We think charities should be chosen on the basis of impact.
To identify the most impactful giving opportunities, we consult the work of trusted, third-party, impact-focused charity evaluators. These are organisations that invest thousands of hours into finding where donations can do the most good — often identifying programs that are many times more effective than average.
While traditional charity evaluators focus most on metrics like overhead and financial health, impact-focused charity evaluators focus on good done per dollar donated – which accounts for (but is not limited to) overhead.
In short, these evaluators ask a deeper question: What’s the actual impact of donating to this program or fund?
But we don’t base our recommendations on any impact-focused evaluator. Each year, our research team investigates which evaluators — and which of their specific programs — are best at finding high-impact donation opportunities. For example, if an evaluator both recommends individual charities and runs a grantmaking fund, we might assess each of those separately.
Based on this research, we publish a list of programs and funds we recommend. These are:
We revisit this list annually, based on our latest round of “evaluating the evaluators” research. Our goal is to highlight the best donation opportunities we currently know of for donors who want to maximise the impact of their giving.
Limits of our approach
We haven’t yet evaluated every impact-focused evaluator or every grantmaking program. That means there could be highly effective programs that don’t appear on our list — not because we think they’re ineffective, but simply because we haven’t yet assessed the evaluator or program in depth.
Additionally, there may be promising, highly cost-effective programs that haven’t (yet) been evaluated by any impact-focused evaluator.
Still, we’re confident that the programs we do recommend are among the most impactful donation opportunities available. We prioritise evaluating the evaluators we believe are doing particularly strong work. We also believe donors who want to maximise their impact should place more confidence in programs that have undergone rigorous, external review.
We sometimes hear from people who wonder why their favorite cause or charity isn’t on our list. That’s a great question — and the answer has a lot to do with how we approach impact.
Our recommendations start with a big-picture question: Which global problems are most pressing and solvable right now? This is called cause prioritization, and it helps us focus on areas where donations can make the biggest difference. (See high-impact causes for more info on this.)
Impact-focused charity evaluators in the effective giving space also use this “funnel” approach – they first identify program areas that are likely to be particularly impactful, then identify impactful programs working in those areas, and finally evaluate individual charities implementing those high-impact programs to find the best opportunities.
This doesn’t mean other causes aren’t important — far from it. It just means we aim to spotlight opportunities where each dollar can go unusually far in improving lives or preventing suffering.
Even if your favorite cause isn’t featured, we hope this approach gives you a clearer picture of what makes some giving opportunities especially impactful — and inspires you to explore further.