Center for Effective Global Action at UC Berkeley — Unrestricted Funding (December 2023)

Note: This page summarizes the rationale behind a GiveWell grant to the Center for Effective Global Action (CEGA). CEGA staff reviewed this page prior to publication.

Published: March 2024

Background

CEGA is a global health and development research hub based at the University of California, Berkeley.1
By supporting graduate students’ research projects, CEGA seeks to grow the evidence base for cost-effective and policy-relevant global health, education, and economic interventions, which GiveWell or other funders may then support.2 CEGA is also involved in policy dissemination and in strengthening the global health and development research community.3 GiveWell has funded numerous programs that were originally funded by CEGA or influenced by CEGA research,4 and we think CEGA is well-aligned with GiveWell’s values of transparency, evidence, and impact.5

The discretionary grant we have recommended aims to support CEGA’s ability to invest in high-impact funding opportunities in this research field. The grant is unrestricted, meaning that CEGA can use the funds at its discretion. However, as a rough indication, we expect the grant may be used for activities including (a) seed funding for graduate students or early-career researchers, (b) policy dissemination, or (c) filling gaps in the global development research ecosystem as CEGA perceives them.6

Case for the grant

• This grant could enable new, highly promising research in global health and development, which may lead funders to make highly impactful grants in the future. We think CEGA is well placed to identify high-impact avenues for research. By increasing CEGA’s funding, we may increase the number of research projects CEGA is able to support. In turn, this may lead to highly promising funding opportunities for GiveWell or other funders, shifting our or others’ grantmaking toward more impactful interventions than would otherwise have been funded.
• This grant could support the overall trajectory of the global development community, of which CEGA is an important part. By supporting CEGA, we think our grant may lead to a number of potential benefits, such as crowding new talent into global development-focused research, or speeding up the adoption of research-based practices in low- and middle-income country contexts. We expect the exact nature of these benefits to vary based on how CEGA chooses to use our grant.

Reservations

• There is no guarantee this grant will lead to activity that directly impacts GiveWell’s work. We have recommended an unrestricted grant, as we think CEGA is best placed to judge how to put our funding to effective use. However, this could mean that our grant is not directed toward the opportunities that are best aligned with our own organizational goals, or with the case for the grant that we outlined above.
• It is difficult to predict the counterfactual value of this grant. We are unable to know whether projects funded by CEGA otherwise would have received support. This makes it difficult to predict or assess the impact of this grant.

Plans for follow up

We plan to check in every six months with CEGA to learn about the progress of this grant.

Sources

Document	Source
CEGA, “About CEGA”	Source (archive)
CEGA, “Concept Note”, 2023	Unpublished
CEGA, "Our Values"	Source (archive)
CEGA, “Returns to Seed Funding”, 2023	Unpublished
GiveWell, Small Discretionary Grantmaking	Source

• 1

  “The Center for Effective Global Action (CEGA) is a hub for research, training and innovation headquartered at the University of California, Berkeley. We generate insights that leaders can use to improve policies, programs, and people’s lives.” CEGA, “About CEGA”.

• 2

  “CEGA [supports] research led by graduate students, which goes a long way towards generating new evidence while building sustainable research capacity. Between 2011-2023, CEGA awarded more than $811k to 93 graduate student projects in 31 countries. Seed funding enables junior researchers to take a leadership role in designing and implementing field studies that improve the lives of those living in poverty, either by building on existing work or examining entirely new questions that bring innovation to global development.” CEGA, “Concept Note”, 2023 (unpublished).

• 3
  • “CEGA ensures that the evidence, insights, and tools we generate are effectively delivered (and put to use) by leaders by promoting meaningful collaboration between researchers and policymakers”
  • “CEGA improves the quality and credibility of the data, evidence, tools and analytical methods used to drive large-scale societal impact by promoting high standards for research transparency and reproducibility”.
  • "CEGA advances diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice in our work and across the evidence-informed policy ecosystem by elevating low- and middle-income country scholars, women, and underrepresented groups and building scholars' skills and capabilities to produce policy-relevant evidence and communications."

  CEGA, “About CEGA”.

• 4

  CEGA, “Returns to Seed Funding”, 2023 (unpublished).

• 5

  For more information on CEGA’s values, see CEGA, “Our Values”.

• 6

  This understanding is based on conversations with CEGA over time.