What problem is Rethink Priorities working on?

Rethink Priorities is a research and implementation organisation that identifies pressing opportunities and solutions to improve global wellbeing. Its work covers important and neglected cause areas, including animal welfare, artificial intelligence, climate change, global health and development, worldview investigations, as well as surveys and data analyses to understand movements focused on these issues. Rethink Priorities increases the impact of a variety of stakeholders, including policymakers, foundations, and nonprofits.

What does Rethink Priorities do?

Rethink Priorities works to uncover insights that can help address the most pressing issues facing the world today. As a think-and-do tank, it

rigorously evaluates evidence and tests high-leverage interventions
identifies solutions in neglected but promising areas to improve the lives of humans and animals – both now and in the future.

Its research and strategic advisory empowers other organisations to achieve measurable and sustainable results.

As part of this work, Rethink Priorities has:

Conducted seminal reports (2021, 2023) that showed the neglectedness of lead exposure reductions to improve the health of children in the Global South.
Researched whether invertebrates like shrimps might be sentient and wrote a guide to help animal advocates reduce the harms of shrimp farming
Developed various tools for philanthropists like the Donor Compass to help guide their decision-making under uncertainty, and also set up a Cross-Cause Fund which allocates based on years-long prioritization research.
Provided operational support to nascent high-impact projects such Epoch AI, Apollo Research, and Consultants for Impact to accelerate the fulfilment of their mission
Conducted surveys and analyses e.g. on how to frame the risks from advanced AI to thought leaders and policymakers for broader appeal.

To learn more, check out all of Rethink Priorities' published work and updates about its strategy.

How are donations to Rethink Priorities allocated?

By default, donations made through the Giving What We Can platform are allocated to where Rethink Priorities has the greatest need, providing flexible, unrestricted support. If you’d like your gift to instead support a specific department, please forward your donation receipt to development@rethinkpriorities.org with your preferred designation.

You can choose to support:

Animal Welfare
Global Health and Development
Surveys and Data Analysis
Worldview Investigations
AI Cognition Initiative
AI Strategy

What information does Giving What We Can have about the cost-effectiveness of Rethink Priorities?^1.

It works across many of our high-impact causes.
It has received several grants from an impact-focused expert grantmaker, Coefficient Giving, which is an indicator of its cost-effectiveness. (Note — Giving What We Can has also received funds from Coefficient Giving.)
The impact-focused evaluator, Longview Philanthropy, shared that it thought their work on safeguarding the long-term future was highly cost-effective.

We’ve updated our recommendations to reflect only organisations recommended by evaluators we’ve looked into as part of our evaluator investigations. As such, we don't currently include Rethink Priorities as one of our recommended programs but you can still donate to it via our donation platform.

Please note that GWWC does not evaluate individual charities. Our recommendations are based on the research of third-party, impact-focused charity evaluators our research team has found to be particularly well-suited to help donors do the most good per dollar, according to their recent evaluator investigations. Our other supported programs are those that align with our charitable purpose — they are working on a high-impact problem and take a reasonably promising approach (based on publicly-available information).

At Giving What We Can, we focus on the effectiveness of an organisation's work -- what the organisation is actually doing and whether their programs are making a big difference. Some others in the charity recommendation space focus instead on the ratio of admin costs to program spending, part of what we’ve termed the “overhead myth.” See why overhead isn’t the full story and learn more about our approach to charity evaluation.