Alexander Berger donations made to GiveWell

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 GiveWell.org
Websitehttps://www.givewell.org
Donate pagehttps://secure.givewell.org/support-givewell
Transparency and financials pagehttps://www.givewell.org/about/official-records
Donation case pagehttps://blog.givewell.org/2015/12/25/december-2015-update-on-givewells-funding-needs/
Twitter usernamegivewell
Wikipedia pagehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GiveWell
Timelines wiki pagehttps://timelines.issarice.com/wiki/Timeline_of_GiveWell
Org Watch pagehttps://orgwatch.issarice.com/?organization=GiveWell
Key peopleHolden Karnofsky|Elie Hassenfeld
Launch date2007

This entity has also influenced donations by others.

Full donee page for donee GiveWell

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 4 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Charity evaluator 4 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
Charity evaluator (filter this donor) 4 0.00
Total 4 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
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 donations – giving season 20142014-12-17Holden Karnofsky GiveWellElie Hassenfeld Holden Karnofsky Natalie Crispin Alexander Berger Eliza Scheffler Timothy Telleen-Lawton Josh Rosenberg Ben Rachbach Jake Marcus Rebecca Raible Milan Griffes Tyler Heishman GiveWell top charities Against Malaria Foundation Schistosomiasis Control Initiative Deworm the World Initiative GiveWell standout charities Periodic donation list documentationGiveWell staff describe their annual donation plans for 2014. 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 (4 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 4)Donation dateCause areaURLInfluencerNotes
----2017-12-18Charity evaluatorhttps://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%.
----2016-12-09Charity evaluatorhttps://blog.givewell.org/2016/12/09/staff-members-personal-donations-giving-season-2016/GiveWell Same reasons as in 2015: set a norm of donors giving to GiveWell to support their research. Percentage of total donor spend in the corresponding batch of donations: 5.00%.
----2015-12-09Charity evaluatorhttps://blog.givewell.org/2015/12/09/staff-members-personal-donations-for-giving-season-2015/GiveWell Reduced from 10% to 5% from last year. Reasons for donating a bit to GiveWell same as last year: wants to set and follow a norm of donating a bit to GiveWell. Due to increase in money moved (relative to cost of running GiveWell), reducing percentage from 10% to 5%. Percentage of total donor spend in the corresponding batch of donations: 5.00%.
----2014-12-17Charity evaluatorhttps://blog.givewell.org/2014/12/17/staff-members-personal-donations-giving-season-2014/GiveWell Does not like dynamic of asking people familiar with GiveWel work to donate entirely to GiveWell instead of top charities, and thinks a 10% to GiveWell rule makes more sense. So, doing that himself. Percentage of total donor spend in the corresponding batch of donations: 10.00%.