It was an active choice to not make this post a structured point-by-point debate with GiveWell’s thinking as theirs is not the only guiding philosophy of how EAs think about issues of global health and development. With much of the $200B/year in Official Development Assistance going to interventions of question effectiveness and over a trillion dollars sitting in private foundations, the EA movement can and should open the aperture of how it thinks about what it recommends beyond the marginal donation.
We’re optimistic the movement could influence existing pots of money orders of magnitude larger than what it does today, thus doing even more good in the world. This could perhaps have been more clearly argued in the post, open to your thoughts / feedback!
That said, we have engaged with the the question of GiveWell under-valuing cash both in this post and in previous posts (see below)
How you score ‘effectiveness’ is ultimately subjective (see our blog), but it’s worth considering the vast range of benefits this single intervention can have
As that previous blog points out, “[GiveWell’s moral weight approach] results in a spreadsheet. This framework combines the views of a relatively small number of stakeholders and then applies those outcomes to millions of people. GiveDirectly believes that the weights that should count the most are those of the specific people we’re trying to help. Each individual will have their own specific needs, preferences, and aspirations. We have yet to see a place we worked in (village, county, country) where everyone made the same investments, so why prescribe the same solution for everyone? Why not treat each individual person living in poverty as exactly that, respecting their individuality and allowing them the dignity of pursuing their own goals?” This is to say, we don’t subscribe to GiveWell’s moral weights approach, but instead hold recipient’s preference as our north star.
While addressing diseases like malaria or river-blindness would reduce suffering, they are only endemic in some but not all places with high extreme poverty – in 2021, malaria impacted only a third of the extreme poor.[12] Giving cash is impactful nearly everywhere that extreme poverty persists.
The global health and development issues GiveWell’s list targets are relatively niche compared to the wide applicability of cash transfers. The funding gap opportunities they’ve identify are more limited still.
[Footnote] It’s worth noting that the charity evaluator GiveWell does not currently factor in these multiplier research results into their cost effectiveness analysis for GiveDirectly.
GiveWell is likely undervaluing cash by their own moral weight terms based on the research they have right now. They’ve commissioned other research that may further change their own ranking.
We do have a page in Arabic for non-English readers. However, an important part of building trust with zakat givers is transparency and directness (donor=>GiveDirectly=>Yemeni recipient). Rather than market/collect zakat through another organization as a pass-through, we opted to stick with the simplicity that has appealed to other donors. UNHCR is a secular organization with a successful zakat campaign marketed under their name, albeit a much more famous name than GiveDirectly.
Another way we plan to bridge the gap: working with Muslim groups and influencers to share the campaign.