Our World in Data — Unrestricted Funding (April 2024)

Note: This page summarizes the rationale behind a GiveWell grant to Our World in Data. Our World in Data staff reviewed this page prior to publication.

Published: August 2024

Background

Our World in Data (OWID) is a collaborative research project between researchers at the University of Oxford and the Global Change Data Lab, a non-profit.1 OWID publishes research and data on a number of cause areas related to GiveWell’s work.2 It also produces work on other cause areas, such as existential risk and technological change.

We believe the research and data published by OWID is of high quality, and we have frequently drawn on it in the past. In addition, we believe OWID may play a role in raising the salience of global health topics among the wider public and with key decision-makers.3

The grant

We are recommending a grant of $400,000 to OWID. This grant is unrestricted, meaning that OWID can use the funds at its own discretion. However, as a rough indication, we think this grant is likely to be spent on OWID’s institutional and technological infrastructure, and its administrative costs.4 We think it is less likely to go toward specific research projects.

The case for the grant

We are recommending this grant because:

• OWID is resource that we draw upon frequently at GiveWell, and this grant will provide broad support for its operations. Our understanding is that the majority of OWID’s large donors focus on providing funding for specific research projects, and that OWID’s overheads are comparatively neglected. Therefore, we think unrestricted funding may be particularly valuable to OWID, and represents the appropriate way to provide reciprocal support for an organization whose research we value highly.
• We think now is the right opportunity to make this grant. OWID told us that it is currently working on a long-term strategy that it believes could accelerate its growth in the future.5 By supporting OWID now, we expect to allow OWID’s leadership team to shift more of their attention toward this project, and reduce the amount of time they spend fundraising.

Reservations

We think this grant is low risk. We are not certain that our unrestricted grant will lead to activity that directly supports GiveWell’s work in future. However, we think this is a worthwhile trade-off, as the purpose of this grant is to support OWID as an organization, rather than directly generate value for GiveWell. More generally, GiveWell’s discretionary grants have a lower burden of proof of impact, due to the small size of the grants and the comparatively limited time we spend evaluating them.

Plans for follow up

We plan to check in with OWID every six months to learn about their progress and development as an organization. We do not anticipate renewing this grant.

Our process

In February 2024, OWID discussed with GiveWell the possibility of us providing support. In line with our policy for small discretionary grantmaking, we conducted a relatively minimal investigation of this opportunity, based on two conversations with OWID, a review of materials that OWID shared with us, and an exchange of further questions over email.

Relationship disclosure

Rachel Glennerster, Associate Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago, is on both GiveWell’s Research Council, and Our World in Data’s Board of Trustees. GiveWell did not discuss this grant with Professor Glennerster prior to recommending it, nor was she involved in OWID’s preparation for its grant application.

Sources

Document	Source
Our World in Data, “About”	Source (archive)
Our World in Data, email to GiveWell, April 5, 2024	Unpublished
Our World in Data, "Impact Report", 2022	Unpublished
Our World in Data, “Our Organization”	Source (archive)

• 1

  “Our World in Data is produced as a collaborative effort between researchers at the University of Oxford, who are the scientific contributors of the website content; and the non-profit organization Global Change Data Lab, who owns, publishes and maintains the website and the data tools.” Our World in Data, “Our Organization.”

• 2

  “Poverty, disease, hunger, climate change, war, existential risks, and inequality: The world faces many great and terrifying problems. It is these large problems that our work at Our World in Data focuses on … The goal of our work is to make the knowledge on the big problems accessible and understandable. As we say on our homepage, Our World in Data’s mission is to publish the 'research and data to make progress against the world’s largest problems.'” Our World in Data, “About.”

• 3

  The plausibility of OWID’s broader impact is based on statistics and case studies in Our World in Data, “Impact Report,” 2022 (unpublished).

• 4

  This expectation is based on Our World in Data, email to GiveWell, April 5, 2024 (unpublished).

• 5

  This understanding is based on our call with Our World in Data on April 3, 2024 (unpublished).