It costs GiveWell money to do evaluation. Is that charitable expense worth it?
We strongly feel that it is. We believe, mostly intuitively but also based on the research we’ve done, that an excellent charity can be several times more effective than an average one – and that many charities may not be helping people in any significant way at all. In this context, spending time and money on evaluating charities – rather than just funding them – seems easily justified. We believe that our research speaks for itself on this matter; we encourage you to read our reports and determine whether the differences between charities that we’ve identified are large enough to justify our costs.
