Helen Keller, our co-founder, envisioned a world without barriers to human potential. We are continuing her work.


Helen Keller, our co-founder, envisioned a world without barriers to human potential. Guided by her fierce optimism, we have been working on the front lines of health and well-being for more than 100 years. We deliver life-changing health care to vulnerable families in places where the need is great, but access is limited. Our proven, science-based programs empower people to create opportunities in their own lives.


Helen Keller International

Support highly-impactful, evidence-based solutions to reduce animal suffering on a global scale. 

At least 75 billion farmed land animals and more than a trillion fish are slaughtered each year. That is more than 2000 land animals and 25,000 fish are killed every second. This is possible due to the mechanization and intensification of factory farming, driven by global increase in demand for meat.

Although this situation seems bleak - and the numbers almost too large to comprehend - there are reasons to be hopeful. Recent years have seen rapid progress in the animal welfare movement. Many large companies have pledged to phase out or drastically reduce some of their industry’s most harmful practices. Governments have banned some of these practices outright. And companies working to commercialize alternative proteins, such as plant-based meats, have raised billions of dollars from investors. Yet farm animal welfare remains highly neglected, with just 0.03% of US philanthropic funding going to this cause in 2017. 

By giving to the Founders Pledge Animal Welfare Index, you can spread your donation across several highly-impactful and neglected global initiatives to alleviate suffering and improve the conditions of factory-farmed animals. By pooling your donations, this Index fund allows you to make larger grants and thereby maximize your impact.

### Our Approach to Grantmaking
When evaluating potential grants, we consider several key points:

- **Counterfactual impact.** Our grants are designed to create a meaningful outcome that would not otherwise have happened. This means that you can rely on the Funds to create meaningful, real change, rather than just maintaining the status quo.
- **Impact-driven philanthropy.** The goal of this fund is maximal positive impact, irrespective of this impact being “sexy” or visible. This means we will focus on opportunities that others focused on clear attribution of their work or shiny outcomes might neglect.
- **The organization’s funding gap.** Not all organizations are set up to scale up their programming and many can’t productively absorb large amounts of unsolicited funding. We evaluate all potential grantees’ capacity for growth and consider how much money they could put to good use.
- **Organizational strength.** Particularly with unrestricted funding, it’s important to have trust in the leadership and capacity of the organizations we support. We look at their track record of success and their transparency about failures as well as successes, and we only support those organizations which are exceptionally well run.


To learn more about our approach to Animal Welfare as a cause area, please visit [www.founderspledge.com](https://www.founderspledge.com/research/topic/animal-welfare).

Founders Pledge: Animal Welfare Index

Protecting sight and fighting for disability rights

Sightsavers works in more than 30 countries worldwide, focusing on Africa and Asia.
We work with local, regional, national and international partners and governments. With their help, we distribute treatments to prevent disease, carry out eye operations, advocate for disability rights and improve health services to create sustainable development projects. 

Our vision is of a world where avoidable blindness is eliminated, and people with disabilities have the same rights as everyone else. We can only get there thanks to the generosity of our supporters, so we aim to be as transparent as possible so you can be sure your money is being used wisely.

Sightsavers

We provide cash incentives for childhood vaccinations. It’s one of the most cost-effective ways known to save lives.


New Incentives’ mission is to save lives in a way that does the **most good per dollar**.
Guided by evidence, we provide cash incentives to increase childhood vaccination rates.

- We [raise awareness](https://www.newincentives.org/blog-posts/awareness-activities) about the benefits of childhood vaccinations.
- We [provide cash incentives](https://www.newincentives.org/blog-posts/a-day-in-the-life-abubakar-aliyu-field-officer) at government clinics after children receive vaccinations.
- We [help improve the vaccine supply chain](https://www.newincentives.org/blog-posts/supporting-government-partners-with-vaccine-supply-efforts) to ensure enough vaccines are available at clinics.

Together, these efforts are proven to double vaccination rates and save lives.
Learn more about the [randomized controlled trial](https://www.newincentives.org/rct-results).

As of March 2024, New Incentives has reached more the 3 million infants in northern Nigeria.

New Incentives

The Top Charities Fund supports the highest-priority funding needs among our top charities.

We find and recommend outstanding giving opportunities and publish our research to help donors give more effectively and with greater confidence.

All donations here support our Top Charities Fund. Donations to the Top Charities Fund are granted on a rolling basis to support cost-effective funding opportunities at our top charities. We use our latest research to grant the funds to the top charity (or charities) where we believe they’ll do the most good.

Learn more and view past grants at https://www.givewell.org/top-charities-fund


Photo caption: At health centers in Sierra Leone supported by Helen Keller Intl, mothers who bring their children in for twice-yearly vitamin A supplemention can also receive comprehensive counseling about birth control options that are available to them free of charge. Combining family planning and children's healthcare services benefits both mother and child. 2019.

Top Charities Fund

International nonprofit ending the abuse of animals raised for food.

The mission of The Humane League, why we exist, is to end the abuse of animals raised for food. This sense of purpose drives every action in our unrelenting march forward for animals.

The Humane League

Evidence Action scales evidence-based and cost-effective programs to reduce the burden of poverty. 

Evidence Action was founded in 2013 to address a big gap in the fight against global poverty – many of the most promising interventions are either implemented at a very small scale, or not at all. We set out to address this gap by building programs that would scale evidence-based and cost-effective interventions, leading to significant improvements in quality of life for hundreds of millions of people.

Our model worked. Since then, our interventions have reached more than 530 million people. This success is achieved through the dedication and talent of our staff, the hard work of our partners, and the commitment of our supporters.

Our Accelerator is the engine for our new program development. To find the most cost-effective solutions in the world, we explore untapped opportunities with the greatest potential for impact. Through a rigorous process, we test groundbreaking health and development interventions, selecting those with a proven ability to reduce the burden of poverty at scale. This focus allows us to maximize the impact made for every single dollar invested.

**Programs:**

**Safe Water Now**

We provide sustained safe water access to communities through water treatment – one of the most cost-effective ways to prevent childhood illnesses and death. Safe Water Now programming in Kenya, Uganda, Malawi, and India uses innovative, low-cost approaches like chlorine dispensers and automatic in-line chlorination. With local government and community buy-in, we reach nearly 10 million people with safe water access and have saved the lives of more than 15,000 children under 5 years old. Now, we are scaling in partnership with the Government of India to reach tens of millions more.

**Deworm the World** 

We help improve children's health, education, and long-term wellbeing by treating parasitic worm

infections at schools. In partnership with governments in Kenya, Nigeria, India, and Pakistan, Evidence Action designs, scales, and sustains cost-effective mass deworming programs. Since 2014, Deworm the World has helped governments deliver 2 billion deworming treatments to children, dramatically reducing worm prevalence and collectively increasing economic productivity by an estimated $23 billion USD.

**Equal Vitamin Access**

We combat the leading cause of childhood malnutrition and disability in low- and middle-income countries by helping to deliver essential supplementation. Equal Vitamin Access provides end-to-end support to governments in India and Malawi to address anemia by leveraging our school-based deworming platform to offer iron and folic acid supplementation cost effectively. In 2023 alone, our program reached 35.8 million children with weekly treatments, giving them a

better chance to develop into strong, healthy adults.

**Syphilis-Free Start**

We safeguard the health of pregnant women and their unborn children by enabling access to low-cost syphilis screening and treatment as part of prenatal care. We partner with governments in Liberia, Cameroon, and Zambia to prevent disability, neonatal

mortality, and stillbirths resulting from congenital syphilis. Syphilis-Free Start’s timely detection and treatment prevented 2,300 adverse outcomes such as blindness, neurological issues, and hearing loss between 2021 and 2023, including 1,300 lives saved.



Evidence Action

Delivering unconditional cash directly to the world's poorest households via secure mobile transfers. 

Since 2009, GiveDirectly has delivered more than $580 million in unconditional cash transfers to families in need. These one-time cash transfers allow recipients to invest in what they need most and have been shown to improve their earnings, children’s school attendance, health, nutrition, and mental well-being.
 
GiveDirectly uses government data to target villages where most or all residents are living in extreme poverty, defined by the World Bank as earning under $2.15/day. In-country GiveDirectly staff enroll one member of each household in the entire village to receive a one-time transfer of about $1,000 USD sent in two installments using mobile money. Recipients can then withdraw the mobile funds as cash with local agents and use the funds to invest in what they need – whether it’s on starting a business, education, making their home safer/sturdier, healthcare, or livestock.
 
GiveDirectly uses rigorous experimental research (randomized controlled trials) to measure the impact of their unconditional cash programs and answer public policy questions, generating evidence on key design and implementation questions across varied contexts. You can find over 300 studies on the positive impacts of cash transfers in GiveDirectly’s Cash Research Explorer.

GiveDirectly

Malaria Consortium

One of GiveWell's top charities for the past several years, AMF provides anti-malarial bednets to people in need. 

From Givewell: 
What do they do? AMF (againstmalaria.com) provides funding for long-lasting insecticide-treated net (LLIN) distributions (for protection against malaria) in developing countries. (More)

Does it work? There is strong evidence that distributing LLINs reduces child mortality and malaria cases. AMF conducts post-distribution surveys of completed distributions to determine whether LLINs have reached their intended destinations and how long they remain in good condition. AMF's post-distribution surveys have generally found positive results but have some methodological limitations. (More)

What do you get for your dollar? We estimate that the cost to purchase and distribute an AMF-funded net is $4.95, or $4.65 excluding in-kind contributions from governments. The numbers of deaths averted and other benefits of distributing LLINs are a function of a number of difficult-to-estimate factors, which we discuss in detail below. (More)

Is there room for more funding? We believe that AMF is likely to be constrained by funding. We estimate that AMF could use up to an additional $37.8 million to support LLIN distributions that will occur between now and late 2023. 

AMF is recommended because of its:

Focus on a program with excellent evidence of effectiveness and cost-effectiveness.
Processes for ensuring that nets reach their intended recipients and monitoring whether they remain in homes and in good condition over the long-term.
Room for more funding – we believe AMF will be able to use additional funds to deliver additional nets.
Transparency – AMF shares significant information about its work with us and we are able to closely follow and understand its work.

The Against Malaria Foundation

Founders Pledge is a global nonprofit empowering entrepreneurs to do the most good possible with their charitable giving. 

We equip members with everything needed to maximize their impact, from evidence-led research and advice on the world’s most pressing problems, to comprehensive infrastructure for global grant-making, alongside opportunities to learn and connect. We’re grateful to be funded by our members and other generous donors. 

Founders Pledge

We search for the charities that save or improve lives the most per dollar.

Our goal is to produce the world's top research on where to give. Free, for everyone.

We recommend a small number of charities that do an incredible amount of good. 

If you would like to donate to our giving funds or individual top charities, please see our projects below. You can donate here or on the Unrestricted Fund page below to make an unrestricted gift to GiveWell to support the full spectrum of our grantmaking and underwrite our ability to continue doing what we do.

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