Why effective giving?
Americans donated $600 billion to charity in 2024. This generosity is extraordinary, yet much of its potential impact is left on the table.
In recent years, researchers have begun rigorously studying charities' cost-effectiveness, much like investors evaluate which companies deliver the strongest returns. They ask questions such as: "How much does it cost for a charity's program to save a life?" or "Which interventions generate the greatest societal improvement?".
The results are striking. Charity evaluators find that some charities can be 100 times as effective as typical charities.
Giving Multiplier relies on evidence-based recommendations from the expert charity evaluators GiveWell, Animal Charity Evaluators, and Founders Pledge. Their independent researchers evaluate and identify the highest impact opportunities available to donors.
Importance
When you give to charity, the goal isn’t just to feel good — it’s also to make a real difference for others.
The impact of your donation often depends far more on where you give than how much you give. In many cases, $100 to a highly effective charity can accomplish more than $10,000 to a typical charity. This surprising fact can be very empowering for everyday donors who want to do as much good as they can.
Just as the best athletes, artists, and businesses can drastically outperform others, so do charities. But charities aren't usually compared in this way, so the superstars are less visible. Yet superstar charities exist, and their outstanding impact has been identified by independent charity evaluators. Super-effective charities offer donors an exceptional opportunity to do far more good with the same resources.
Measurement
A common misconception is that charity cost-effectiveness is about keeping administrative costs low. But overhead such as staff salaries or fundraising budgets tells you fairly little about actual impact.
Successful organizations in any field invest in talented people, infrastructure, and research because that is what enables meaningful results. Well-run charities are no different. The right question isn't "How little can you spend?", but "How much good can you do with the money you spend?"
Measuring impact is challenging, but it's absolutely possible. Medicine faces similar questions when comparing treatments by how many lives they save, how much they improve quality of life, and how much they cost. Healthcare economists developed rigorous cost-effectiveness methods to answer these challenging decisions. Charity evaluators apply similar principles to help donors identify the opportunities that generate the greatest benefit per dollar.
Choosing causes
Donating effectively requires identifying the most pressing problems. This means focusing on causes that are:
a) Big: Affecting many individuals
b) Solvable: Able to make progress
c) Neglected: Much more progress to be made
Using this framework, our super-effective charities address the following causes (and the charity evaluators we use):
i) Global health & poverty (GiveWell)
ii) Farm animal welfare (Animal Charity Evaluators)
iii) Catastrophic risk reduction (Founders Pledge)
Resources
Introduction to effective giving
Effective Giving 101 (Giving What We Can)
How Much Does It Cost To Save a Life? (GiveWell)
How we think about charity evaluation (Founders Pledge)
Why Farmed Animals? (Animal Charity Evaluators)
Psychology of charitable giving
Giving Multiplier was co-founded by academic researchers at Harvard University who study the psychology of charitable giving. Here's a selection of media coverage about our work:
Articles
Making Charitable Giving More Competent (Harvard Magazine)
Giving with your head and your heart: combining evidence and personal connection in your charitable giving (Charityvest)
Podcasts
How to Give More Effectively (The Happiness Lab)
Trolleyology (MORAL DILEMMAS + THE TROLLEY PROBLEM) with Joshua Greene (Ologies with Alie Ward)
Effectively encouraging people to give more (Clearer Thinking)