We have published a more recent list of top charities. See our most recent list.
Thousands of hours have gone into finding our top-rated charities. They're proven, cost-effective, underfunded, and outstanding.
Top international charities
| Basics | Strengths/weaknesses | ||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Organization | Cause | Rating | Ranking | Evidence of effectiveness | Cost-effectiveness | Funding gap | Transparency | Monitoring and evaluation | |
| Village Reach | Global health: immunizations | Gold | 1 | Strong | Excellent | Significant | Excellent | Excellent | |
| Stop TB | Global health: Tuberculosis | Silver | 2 | Strong | Excellent | Significant | Above average | Strong | |
| Against Malaria Foundation | Global health: malaria | Silver | 3 | Moderate | Excellent | Significant | Excellent | Strong | |
| Small Enterprise Foundation | Economic empowerment: microfinance | Silver | 4 | Limited | Moderate | Moderate | Excellent | Strong | |
| Village Enterprise Fund | Economic empowerment: cash transfers and business training | Silver | 5 | Limited | Moderate | Moderate | Excellent | Strong | |
| Chamroeun | Economic empowerment: microfinance | Silver | 6 | Limited | Moderate | Moderate | Excellent | Strong | |
Top United States charities
| Basics | Strengths/weaknesses | ||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Organization | Cause | Rating | Ranking | Evidence of effectiveness | Cost-effectiveness | Funding gap | Transparency | Ongoing monitoring | |
| KIPP | Education: charter schools | Gold | 1 | Above average | Limited | Significant | Above average | Strong | |
| Nurse-Family Partnership | Early childhood care: nurse home visits | Gold | 2 | Strong | Limited | Only long term | Above average | Excellent | |
| Invest in Kids | Youth behavior | Silver | 3 | Above average | Limited | Moderate | Strong | Strong | |
Top charities, by cause
| Cause | Top charity in cause | Rating |
|---|---|---|
| Global health | Village Reach | Gold |
| Tuberculosis | Stop TB | Silver |
| Malaria | Against Malaria Foundation | Silver |
| HIV/AIDS | PSI | Notable |
| Microfinance | Small Enterprise Foundation | Silver |
| Other economic empowerment | Village Enterprise Fund | Silver |
| Cleft palate surgery | ReSurge International (formerly Interplast) | Notable |
| Developing-world education | Pratham | Notable |
| US education | KIPP | Gold |
| US early childhood care | Nurse-Family Partnership | Gold |
| US youth behavior | Invest in Kids | Silver |
Our charity evaluation process
For specifics, see our process for international charities and our process for U.S. charities.
GiveWell's process broadly consists of:
- Examine hundreds of charities and relevant academic literature
- Deeply investigate the most promising charities by our criteria
- Publish all the details of our charity recommendations and the full details of our reasoning on this website
Evaluation criteria
We look for charities that are proven, cost-effective, have "room for more funding," and are transparent. More information is available on our criteria page.
Identifying charities
We cast the net as wide as we can to consider as many charities as possible, reviewing hundreds of charities' websites and more deeply investigating the most promising ones. We identify charities from sources, including:
- Submissions to our website
- Grantees of other major funders such as the Skoll, Gates, or Mulago foundations
- Partners of research organizations such as the Poverty Action Lab or Innovations for Poverty Action
In-depth charity reviews
We perform in-depth reviews of charities that meet our heuristics for further evaluation. These are a relatively small subset of all the charities we consider and are those we believe have a reasonable chance of receiving our recommendation.
We begin our process by reviewing all publicly available information about a charity including its website, external evaluations, and other relevant information.
We then try and speak directly with a member of a charity's senior management, who can answer questions about the organization's overall activities and process for evaluating its impact.
We also often request additional documents and information which we analyze and incorporate into our review process.