Earlier in our history as an organization, GiveWell reviewed hundreds of organizations, looking for cost-effective opportunities to improve global well-being.
In order to maintain transparency and provide a historical record of our review process, reviews we published in 2012 or earlier are available here. Note that the content of these reviews is likely to be no longer fully accurate, both with respect to what it says about the organizations and with respect to what it implies about our own views and positions. (Reviews of organizations published more recently can be found by searching on GiveWell's website.)
GiveWell's current research process generally begins by identifying promising programs. Once we have found programs that appear cost-effective, we then identify organizations that effectively implement those programs and investigate specific funding opportunities. As a result, most of our published research describes either specific programs (see our program reviews) or specific funding opportunities we've recommended (see the grants we've recommended) rather than organizations as a whole.
(October 2021 version of this page)