Where to find the most effective charities

Charities can vary in their effectiveness by more than 100-fold. In other words, if you donate to the most effective charities, it can be like giving 100x more money than to a less effective charity. 

A few independent charity evaluators do the hard work of finding those most effective charities for us. They read the evidence, follow up with the charities for more data, model cost-effectiveness and publish their recommendations. 

These lists don’t really compete with each other, because each answers a different question. Do you want to save lives, or make lives better? Should the suffering of animals, most of them in factory farms, count alongside human suffering? What about risks like pandemics, which could harm huge numbers of people at once?

Current recommendations from several of the top evaluators are presented here:

Evaluator	Focus	Current top recommendations
GiveWell	Saving and improving lives in global health, measured by cost-effectiveness	Malaria Consortium (seasonal malaria chemoprevention), Against Malaria Foundation, Helen Keller Intl (vitamin A supplementation), New Incentives (incentives for childhood vaccination)
Giving What We Can	Evaluates the evaluators and collects their top picks across cause areas	Global health The four GiveWell charities above, plus GiveWell's Top Charities Fund and All Grants Fund Animal welfare EA Funds Animal Welfare Fund, ACE Movement Grants Catastrophic risks GWWC Risks and Resilience Fund
The Life You Can Save	Lifting people out of extreme poverty: health, education, livelihoods, women and girls	Against Malaria Foundation, Breakthrough, Building Tomorrow, CEDOVIP, Development Media International, Educate Girls, EIDU, Evidence Action, Fistula Foundation, Food4Education, The Fred Hollows Foundation, GiveDirectly, Helen Keller Intl, Iodine Global Network, Living Goods, Luminos Fund, Malaria Consortium, New Incentives, One Acre Fund, Raising The Village, Sanku – Project Healthy Children, Seva Foundation, Teaching at the Right Level Africa, Unlimit Health, Village Enterprise, Youth Impact
Happier Lives Institute	Improving wellbeing, measured in WELLBYs (wellbeing-adjusted life years)	Top charities StrongMinds, Friendship Bench (recommendation currently paused) Promising charities Pure Earth, Taimaka
Animal Charity Evaluators	Reducing animal suffering, mostly farmed animals	Kafessiz Türkiye (Çiftlik Hayvanlarını Koruma Derneği), Greener by Default, Sinergia Animal, Animal Welfare Observatory, Shrimp Welfare Project, Sociedade Vegetariana Brasileira, The Humane League, Wild Animal Initiative
Giving Green	Climate change	Clean Air Task Force, Project InnerSpace, Opportunity Green, Future Cleantech Architects, Good Food Institute