We are excited to announce that for the first time in a while, Giving What We Can is changing its recommendations! Below we describe what is happening and answer some natural questions that flow from that.
80,000 Hours is our sister organisation, we are cross posting this vacancy from their blog:
As Head of Research, you will become part of our founding team to lead our research efforts into how to select the most high-impact careers. Our research is what drives the advice we provide via our website and career coaching.
Specifically, you become responsible for:
Rob is the Executive Director of the Centre for Effective Altruism, and Giving What We Can's previous Director of Research.
Research Director Robert Wiblin interviewed GiveWell co-founder Elie Hassenfeld on a range of issues suggested by volunteers and members of Giving What We Can. This is the third post, which covers causes beyond global health, GiveWell Labs, and charity fundraising. An unabridged transcript of the interview is available here and MP3 audio here.
Research Director Robert Wiblin interviewed GiveWell co-founder Elie Hassenfeld on a range of issues suggested by volunteers and members of Giving What We Can. This is the second post, which covers when to donate, how GiveWell's research has changed over time, and exactly what the Against Malaria Foundation are doing that makes them GiveWell's number one charity.
Research Director Robert Wiblin interviewed GiveWell co-founder Elie Hassenfeld (pictured right) on a range of issues suggested by volunteers and members of Giving What We Can. This is the first instalment, focussed on the issue of meta-charity - or research into which forms of charity are most effective.
As we have mentioned before on this blog, one big idea in development that is slowly building momentum as a concept, if not as a reality, is a focus on the movement of people to better places to live and work. One of our research volunteers, Shaun Raviv, recently took leave from Giving What We Can to work on a piece on how migration could reduce poverty which was just published in The Atlantic.
Today we are releasing another part of our evaluation of Project Healthy Children, this time generally looking into how worthwhile micronutrient fortification of staple foods is. For those who don't have time to read the full report, below are the key bottom lines.
A
common question that comes up in the effective giving community is whether we
should give to the best charities we can find now, or invest our money in
order to give away a larger sum to the best charity we can find in the
future.
I recently wrote up a short report with Toby Ord on how we ought to deal with future gains to health when doing cost-benefit analysis for Giving What We Can, and in our other projects. Typically, cost benefit analyses discount future costs and gains at somewhere between 3-7% every year into the future. We propose that while this makes sense for financial assets, it is quite inappropriate for dealing with health improvements and other similar welfare gains. 
