactful ways to save / improve the lives of current people than donating to GiveWell’s top charities; and I think there are even greater opportunities for impact (via improving animal welfare, or the long-term future). Many of EAIF’s grantees cover more than just fundraising for effective global health charities, and thus I expect they will (on average) have a higher impact
But this is just my personal view, contingent on a very large number of assumptions, which people very reasonably disagree on.
Hey—I think it’s important to clarify that EAIF is optimising for something fairly different from GiveWell (although we share the same broad aim):
Specifically, GiveWell is optimising for lives saved in the next few years, under the constraint of health projects in LMICs, with a high probability of impact and fairly immediate / verifable results.
Meanwhile, EAIF is focused on a hits-based, low-certainty area, where the evidence base is weaker, grants have longer paths to impact, and the overarching goal is often unclear.
As such, a direct/equivalent comparison is fairly challenging, with our “bar for funding” fairly different to GiveWell’s. The other caveat is that we don’t have a systematic process for retroactively classifying grants as “wins” or “losses”—our current M&E process is much more fuzzy.
Given this, any answer about the cost-effectiveness of GiveWell vs EAIF will be pretty subjective and prone to error.
Nonetheless, my personal opinion is that the mean EAIF grant is likely more impactful than the typical GiveWell grant. Very briefly, this is becuase:
I think many of our grants have / would have a >1x multiplier on donations to GiveWell top charities, if we evaluated them under this framework (as outlined here)
Further, I think there are more impactful ways to save / improve the lives of current people than donating to GiveWell’s top charities; and I think there are even greater opportunities for impact (via improving animal welfare, or the long-term future). Many of EAIF’s grantees cover more than just fundraising for effective global health charities, and thus I expect they will (on average) have a higher impact
But this is just my personal view, contingent on a very large number of assumptions, which people very reasonably disagree on.