My sense is that UNICEF is the most effective big (health) charity—they do lots of highly effective health interventions:
they deliver 20-30 million bednets every year—for comparison AMF has delivered 6-7 since its inception
they also spend lots of money on vaccinations, which are likely to be more effective than bednets (though better funded due to GAVI)
big on HIV spending
But their effectiveness might be diluted because they spend money on non-priority interventions and countries that are not among the least developed countries such as the DRC, where AMF is active.
One thing that has changed since the Givewell posts have been written is that UN agencies (among them UNICEF) have become more transparent, but it’s still hard to see what exactly they spend their money on:
ati.publishwhatyoufund.org/index-2014/results/
You can see UNICEF’s spending on their 7 programme areas here:
where they give a breakdown of what they spend their money on in the programme areas (it’s still quite crude, I couldn’t find out what they spend on which vaccine, but the data might be out there- I just couldn’t find it).
You could do a back of the envelope calculation and see whether they’re on average better than AMF, and I would not be super terribly surprised, but that doesn’t mean that your marginal dollar that you donate to UNICEF will have a bigger impact. It’s very difficult to properly ring fence money and restrict funding to priority areas when giving to UNICEF as a small donor, because they might just shift money around (using their considerable unrestricted funding to do that). I’m also not sure whether when you go on the UNICEF website and click ‘I want to provide a family with a bednet’, whether that then is really going into the restricted funding pot.
If the EA movement were to grow considerably, we might be able to ringfence money properly, by looking at UNICEFs projected spending and the immunization expenditure line and then say ‘we want you to spend more on immunizations’ or use Social Impact Bonds: ‘if everyone in country x is immunized against measles, the EA community will pay X million $’.
Givewell has recently had a post on ‘Charities we’d like to see’ and they wish for an immunization charity, but I’m not sure whether there ever will be one.
This is an excellent question.
Givewell has written about this:
http://www.givewell.org/search/google/Mega-charities?query=Mega-charities&cx=007119284953973998335%3Arwakucpx-to&cof=FORID%3A11&sitesearch=&safe=medium
My sense is that UNICEF is the most effective big (health) charity—they do lots of highly effective health interventions:
they deliver 20-30 million bednets every year—for comparison AMF has delivered 6-7 since its inception
they also spend lots of money on vaccinations, which are likely to be more effective than bednets (though better funded due to GAVI)
big on HIV spending
But their effectiveness might be diluted because they spend money on non-priority interventions and countries that are not among the least developed countries such as the DRC, where AMF is active.
One thing that has changed since the Givewell posts have been written is that UN agencies (among them UNICEF) have become more transparent, but it’s still hard to see what exactly they spend their money on: ati.publishwhatyoufund.org/index-2014/results/
You can see UNICEF’s spending on their 7 programme areas here:
http://www.unicef.org/strategicplan/files/2013-ABL4-Integrated_budget-ODS-English.pdf
and then look at the thematic reports here:
http://www.unicef.org/publicpartnerships/66662_66837.html
where they give a breakdown of what they spend their money on in the programme areas (it’s still quite crude, I couldn’t find out what they spend on which vaccine, but the data might be out there- I just couldn’t find it).
You could do a back of the envelope calculation and see whether they’re on average better than AMF, and I would not be super terribly surprised, but that doesn’t mean that your marginal dollar that you donate to UNICEF will have a bigger impact. It’s very difficult to properly ring fence money and restrict funding to priority areas when giving to UNICEF as a small donor, because they might just shift money around (using their considerable unrestricted funding to do that). I’m also not sure whether when you go on the UNICEF website and click ‘I want to provide a family with a bednet’, whether that then is really going into the restricted funding pot.
If the EA movement were to grow considerably, we might be able to ringfence money properly, by looking at UNICEFs projected spending and the immunization expenditure line and then say ‘we want you to spend more on immunizations’ or use Social Impact Bonds: ‘if everyone in country x is immunized against measles, the EA community will pay X million $’.
Givewell has recently had a post on ‘Charities we’d like to see’ and they wish for an immunization charity, but I’m not sure whether there ever will be one.