Alexander Berger donations made to GiveDirectly

This is an online portal with information on donations that were announced publicly (or have been shared with permission) that were of interest to Vipul Naik. The git repository with the code for this portal, as well as all the underlying data, is available on GitHub. All payment amounts are in current United States dollars (USD). The repository of donations is being seeded with an initial collation by Issa Rice as well as continued contributions from him (see his commits and the contract work page listing all financially compensated contributions to the site) but all responsibility for errors and inaccuracies belongs to Vipul Naik. Current data is preliminary and has not been completely vetted and normalized; if sharing a link to this site or any page on this site, please include the caveat that the data is preliminary (if you want to share without including caveats, please check with Vipul Naik). We expect to have completed the first round of development by the end of July 2024. See the about page for more details. Also of interest: pageview data on analytics.vipulnaik.com, tutorial in README, request for feedback to EA Forum.

Table of contents

Basic donor information

ItemValue
Country United States
Affiliated organizations (current or former; restricted to potential donees or others relevant to donation decisions)GiveWell Open Philanthropy
Facebook username alexander.is
LinkedIn username alexander-berger-58906098
Websitehttp://marginalchange.blogspot.com/
Twitter usernamealbrgr
Data entry method on Donations List WebsiteManual (no scripts used)
Org Watch pagehttps://orgwatch.issarice.com/?person=Alexander+Berger

Full donor page for donor Alexander Berger

Basic donee information

ItemValue
Country United States
Facebook page givedirectly
Websitehttps://www.givedirectly.org/
Donate pagehttps://www.givedirectly.org/give-now#
Donation case pagehttps://www.givedirectly.org/research-at-give-directly
Twitter usernameGive_Directly
Wikipedia pagehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GiveDirectly
GiveWell reviewhttps://www.givewell.org/charities/give-directly
Instagram usernamegivedirectly
Org Watch pagehttps://orgwatch.issarice.com/?organization=GiveDirectly
Key peoplePaul Niehaus|Rohit Wanchoo|Michael Faye|Jeremy Shapiro
Launch date2009

Full donee page for donee GiveDirectly

Donor–donee relationship

Item Value

Donor–donee donation statistics

Cause areaCountMedianMeanMinimum10th percentile 20th percentile 30th percentile 40th percentile 50th percentile 60th percentile 70th percentile 80th percentile 90th percentile Maximum
Overall 5 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Cash transfers 5 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

Donation amounts by cause area and year

If you hover over a cell for a given cause area and year, you will get a tooltip with the number of donees and the number of donations.

Note: Cause area classification used here may not match that used by donor for all cases.

Cause area Number of donations Total
Cash transfers (filter this donor) 5 0.00
Total 5 0.00

Skipping spending graph as there is at most one year’s worth of donations.

Full list of documents in reverse chronological order (5 documents)

Title (URL linked)Publication dateAuthorPublisherAffected donorsAffected doneesAffected influencersDocument scopeCause areaNotes
GiveWell’s Top Charities Are (Increasingly) Hard to Beat2019-07-09Alexander Berger Open PhilanthropyOpen Philanthropy GiveDirectly Against Malaria Foundation Schistosomiasis Control Initiative Target Malaria JustLeadershipUSA GiveWell Broad donor strategyGlobal health and development|Criminal justice reform|Scientific researchIn the blog post, Alexander Berger discusses how, originally, Open Philanthropy Project donations for near-term human well-being (primarily in the areas of criminal justice reform and scientific research) are compared against a cost-effectiveness benchmark of direct cash transfers, which is set as 100x (every $1 donated should yield $100 in benefits). However, since GiveWell has recently made its cost-effectiveness calculations for top charities more thorough, and now estimates that top charities are 5-15x as cost-effective as cash (or 500-1500x, with 1000x as a median), Berger is now comparing all the existing near-term human well-being grants against the 1000x benchmarks. He finds that, using the back-of-the-envelope calculations (BOTECs) done at the time of justifying the grants, many of the criminal justice reform grants do not clear the bar; in total only $32 million of the grants clears the bar, and about half of it is a single grant to Target Malaria. Berger links to https://docs.google.com/document/d/1GsE2_TNWn0x6MWL1PTdkZT2vQNFW8VFBslC5qjk4sgo/edit?ts=5cc10604 for some sample BOTECs.
Staff Members’ Personal Donations for Giving Season 20172017-12-18Holden Karnofsky Open PhilanthropyHolden Karnofsky Alexander Berger Nick Beckstead Helen Toner Claire Zabel Lewis Bollard Ajeya Cotra Morgan Davis Michael Levine GiveWell top charities GiveWell GiveDirectly EA Giving Group Berkeley Existential Risk Initiative Effective Altruism Funds Sentience Institute Encompass The Humane League The Good Food Institute Mercy For Animals Compassion in World Farming USA Animal Equality Donor lottery Against Malaria Foundation GiveDirectly Periodic donation list documentationOpen Philanthropy Project staff members describe where they are donating this year, and the considerations that went into the donation decision. By policy, amounts are not disclosed. This is the first standalone blog post of this sort by the Open Philanthropy Project; in previous years, the corresponding donations were documented in the GiveWell staff members donation post.
Staff members’ personal donations for giving season 20162016-12-09Natalie Crispin GiveWellElie Hassenfeld Holden Karnofsky Natalie Crispin Alexander Berger Timothy Telleen-Lawton Josh Rosenberg Rebecca Raible Helen Toner Sophie Monahan Laura Muñoz Catherine Hollander Andrew Martin Lewis Bollard Chelsea Tabart Sarah Ward Chris Somerville Ajeya Cotra Chris Smith Isabel Arjmand A political campaign GiveWell top charities International Genetically Engineered Machine Foundation UPMC Center for Health Security Donor lottery EA Giving Group GiveDirectly Center for Applied Rationality Malaria Consortium Animal Charity Evaluators Northwest Health Law Advocates StrongMinds Against Malaria Foundation Schistosomiasis Control Initiative The Humane Society of the United States The Humane League Mercy For Animals Humane Society International Compassion in World Farming USA The Good Food Institute Citizens for Farm Animal Protection The END Fund Causa Justa Planned Parenthood International Refugee Assistance Project Periodic donation list documentationGiveWell and Open Philanthropy Project staff describe their annual donation plans for 2016. Some of these are tentative and get superseded by further events. Also, not all employees are present in the document (participation is optional). Amounts donated are not included, per a decision by GiveWell
Staff members’ personal donations for giving season 20152015-12-09Elie Hassenfeld GiveWellElie Hassenfeld Holden Karnofsky Natalie Crispin Alexander Berger Timothy Telleen-Lawton Sean Conley Josh Rosenberg Jake Marcus Rebecca Raible Milan Griffes Helen Toner Sophie Monahan Laura Muñoz Catherine Hollander Andrew Martin Claire Zabel Nicole Ross Lewis Bollard GiveWell top charities Against Malaria Foundation GiveWell GiveDirectly Wikimedia Foundation Center for Global Development Martha’s Table Country Dance and Song Society Northwest Health Law Advocates Mercy For Animals The Humane League Animal Charity Evaluators Raising for Effective Giving Humane Society of te United States Periodic donation list documentationGiveWell and Open Philanthropy Project staff describe their annual donation plans for 2015. Some of these are tentative and get superseded by further events. Also, not all employees are present in the document (participation is optional). Amounts donated are not included, per a decision by GiveWell
Staff members’ personal donations2013-12-12Holden Karnofsky GiveWellHolden Karnofsky Elie Hassenfeld Alexander Berger Natalie Crispin Eliza Scheffler Timothy Telleen-Lawton Sean Conley Josh Rosenberg Ben Rachbach Howie Lempel Jake Marcus GiveDirectly Mercy For Animals Schistosomiasis Control Initiative Against Malaria Foundation Deworm the World Initiative The Humane Society of the United States Periodic donation list documentationGiveWell staff describe their annual donation plans for 2013. Some of these are tentative and get superseded by further events. Also, not all employees are present in the document (participation is optional). Amounts donated are not included, per a decision by GiveWell

Full list of donations in reverse chronological order (5 donations)

Graph of all donations (with known year of donation), showing the timeframe of donations

Graph of donations and their timeframes
Amount (current USD)Amount rank (out of 5)Donation dateCause areaURLInfluencerNotes
----2017-12-18Cash transfershttps://www.openphilanthropy.org/blog/staff-members-personal-donations-giving-season-2017#AlexanderGiveWell Same allocation as in 2016, for same reasons. Percentage of total donor spend in the corresponding batch of donations: 5.00%.
----2016-12-09Cash transfershttps://blog.givewell.org/2016/12/09/staff-members-personal-donations-giving-season-2016/GiveWell Same reasons as in 2015: outstanding organization and valuable for cash benchmark. Percentage of total donor spend in the corresponding batch of donations: 5.00%.
----2015-12-09Cash transfershttps://blog.givewell.org/2015/12/09/staff-members-personal-donations-for-giving-season-2015/GiveWell Outstanding organization and valuable for setting cash transfer benchmark. Percentage of total donor spend in the corresponding batch of donations: 5.00%.
----2014-12-17Cash transfershttps://blog.givewell.org/2014/12/17/staff-members-personal-donations-giving-season-2014/GiveWell Correct target after removing 10% for GiveWell and adjusting for non-donation to Deworm the World Initiative. Percentage of total donor spend in the corresponding batch of donations: 10.00%.
----2013-12-12Cash transfershttps://blog.givewell.org/2013/12/12/staff-members-personal-donations/GiveWell Actually, split evenly between giving now and waiting, but all the amount actually given went to GiveDirectly. Two main upside points: (1) May not remain a GiveWell top recommendation, so more need to grow enough to develop a non-GiveWell funding stream, (2) Helps to set cash as a baseline for recommendations. Percentage of total donor spend in the corresponding batch of donations: 100.00%.