GiveWell Maximum Impact Fund donations made to Sightsavers

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
Best overview URLhttps://blog.givewell.org/2016/12/19/discretionary-grant-making-and-implications-for-donor-agency/
Websitehttps://www.givewell.org/maximum-impact-fund
Donations URLhttps://www.givewell.org/maximum-impact-fund
Page on philosophy informing donationshttps://blog.givewell.org/2016/12/19/discretionary-grant-making-and-implications-for-donor-agency/
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)months
Data entry method on Donations List WebsiteManual (no scripts used)

Brief history: GiveWell's Maximum Impact Fund began as a "discretionary regranting" option where donors could give money to GiveWell to allocate to its top charities. This differed from simply giving to GiveWell top charities using the recommended allocation, because GiveWell would determine the best use of marginal funds at the time of each regrant decision. GiveWell began highlighting discretionary regranting with https://blog.givewell.org/2016/12/19/discretionary-grant-making-and-implications-for-donor-agency/ in late 2016, and announced some major discretionary regrants in 2017. Starting with the 2017 giving season, GiveWell's recommendation to donors has been to give it the money for discretionary regranting. Per https://www.givewell.org/sources/blog-post/q1-q2-2020-discretionary-funding-allocation discretionary regranting was renamed to "Maximum Impact Fund" in the first half of 2020.

Brief notes on broad donor philosophy and major focus areas: The fund makes grants to GiveWell top charities, that are within the broad domain of global health and development. Top areas in recent years have included malaria, deworming, vitamin A supplementation, cash transfers, and seasonal intracountry migration.

Notes on grant decision logistics: For each discretionary regrant, which may be done about once a quarter, GiveWell looks at the most pressing of the needs of its top charities, and regrants funds based on those. Grant decisions have to be approved by the board. The grants using funds obtained by the end of a quarter are usually made within the next quarter.

Notes on grant publication logistics: Shortly after making the grant for a quarter, GiveWell publishes a blog post announcing and explaining the grant(s), and also updates https://www.givewell.org/maximum-impact-fund to include the grant and link to the blog post. In addition to public announcement, individual donors are also notified where "their" money ended up getting allocated.

Notes on grant financing: Money for the grants mostly comes from funds that are either donated directly to the Maximum Impact Fund (by earmarking the donation to GiveWell as being for top charities) or, in some cases, from unrestricted donations to GiveWell that are in excess of what GiveWell needs for operations. In some cases, grants made via donors explicitly for specific charities but done through the fund may also be included. As a general rule, all available money in the Maximum Impact Fund at the end of a quarter is granted out by the end of the next quarter, so no reserve or buffer is built up in the Maximum Impact Fund. In the case of regrant to the Against Malaria Foundation, the original donors show up in the Against Malaria Foundation donor list.

This entity is also a donee.

Full donor page for donor GiveWell Maximum Impact Fund

Basic donee information

ItemValue
Country
Facebook page sightsaversUK
Websitehttp://www.sightsavers.org/
Twitter usernameSightsavers
Wikipedia pagehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sightsavers
Instagram usernamesightsavers

Full donee page for donee Sightsavers

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 1 1,500,000 1,500,000 1,500,000 1,500,000 1,500,000 1,500,000 1,500,000 1,500,000 1,500,000 1,500,000 1,500,000 1,500,000 1,500,000
Global health 1 1,500,000 1,500,000 1,500,000 1,500,000 1,500,000 1,500,000 1,500,000 1,500,000 1,500,000 1,500,000 1,500,000 1,500,000 1,500,000

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 2021
Global health (filter this donor) 1 1,500,000.00 1,500,000.00
Total 1 1,500,000.00 1,500,000.00

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

Full list of documents in reverse chronological order (3 documents)

Title (URL linked)Publication dateAuthorPublisherAffected donorsAffected doneesAffected influencersDocument scopeCause areaNotes
Announcing our 2019 top charities2019-11-26Catherine Hollander GiveWellGiveWell Maximum Impact Fund Malaria Consortium Against Malaria Foundation Helen Keller International Deworm the World Initiative Sightsavers The END Fund GiveDirectly Schistosomiasis Control Initiative GiveWell Evaluator consolidated recommendation listGlobal health and developmentGiveWell annual top charrities list. As in previous years, GiveWell recomemnds that donors donate to GiveWell to regrant to top charities at its discretion, but also provides its current ranked list of top charities to help donors make an informed decision. Its ranked list (from best to worst) is: Malaria Consortium (seasonal malaria chemoprevention (SMC) program), Against Malaria Foundation, Helen Keller International (vitamin A suppplementation), charities that treat parasitic worm infections (Evidence Action's Deworm the World Initiative, Sightsavers, The END Fund), and GiveDirectly. From the perspective of cause areas, the rank is: malaria > vitamin A supplementation > deworming > cash transfers. This is consistent with, and highly influenced by, the cost-effectiveness estimates that GiveWell uses. The post highlights Malaria Consortium as the charity to select for donors who want to give directly to a charity. The post links to a number of more in-depth write-ups explaining the charity ranking, as well as to https://www.givewell.org/charities/top-charities/2019/open-philanthropy-recommendation which describes the recommendation to Open Philanthropy Project (and indirectly, to Good Ventures) on how to allocate funding to the top charities in 2019
Our updated top charities for giving season 20182018-11-26Catherine Hollander GiveWellGiveWell Maximum Impact Fund Open Philanthropy GiveWell top charities Malaria Consortium Helen Keller International Against Malaria Foundation Deworm the World Initiative Schistosomiasis Control Initiative Sightsavers The END Fund GiveDirectly GiveWell Evaluator consolidated recommendation listGlobal health and developmentGiveWell annual top charities list. GiveWell recommends that donors donate to GiveWell to regrant to top charities at its discretion, but also provides details on the individual top charities so that people can make an informed decision. In addition, the amounts determined for GiveWell Maximum Impact Fund and for donation by Good Ventures are also included, though details of the amount recommended to Good Ventures are in a separate blog post https://blog.givewell.org/2018/11/26/our-recommendation-to-good-ventures/
Our top charities for giving season 20172017-11-27Natalie Crispin GiveWellGiveWell Maximum Impact Fund Good Ventures/GiveWell top and standout charities GiveWell top charities Against Malaria Foundation Schistosomiasis Control Initiative Malaria Consortium Deworm the World Initiative Helen Keller International Sightsavers The END Fund No Lean Season GiveDirectly Development Media International Dispensers for Safe Water Food Fortification Initiative Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition Iodine Global Network Living Goods Project Healthy Children GiveWell Evaluator consolidated recommendation listGlobal health and developmentGiveWell annual top charity refresh, also announced amounts recommended for Good Ventures to donate to top charities. Added two new top charities

Full list of donations in reverse chronological order (1 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 1)Donation dateCause areaURLInfluencerNotes
1,500,000.0012021-06Global health/nutrition/vitamin A supplementationhttps://www.givewell.org/maximum-impact-fundGiveWell Donation process: https://www.givewell.org/maximum-impact-fund/allocation-q1-2021#How_did_we_arrive_at_our_allocation explains the seven principles followed in deciding the allocation: "Principle 1: Put significant weight on our cost-effectiveness estimates. Principle 2: Consider additional information that we have not explicitly modeled about an organization. Principle 3: Consider additional information that we have not explicitly modeled about a funding gap. Principle 4: Assess charities' funding gaps at the margin, i.e., how they would spend additional funding, where possible. Principle 5: Default to not imposing restrictions on charities' spending. Principle 6: Default to funding on a three-year horizon, modifying to preserve our options for the future where doing so is low-cost. Principle 7: Ensure charities are incentivized to engage with our process." There are more details in the document.

Intended use of funds (category): Direct project expenses

Intended use of funds: Grant "to partially fund deworming MDA in 2022-2024 in six regions of Chad that it has classified as "Priority 1" regions."

Donor reason for selecting the donee: https://www.givewell.org/maximum-impact-fund/allocation-q1-2021#Sightsavers has a "Case for the grant" section that estimates the cost-effectiveness of the grant as 14x cash. It includes more details, and also talks about Priority 2 regions that were ultimately not funded by the grant.

Donor reason for donating that amount (rather than a bigger or smaller amount): The amount only partially funds the programs it funds; it covers $1.5 million out of $13.5 million available for granting. The exact reasons for allocating this particular amount to this grantee are not described.
Percentage of total donor spend in the corresponding batch of donations: 11.11%

Donor reason for donating at this time (rather than earlier or later): This discretionary regrant is done for each quarter, usually within 2 to 3 months of the end of the quarter. This particular grant is for Q1 2021 (January to March) and would therefore be expected to be in Q2 2021, which it is.
Intended funding timeframe in months: 36

Other notes: Affected countries: Chad; announced: 2021-08-31.