IDinsight — Embedded GiveWell Team (2017)

Published: October 2017

Note: This page summarizes the rationale behind a GiveWell Incubation Grant to IDinsight. IDinsight staff reviewed this page prior to publication.

As part of GiveWell’s work to support the creation of future top charities and improve the quality of our recommendations, in May of 2017, IDinsight received a GiveWell Incubation Grant of $2,321,617 to support its GiveWell-embedded team for the next twelve months. This grant is in addition to June 2016 and October 2016 GiveWell Incubation Grants to IDinsight.

IDinsight supports and conducts rigorous evaluations of development interventions, often involving randomized controlled trials (RCTs), with an explicit focus on partnering with funders and policy makers to use data to inform key strategy decisions. This "decision-focused evaluation" model appears to us to be both uncommon and particularly aligned with GiveWell's goals. We therefore see working with IDinsight as a promising way of supporting the development of future GiveWell top charities.

The funding from this grant is intended to significantly expand the staff capacity of IDinsight's GiveWell-embedded team, and will likely support activities similar to some of the following:

• New Incentives: Conduct an RCT of New Incentives' conditional cash transfer (CCT) program incentivizing mothers to vaccinate their infants.
• Fistula: Conduct a fistula surgery project to analyze the cost-effectiveness of fistula surgery and potentially identify a fistula surgery organization to partner with on monitoring and evaluation improvements, with the goal of helping the organization qualify as a GiveWell top charity.
• Cataracts: Conduct a cataract surgery project to identify a promising cataract surgery organization to work with, with the goal of improving its monitoring and evaluation data so that it can qualify as a GiveWell top charity.
• Beneficiary preferences: Design and pilot survey techniques to gather information on the preferences of GiveWell top charity beneficiaries in order to compare health vs. non-health interventions to use in GiveWell's cost-effectiveness analyses.
• Monitoring support for top charities: Establish standards for monitoring best practices and work with select top charities to implement those practices.
• Incubation program for new charities: Explore the possibility of creating a formal incubation program to support new charities with top charity potential.

In addition to the above, this funding allows some flexibility for GiveWell and IDinsight to explore and approve new activities throughout the duration of the grant period.

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