Open Philanthropy 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 Good Ventures
Best overview URLhttps://causeprioritization.org/Open%20Philanthropy%20Project
Facebook username openphilanthropy
Websitehttps://www.openphilanthropy.org/
Donations URLhttps://www.openphilanthropy.org/giving/grants
Twitter usernameopen_phil
PredictionBook usernameOpenPhilUnofficial
Page on philosophy informing donationshttps://www.openphilanthropy.org/about/vision-and-values
Grant application process pagehttps://www.openphilanthropy.org/giving/guide-for-grant-seekers
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)
Org Watch pagehttps://orgwatch.issarice.com/?organization=Open+Philanthropy

Brief history: Open Philanthropy (Open Phil for short) spun off from GiveWell, starting as GiveWell Labs in 2011, beginning to make strong progress in 2013, and formally separating from GiveWell as the "Open Philanthropy Project" in June 2017. In 2020, it started going by "Open Philanthropy" dropping the "Project" word.

Brief notes on broad donor philosophy and major focus areas: Open Philanthropy is focused on openness in two ways: open to ideas about cause selection, and open in explaining what they are doing. It has endorsed "hits-based giving" and is working on areas of AI risk, biosecurity and pandemic preparedness, and other global catastrophic risks, criminal justice reform (United States), animal welfare, and some other areas.

Notes on grant decision logistics: See https://www.openphilanthropy.org/blog/our-grantmaking-so-far-approach-and-process for the general grantmaking process and https://www.openphilanthropy.org/blog/questions-we-ask-ourselves-making-grant for more questions that grant investigators are encouraged to consider. Every grant has a grant investigator that we call the influencer here on Donations List Website; for focus areas that have Program Officers, the grant investigator is usually the Program Officer. The grant investigator has been included in grants published since around July 2017. Grants usually need approval from an executive; however, some grant investigators have leeway to make "discretionary grants" where the approval process is short-circuited; see https://www.openphilanthropy.org/giving/grants/discretionary-grants for more. Note that the term "discretionary grant" means something different for them compared to government agencies, see https://www.facebook.com/vipulnaik.r/posts/10213483361534364 for more.

Notes on grant publication logistics: Every publicly disclosed grant has a writeup published at the time of public disclosure, but the writeups vary significantly in length. Grant writeups are usually written by somebody other than the grant investigator, but approved by the grant investigator as well as the grantee. Grants have three dates associated with them: an internal grant decision date (that is not publicly revealed but is used in some statistics on total grant amounts decided by year), a grant date (which we call donation date; this is the date of the formal grant commitment, which is the published grant date), and a grant announcement date (which we call donation announcement date; the date the grant is announced to the mailing list and the grant page made publicly visible). Lags are a few months between decision and grant, and a few months between grant and announcement, due to time spent with grant writeup approval.

Notes on grant financing: See https://www.openphilanthropy.org/giving/guide-for-grant-seekers or https://www.openphilanthropy.org/about/who-we-are for more information. Grants generally come from the Open Philanthropy Fund, a donor-advised fund managed by the Silicon Valley Community Foundation, with most of its money coming from Good Ventures. Some grants are made directly by Good Ventures, and political grants may be made by the Open Philanthropy Action Fund. At least one grant https://www.openphilanthropy.org/focus/us-policy/criminal-justice-reform/working-families-party-prosecutor-reforms-new-york was made by Cari Tuna personally. The majority of grants are financed by the Open Philanthropy Project Fund; however, the source of financing of a grant is not always explicitly specified, so it cannot be confidently assumed that a grant with no explicit listed financing is financed through the Open Philanthropy Project Fund; see the comment https://www.openphilanthropy.org/blog/october-2017-open-thread?page=2#comment-462 for more information. Funding for multi-year grants is usually disbursed annually, and the amounts are often equal across years, but not always. The fact that a grant is multi-year, or the distribution of the grant amount across years, are not always explicitly stated on the grant page; see https://www.openphilanthropy.org/blog/october-2017-open-thread?page=2#comment-462 for more information. Some grants to universities are labeled "gifts" but this is a donee classification, based on different levels of bureaucratic overhead and funder control between grants and gifts; see https://www.openphilanthropy.org/blog/october-2017-open-thread?page=2#comment-462 for more information.

Miscellaneous notes: Most GiveWell-recommended grants made by Good Ventures and listed in the Open Philanthropy database are not listed on Donations List Website as being under Open Philanthropy. Specifically, GiveWell Incubation Grants are not included (these are listed at https://donations.vipulnaik.com/donor.php?donor=GiveWell+Incubation+Grants with donor GiveWell Incubation Grants), and grants made by Good Ventures to GiveWell top and standout charities are also not included (these are listed at https://donations.vipulnaik.com/donor.php?donor=Good+Ventures%2FGiveWell+top+and+standout+charities with donor Good Ventures/GiveWell top and standout charities). Grants to support GiveWell operations are not included here; they can be found at https://donations.vipulnaik.com/donor.php?donor=Good+Ventures%2FGiveWell+support with donor "Good Ventures/GiveWell support".The investment https://www.openphilanthropy.org/focus/us-policy/farm-animal-welfare/impossible-foods in Impossible Foods is not included because it does not fit our criteria for a donation, and also because no amount was included. All other grants publicly disclosed by open philanthropy that are not GiveWell Incubation Grants or GiveWell top and standout charity grants should be included. Grants disclosed by grantees but not yet disclosed by Open Philanthropy are not included; some of them may be listed at https://issarice.com/open-philanthropy-project-non-grant-funding

Full donor page for donor Open Philanthropy

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 3 2,500,000 1,833,333 500,000 500,000 500,000 500,000 2,500,000 2,500,000 2,500,000 2,500,000 2,500,000 2,500,000 2,500,000
Cash transfers 3 2,500,000 1,833,333 500,000 500,000 500,000 500,000 2,500,000 2,500,000 2,500,000 2,500,000 2,500,000 2,500,000 2,500,000

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 2019 2018
Cash transfers (filter this donor) 3 5,500,000.00 500,000.00 2,500,000.00 2,500,000.00
Total 3 5,500,000.00 500,000.00 2,500,000.00 2,500,000.00

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 (9 documents)

Title (URL linked)Publication dateAuthorPublisherAffected donorsAffected doneesAffected influencersDocument scopeCause areaNotes
A Critical Review of Open Philanthropy’s Bet On Criminal Justice Reform (GW, IR)2022-06-16Nuno Sempere Effective Altruism ForumOpen Philanthropy Just Impact Against Malaria Foundation GiveDirectly Third-party coverage of donor strategyCriminal justice reformThe blog post reviews Open Philanthropy's spending on, and eventual exit from, criminal justice reform. It is critical of the fact that Open Philanthropy took two years between its blog post https://www.openphilanthropy.org/blog/givewells-top-charities-are-increasingly-hard-beat (that identified GiveWell's top charities as hard to beat in the context of near-term, human-centric work) and its late 2021 announcement https://www.openphilanthropy.org/blog/our-criminal-justice-reform-program-now-independent-organization-just-impact of spinning out the criminal justice reform grantmaking to Just Impact and giving it an exit grant of $50 million. The post is further critical of the fact the Open Philanthropy effectively gave a two-fold exit grant of $100 million after its mid-2019 blog post: $50 million in grants between mid-2019 and late 2021, and a $50 million exit grant to Just Impact. The post and comments include extensive discussion of cost-effectiveness, worldviews, and ways to make better decisions.
Recommendation to Open Philanthropy for Grants to Top Charities2019-11-26GiveWellOpen Philanthropy Malaria Consortium Helen Keller International Sightsavers Against Malaria Foundation The END Fund GiveDirectly Development Media International Dispenses for Safe Water Food Fortification Initiative Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition Georgetown University Initiative on Innovation, Development, and Evaluation Iodine Global Network Living Goods Project Healthy Children GiveWell Periodic donation list documentationGlobal health and developmentThe document details GiveWell's recommendation in 2019 for grants by Good Ventures (via the Open Philanthropy Project) to GiveWell top and standout charities. The overall amount of money recommended for allocation is $54.6 million, and the document explains that Open Phil's calculation that it may make sense to spend down more slowly was the reason for reducing the allocation from last year. It discusses the principles used for allocation: (1) Put significant weight on cost-effectiveness estimates, (2) Consider additional information not explicitly modeled about the organization, (3) Consider additional information not explicitly modeled about the funding gap, (4) Assess funding gaps at the margin, (5) Default to not imposing restrictions on charity spending, (6) Default to funding on a 3-year horizon, and (7) Ensure charities are incentivized to engage with the process. The three charities that get significant grants are Malaria Consortium for its SMC program ($33.9 million), Helen Keller International ($9.7 million), and Sightsavers ($2.7 million). Against Malaria Foundation, The END Fund, and GiveDirectly receive the minimum "incentive grant" amount of $2.5 million that all top charities should receive. The top charity Deworm the World Initiative is not given an incentive grant because it received a previous grant through GiveWell discretionary grant that more than covers the incentive grant amount. 8 standout charities get $100,000 each
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.
Response to concerns about GiveWell’s spillovers analysis2018-12-06Josh Rosenberg GiveWellGiveWell Maximum Impact Fund Open Philanthropy GiveDirectly GiveWell Reasoning supplementCash transfersThe blog post explains in more detail how GiveWell came to its conclusions in its recent analysis of spillover effects from GiveDirectly's cash transfer program. In particular, it responds to a series of tweets from economist Berk Özler expressing concern over GiveWell for (1) using an unpublished paper as a key study, (2) placing little weight on some papers in its analysis of spillover effects, (3) focusing solely on consumption. While replying to the concerns, the GiveWell blog post also explains some of the broader principles used by GiveWell to determine when to use private information, and what evidence to review and what outcomes to consider
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/
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.
Approaches to Moral Weights: How GiveWell Compares to Other Actors2017-11-07GiveWellGiveWell Maximum Impact Fund Open Philanthropy GiveWell top charities Deworm the World Initiative Schistosomiasis Control Initiative Against Malaria Foundation Malaria Consortium GiveDirectly GiveWell Evaluator quantification approachIn-depth look at how the way GiveWell uses moral weights in cost-effectiveness analyses (such as the value of saving lives) compares with the way governments and others in public policy use it. One difference is that the target population GiveWell deals with is often in low and middle income countries (LMIC) for which estimates of the value of a life saved are more murky. The document also talks of the different moral weights associated with saving people at different ages. See https://blog.givewell.org/2017/11/07/how-givewell-and-mainstream-policymakers-compare-the-good-achieved-by-different-programs/ for a blog post by Josh Rosenberg announcing and summarizing the report. The earlier blog post https://blog.givewell.org/2017/06/01/how-givewell-uses-cost-effectiveness-analyses/ is also referenced. Also see https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/newly-published-givewell-materials/xeSpZ512VFw (2017-11-07) for the mailing list announcement
How GiveWell uses cost-effectiveness analyses2017-06-01Catherine Hollander GiveWellGiveWell Maximum Impact Fund Open Philanthropy Against Malaria Foundation GiveDirectly GiveWell top charities GiveWell Evaluator quantification approachProvides an in-depth lok at how GiveWell does cost-effectiveness analyses, including a list of the kinds of subjective inputs that go into the modeling. The later blog post https://blog.givewell.org/2017/11/07/how-givewell-and-mainstream-policymakers-compare-the-good-achieved-by-different-programs/ summarizing the report https://www.givewell.org/how-we-work/our-criteria/cost-effectiveness/comparing-moral-weights references this
Good Ventures and Giving Now vs. Later (2016 Update)2016-12-28Holden Karnofsky Open PhilanthropyGood Ventures/GiveWell top and standout charities GiveWell top charities Against Malaria Foundation Schistosomiasis Control Initiative Deworm the World Initiative GiveDirectly Malaria Consortium Sightsavers The END Fund Development Media International Food Fortification Initiative Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition Iodine Global Network Living Goods Project Healthy Children GiveWell Reasoning supplementGlobal health and developmentExplanation of reasoning that led to $50 million allocation to GiveWell top charities

Full list of donations in reverse chronological order (3 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 3)Donation dateCause areaURLInfluencerNotes
500,000.0032021-01Cash transfers/unconditional cash transfershttps://www.openphilanthropy.org/focus/global-health-and-development/miscellaneous/givedirectly-general-support-2021GiveWell Donation process: The grant is based on GiveWell's recommendation. GiveWell made the recommendations as part of its end-of-year recommendations to Open Philanthropy, along with allocations to other GiveWell top and standout charities. The total budget of $100 million is set by Open Philanthropy, but GiveWell decided to allocate only $70 million in end-of-year grantmaking and defers the remaining $30 million to early 2021. GiveWell explains the process in detail at https://www.givewell.org/charities/top-charities/2020/open-philanthropy-recommendation (published February 2021).

Intended use of funds (category): Organizational general support

Donor reason for selecting the donee: https://www.givewell.org/charities/top-charities/2020/open-philanthropy-recommendation#Our_recommended_allocation_to_Open_Philanthropy describes the grant as an incentive grant since the grantee is a GiveWell top charity.

Donor reason for donating that amount (rather than a bigger or smaller amount): The size of the grant is chosen as the standard size of the incentive grant of $500,000. https://www.givewell.org/charities/top-charities/2020/open-philanthropy-recommendation#Size_of_incentive_grants explains the reason for reducing the incentive grant size from $2.5 million to $500,000: "We considered the cases where an organization is on our top charity list, but due to relatively lower cost-effectiveness, we are not prioritizing its funding needs most highly—i.e. we don't expect to grant donations from the Maximum Impact Fund to it or recommend that Open Philanthropy make a grant to it beyond the incentive grant. In those cases, we felt that the amount of time we asked from the organization's staff to engage with us was not commensurate with the $2.5 million grants we had been making. We considered other grants we've made and our perception of norms in international development and decided to change the standard amount of these grants to $500,000 for top charities."
Percentage of total donor spend in the corresponding batch of donations: 0.71%

Donor reason for donating at this time (rather than earlier or later): Part of GiveWell's end-of-year recommendations for Open Philanthropy, so the timing is determined by the timing of end-of-year recommendations (which is usually the week after Thanksgiving in the United States). The grant is made by Open Philanthropy shortly after the recommendations.

Donor thoughts on making further donations to the donee: https://www.givewell.org/charities/top-charities/2020/open-philanthropy-recommendation#END_Fund-s_deworming_program says: "GiveDirectly is significantly less cost-effective (1x cash) than the other funding gaps recommended here." It is likely that GiveDirectly will only receive the annual incentive grant from Open Philanthropy and nothing more.

Donor retrospective of the donation: GiveDirectly would continue to remain a GiveWell top charity in 2021.

Other notes: See https://www.givewell.org/charities/give-directly/November-2020-version for GiveWell's review of GiveDirectly at the time of the grant recommendation.
2,500,000.0012019-12Cash transfers/unconditional cash transfershttps://www.openphilanthropy.org/focus/global-health-and-development/miscellaneous/givedirectly-general-support-december-2019GiveWell Donation process: The grant is based on GiveWell's recommendation. GiveWell made the recommendations as part of its end-of-year recommendations to Open Philanthropy, along with allocations to other GiveWell top and standout charities. The total budget is based on guidelines set by Open Philanthropy. GiveWell explains the process in detail at https://www.givewell.org/charities/top-charities/2019/open-philanthropy-recommendation (published November 2019).

Intended use of funds (category): Organizational general support

Donor reason for selecting the donee: GiveDirectly is a GiveWell top charity, and therefore receives the $2.5 million incentive grant that all top charities receive, per https://www.givewell.org/charities/top-charities/2019/open-philanthropy-recommendation#Principles_we_followed Principle 7: "To this end, since 2016, we have recommended that Open Philanthropy provide a minimum “incentive grant” to top charities ($2.5 million) and standout charities ($100,000)."

Donor reason for donating that amount (rather than a bigger or smaller amount): The amount ($2.5 million) is chosen since it is the size of the incentive grant (per https://www.givewell.org/charities/top-charities/2019/open-philanthropy-recommendation#Principles_we_followed Principle 7).

Donor reason for donating at this time (rather than earlier or later): Part of GiveWell's end-of-year recommendations for Open Philanthropy, so the timing is determined by the timing of end-of-year recommendations (which is usually the week after Thanksgiving in the United States). The grant is made by Open Philanthropy shortly after the recommendations.

Donor retrospective of the donation: GiveDirectly would continue to remain a GiveWell top charity in 2020 and 2021.

Other notes: See https://www.givewell.org/charities/give-directly/November-2019-version for GiveWell's review of GiveDirectly at the time of the grant recommendation.
2,500,000.0012018-12Cash transfers/unconditional cash transfershttps://www.openphilanthropy.org/focus/global-health-and-development/miscellaneous/givedirectly-general-support-december-2018GiveWell Donation process: The grant is based on GiveWell's recommendation. GiveWell made the recommendations as part of its end-of-year recommendations to Open Philanthropy, along with allocations to other GiveWell top and standout charities. The total budget is based on guidelines set by Open Philanthropy. GiveWell explains the process in detail at https://blog.givewell.org/2018/11/26/our-recommendation-to-good-ventures/ Charity status updates in 2018 are at https://www.givewell.org/charities/top-charities/updates-in-november-2018#GiveDirectly

Intended use of funds (category): Organizational general support

Intended use of funds: Grant for general operating support, which has GiveWell top charity status; see http://www.givewell.org/charities/give-directly GiveDirectly transfers cash to households in developing countries via mobile phone-linked payment services. It targets extremely low-income households.

Donor reason for selecting the donee: GiveWell recommends GiveDirectly for the following reasons: (1) Program has strong track record and low burden of proof. (2) Strong monitoring process. (3) Documented success. (4) Standout transparency. (5) Room for more funding. The full GiveWell review is at https://www.givewell.org/charities/give-directly and the top charity selection is at https://blog.givewell.org/2018/11/26/our-updated-top-charities-for-giving-season-2018/

Donor reason for donating that amount (rather than a bigger or smaller amount): GiveWell explains the principles affecting its decision of how much money to allocate to each charity in https://blog.givewell.org/2018/11/26/our-recommendation-to-good-ventures/ (1) Put significant weight on our cost-effectiveness estimates. (2) Consider additional information about an organization that we have not explicitly modeled. (3) Assess charities’ funding gaps at the margin, i.e., where they would spend additional funding, where possible. (4) Default towards not imposing restrictions on charity spending. (5) Fund on a three-year horizon, unless we are particularly uncertain whether we will want to continue recommending a program in the future. (6) Ensure charities are incentivized to engage with our process. Ultimately, GiveWell decides to only allocate to GiveDirectly the minimum amount for top charities, i.e., $2.5 million

Donor reason for donating at this time (rather than earlier or later): Part of GiveWell's end-of-year recommendations for Open Philanthropy, so the timing is determined by the timing of end-of-year recommendations (which is usually the week after Thanksgiving in the United States). The grant is made by Open Philanthropy shortly after the recommendations.

Other notes: Even accounting for this grant, GiveWell identifies a remaining funding gap of over $100 million for GiveDirectly; this is the largest identified room for more funding of all GiveWell top charities.