GiveWell Incubation Grants donations made to IDinsight

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 Good Ventures
Best overview URLhttps://www.givewell.org/research/incubation-grants
Websitehttps://www.givewell.org/research/incubation-grants
Donations URLhttps://www.givewell.org/research/incubation-grants
Regularity with which donor updates donations datacontinuous updates
Regularity with which Donations List Website updates donations data (after donor update)continuous updates
Lag with which donor updates donations datamonths
Lag with which Donations List Website updates donations data (after donor update)days
Data entry method on Donations List WebsiteManual (no scripts used)

Brief history: GiveWell Incubation Grants start off as GiveWell Experimental, with the goal of supporting the growth and discovery of future GiveWell top charities

Brief notes on broad donor philosophy and major focus areas: The focus is on charities that have a decent chance (usually, 10% or more at the time of the grant) of becoming GiveWell top charities, and also on academic research or evaluation processes that would help better evaluate or help improve current or future GiveWell top charities

Notes on grant decision logistics: Organizations may apply by contacting info@givewell.org but more details on the decision process are not publicly stated

Notes on grant publication logistics: Each grant has a separate page. The grant has four associated dates: a grant date (called donation date on the Donations List Website; this is the date the grant is made), a grant announcement date (called donation announcement date; this is the date the grant page is made public and announced on the mailing list), and dates that the grant is made public in the grants databases on the websites of Open Philanthropy and Good Ventures. The latter two dates do not concern us, since they essentially just link to the GiveWell Incubation Grants grant page. The grant page is reviewed by grantee staff prior to publication

Notes on grant financing: After GiveWell decides on a grant, the grant is recommended to Open Philanthropy, which in turn recommends to Good Ventures to fund the grant. Historically, grant requests were made directly to Good Ventures, and even now, in practice, the intermediate role of Open Philanthropy is mostly just a formality. For these reasons, the cross-posting of the grants to Open Philanthropy and Good Ventures pages is not of substantive interest to us. Even though the grants are listed in Open Philanthropy database, they are not included in Open Philanthropy self-reports of how much grant money they decided on. Occasionally, however, grants listed under GiveWell Incubation Grants are financed via Effective Altruism Funds (specifically, the Global Health and Development Fund). We list these grants only under Effective Altruism Funds and not under GiveWell Incubation Grants

Miscellaneous notes: List last checked for completeness and accuracy on 2017-12-24

Full donor page for donor GiveWell Incubation Grants

Basic donee information

ItemValue
Country
Websitehttp://idinsight.org/

Full donee page for donee IDinsight

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 7 474,374 930,168 34,382 34,382 184,324 314,752 314,752 474,374 1,196,729 1,196,729 1,985,000 2,321,617 2,321,617
Global health and development 2 34,382 254,378 34,382 34,382 34,382 34,382 34,382 34,382 474,374 474,374 474,374 474,374 474,374
Conditional cash transfers 1 184,324 184,324 184,324 184,324 184,324 184,324 184,324 184,324 184,324 184,324 184,324 184,324 184,324
Consulting 3 1,196,729 1,277,699 314,752 314,752 314,752 314,752 1,196,729 1,196,729 1,196,729 2,321,617 2,321,617 2,321,617 2,321,617
Nonprofit ecosystem 1 1,985,000 1,985,000 1,985,000 1,985,000 1,985,000 1,985,000 1,985,000 1,985,000 1,985,000 1,985,000 1,985,000 1,985,000 1,985,000

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 2019 2018 2017 2016 2014
Consulting (filter this donor) 3 3,833,098.00 0.00 1,196,729.00 2,321,617.00 314,752.00 0.00
Nonprofit ecosystem (filter this donor) 1 1,985,000.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 1,985,000.00 0.00
Global health and development (filter this donor) 2 508,756.00 474,374.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 34,382.00
Conditional cash transfers (filter this donor) 1 184,324.00 184,324.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00
Total 7 6,511,178.00 658,698.00 1,196,729.00 2,321,617.00 2,299,752.00 34,382.00

Graph of spending by cause area and year (incremental, not cumulative)

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Graph of spending by cause area and year (cumulative)

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Full list of documents in reverse chronological order (0 documents)

There are no documents associated with this combination of donor and donee.

Full list of donations in reverse chronological order (7 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 7)Donation dateCause areaURLInfluencerNotes
474,374.0042019-03Global health and development/feedback collectionhttps://www.givewell.org/research/incubation-grants/IDinsight-beneficiary-preferences-march-2019-- Intended use of funds (category): Direct project expenses

Intended use of funds: Grant to support a scaled-up study surveying potential beneficiaries of GiveWell top charities about the relative value they place on different good outcomes, such as averting a death or doubling a household's income. The research aims to inform GiveWell's approach to two questions: (1) Valuing health vs. income, (2) Age-weighting. The pilot phase of this work was conducted by IDinsight using an April 2018 grant https://www.givewell.org/research/incubation-grants/IDinsight-embedded-givewell-team-2018 IDinsight expects its total budget of $474,374 to break down roughly as follows: IDinsight staff costs: $364,160; Fieldwork: $104,214; Other costs: $6,000

Donor reason for selecting the donee: GiveWell has worked closely with IDinsight in the past on related work, including on the pilot phase of this project conducted by IDinsight using an April 2018 grant https://www.givewell.org/research/incubation-grants/IDinsight-embedded-givewell-team-2018 so it is natural to continue the work with IDinsight

Donor reason for donating that amount (rather than a bigger or smaller amount): Amount likely determined based on budget calculation. IDinsight expects its total budget of $474,374 to break down roughly as follows: IDinsight staff costs: $364,160; Fieldwork: $104,214; Other costs: $6,000

Other notes: GiveWell lists some open questions: (1) How reliable will this study's results be relative to the results of similar studies conducted in high-income countries? (2) To what extent will this study's results influence our approach to valuing health vs. income or age-weighting? (3) How can we encourage more research to be conducted on the moral values of people living in poverty in low-income countries?. Announced: 2019-05-22.
184,324.0062019-02Conditional cash transfershttps://www.givewell.org/research/incubation-grants/IDinsight-new-incentives-february-2019-- Intended use of funds (category): Direct project expenses

Intended use of funds: This relatively small grant is intended to cover IDinsight's staff costs from February to May 2019 for the randomized controlled trial (RCT) it is conducting on New Incentives' conditional cash transfers program. (1) IDinsight aims to have finished its midline analysis. (2) GiveWell plans to have agreed with IDinsight on key design elements for the RCT's endline survey that affect the budget. (3) GiveWell plan to finalize a budget with IDinsight for the remainder of this work that we agree achieves the right balance of a) value of information generated by the endline survey and b) cost. GiveWell expects the results of the RCT to affect whether New Incentives becomes a GiveWell top charity

Donor reason for selecting the donee: GiveWell is interested in having the randomized controlled trial (RCT) from IDinsight so that it can decide whether to give New Incentives top charity status. GiveWell already financed earlier stages of this work with the August 2018 grant https://www.givewell.org/research/incubation-grants/IDinsight-embedded-givewell-team-2018#About_the_grant and earlier with the May 2017 grant https://www.givewell.org/charities/IDinsight/may-2017-grant and the October 2016 grant https://www.givewell.org/charities/IDinsight/october-2016-grant so it is a natural choice to continue funding IDinsight to continue the work

Donor reason for donating that amount (rather than a bigger or smaller amount): No reason given for the amount, but it is likely that the amount is determined based on the budget for the three months of work that the funding covers

Donor reason for donating at this time (rather than earlier or later): The original funding for the RCT ended in January 2019, but the RCT work was not completed. This grant round was made quickly as a bridge round to prevent the work from being suddenly stopped, while details of the final future grant could be hashed out
Intended funding timeframe in months: 4

Donor thoughts on making further donations to the donee: The grant writeup says: "We plan to finalize a budget with IDinsight for the remainder of this work that we agree achieves the right balance of a) value of information generated by the endline survey and b) cost." The following followup questions are listed: (1) What endline survey design decisions (e.g. sample size) does IDinsight believe are justified based on the value of information they will generate for GiveWell's decision about whether New Incentives should be a top charity? (2) How much additional funding will IDinsight need to complete the project, given these endline survey design decisions?

Other notes: Affected countries: Nigeria; announced: 2019-05-06.
1,196,729.0032018-04Consultinghttps://www.givewell.org/research/incubation-grants/IDinsight-embedded-givewell-team-2018-- Grant to continue supporting the work of the GiveWell embedded team, renews the May 2017 grant https://www.givewell.org/charities/IDinsight/may-2017-grant Large projects facilitated by this grant include a midline evaluation for the RCT of New Incentives, and large-scale survey(s) of top charity beneficiaries. Smaller projects include supporting a RCT of Charity Science Health and a deep assessment of the quality of Against Malaria Foundation (AMF) monitoring. Announced: 2018-08-09.
2,321,617.0012017-05Consultinghttps://www.givewell.org/charities/IDinsight/may-2017-grant-- Grant supports a GiveWell-embedded team for the next 12 months, helping with evaluating top charities and interventions. Announced: 2017-10-17.
314,752.0052016-10Consultinghttps://www.givewell.org/charities/IDinsight/october-2016-grant-- Grant for embedded GiveWell team. See https://www.givewell.org/charities/idinsight/all-content for all GiveWell content on the organization.
1,985,000.0022016-06Nonprofit ecosystemhttps://www.givewell.org/charities/IDinsight/june-2016-grant-- General support grant, to scale its model of supporting and evaluating development interventions. See https://www.givewell.org/charities/idinsight/all-content for all GiveWell content on the organization.
34,382.0072014-09Global health and development/scale-uphttps://www.givewell.org/charities/IDinsight/september-2014-grant-- Help with scaling up a high-potential development intervention in India. Affected countries: India.