GiveWell announced the largest grant in its history on 24th August, contributing $276m to the Against Malaria Foundation (AMF). This funds the distribution of 92 million bednets in the DRC over three years, and is modelled to avert 67,000 deaths.
It’s worth sitting with those numbers for a second and feeling very grateful for them. This is a staggeringly impactful grant that should prevent thousands of children from dying unnecessarily.
What does it mean for donors?
How should I think about GiveWell’s grant to AMF?
Critically, this grant does not imply that AMF cannot deploy more funding effectively. The grant is for three years, committed up front, and is limited to a single country.
Indeed, it’s a useful example of how to think about increased funding during the Funding Anthropalypse. We often fall into a lazy shorthand of describing a charity or project as ‘full’. But ‘full’ actually makes no sense in this context, because almost all projects could absorb more money in some fashion.
A better model is to think of investments like this as setting a ‘price’. In this case, AMF’s work in the DRC is now fully funded at a price of roughly 16x GiveWell’s benchmark.
Does that mean AMF’s next project prices below 16x? Maybe - but even at, say, 12x, it would still be double GiveWell’s current funding bar. Furthermore, nothing in the announcement suggests AMF is out of opportunities at this level. GiveWell’s grant only concerned one particularly high-burden country, and the announcement emphasised that bednets remain “one of the most cost-effective ways we’ve found to save lives”. This grant itself shows the need was real: before it, GiveWell believed half those 92 million nets would not have been funded by anyone.
Accordingly, AMF remains a tremendous donation option, at least until we see concrete analysis to the contrary.
Should you still give to GiveWell’s Top Charities?
Yes!
First, a substantial part of this grant ($57.9m) was funded by donations to the GiveWell Top Charities Fund. It’s a great example of the extreme cost-effectiveness that donors to these charities and this fund can achieve.
Second, by definition, this means that ~$218m came from GiveWell’s other funds and Coefficient Giving’s co-funding. This shows a second real value of donating - you allow GiveWell (and Coefficient Giving) to use discretionary funds for other strong grants. At present, this will on average mean a grant at 6x GiveWell’s benchmark, which is still an extremely competitive price point.
Accordingly, for most donors, this grant alone doesn’t imply that you should shift your giving.
I’m giving millions in global health. What should I do now?
In short, it remains the case that donations to GiveWell will be spent very effectively, but it might take longer for them to be deployed.
The real variable here is time - when you can expect your money to be regranted. This usually affects larger donors more, because they are more likely to have a spending plan for their funds, giving a set amount each year. This means that they may prefer to give somewhere where money will be deployed quickly, in order to see immediate impact from each annual grant cycle.
Even with its recent influx of funding, GiveWell will continue to find outstanding donation opportunities. Indeed, as they only research grants when they expect to have the cash to cover them, a grant to GiveWell may enable them to find even more exciting projects.
However, it would be reasonable for donors to monitor GiveWell’s agreed grants versus its receipts. Following Coefficient Giving’s $1bn commitment, GiveWell should now be in a position to assess even very large grant opportunities (as this grant signifies) and has a substantial amount of funds to grant in the near term.
As it says itself, it would be reasonable to pause donations to GiveWell “if you want to see if we successfully draw down our rollover funding over time”.
One way to think about this is that dollars you donate could have one of three states. They could be uncommitted - that is, currently held back in expectation of greater future impact; they can be committed for future delivery, as is the case for some portion of this three-year AMF grant; or they may be deployed already into projects.
In practice, this grant only matters for donors who mind their money sitting uncommitted, or want it deployed fast.
Where else can I give cost-effectively in global health and development?
If the best global health options GiveWell can find are being funded with nine-figure grants, I expect casting a wider net to present significant opportunities for impact.
Finding these opportunities is very difficult, though. You either need to build the capacity to do so, or buy it. Buying it is faster and easier, especially when top-quality research talent is hard to find, and you can do that via a specialist advisory or a pooled fund. (Conflict of interest: I manage a fund and run an advisory, so discount accordingly.)
When I started Ultra Philanthropy, I didn’t build in-house research capacity. I assumed I could stand on the shoulders of GiveWell and other evaluators indefinitely. The AI windfall is making that assumption redundant.
GiveWell’s funding bar has also dropped and may drop further, so the ‘price’ of following only GiveWell’s recommendations has changed. All else being equal, this increases the chances of donors being able to find better cost-effectiveness elsewhere, particularly if they are open to different cause areas or stages of funding.
For one thing, it seems highly likely that the canonical Effective Altruism cause areas are not the only cost-effective places to give. Donors can surely make outstanding grants in areas other than just reducing under-5 mortality, animal welfare, climate, existential risk and meta donations.
In global health and development alone, my shortlist includes the following, and several are areas where we have already recommended excellent grants to donors:
Education in LMICs - supported by a robust evidence base from the Global Education Evidence Advisory Panel and catalytic funding from places like Prevail Fund and Livelihood Impact Fund, and an obvious complement to reducing under-5 mortality.
Gender-based violence reduction - Dr Akhil Bansal, a medical doctor and fellow at the Center for Global Development, laid the groundwork for this some time ago and it is already competitive, and more so as funding bars fall. It’s also an incredibly pervasive problem, which many donors have experienced first-hand, and so could attract significant co-funding. (Conflict of interest: I am chair of trustees at High Impact Athletes, which hosts the 1in3 Fund in this space.)
New funds focussed on a single theme, such as family planning or cataract surgery - Elevate Philanthropy identified a number of promising funds based on a single issue, which could do more field-building and shaping than general grantmakers, and also crowd in a lot of new funding.
Funding that tolerates different levels of risk, such as earlier-stage or hits-based giving - I wrote about this here.
In general, things focussed on improving wellbeing, reducing suffering or improving livelihoods, rather than predominantly preventing deaths. This seems like an obvious complement to GiveWell’s work and there are lots of options, from mental health support to economic growth.
This is without even considering opportunities in entirely new areas for effective giving, such as peacebuilding or the nascent work in democracy.
What to watch out for, following GiveWell’s AMF grant
This grant doesn’t concretely change the options for donors. However, it does indicate the direction of travel, and large donors should monitor a few key indicators to update their plans. (Actually, the $1bn grant from Coefficient Giving already signalled the new direction, but this is further evidence of how effective giving is changing.)
I will be monitoring the following for clients:
How much GiveWell ultimately deploys in 2026, versus receipts, and whether their rollover funds are growing or shrinking.
Further large grants to Top Charities, and what this implies about each individual project’s ‘impact price’.
Whether GiveWell’s funding bar moves again, signalling that the marginal effectiveness of their grantmaking is falling as they fund more things with more money.
Whether Coefficient Giving or other donors make further huge contributions to GiveWell or its recommendations.
On this last point - Coefficient Giving called its $1bn commitment a “one-off”. The Funding Anthropalypse could make these sorts of gifts the new normal. If that happens, this stops being theoretical: every serious donor will need a view on what their money buys, and when. Money deployed now and money committed for later both do enormous good. Just choose on purpose.
If you’d like help refreshing your strategy, get in touch.
Jack Lewars is the founder of Ultra Philanthropy, an independent advisory that helps major donors give for maximum impact, and is the fund manager of its Mid-Stage Global Health Fund. He advises donors giving up to nine figures a year, and is Chair of Trustees at High Impact Athletes. Talk to him about your giving.
I used Claude to help structure my thoughts and to suggest improvements and flag gaps, as well as for proofreading; all views, primary drafting and final edits are mine.