Global Health and Development Fund

The Global Health and Development Fund recommends grants with the aim of improving people's lives, typically in the poorest regions of the world where the need for healthcare and economic empowerment is greatest. This will be achieved primarily by supporting projects that:

• Directly provide healthcare, or preventive measures that will improve health, well-being, or life expectancy
• Directly provide services that raise incomes or otherwise improve economic conditions
• Provide assistance to governments in the design and implementation of effective policies

In addition, the Global Health and Development Fund has a broad remit, and may fund other activities whose ultimate purpose is to serve people living in the poorest regions of the world, for example by raising additional funds (e.g. One for the World) or by exploring novel financing arrangements (e.g. Instiglio).

The Fund manager recommends grants to GiveWell top charities as a baseline, but will recommend higher-risk grants they believe to be more effective (in expectation) than GiveWell top charities. As such, the fund makes grants with a variety of different risk profiles.

The Fund is currently managed by GiveWell co-founder Elie Hassenfeld. Elie and GiveWell staff have extensive experience analyzing unusually promising opportunities in the global health and development space; GiveWell recommends charities that are evidence-backed, thoroughly vetted, and underfunded.

The Global Health and Development Fund has recommended several million dollars' worth of grants to a range of organizations, including:

Higher risk opportunities:

J-PAL’s Innovation in Government Initiative

The Innovation in Government Initiative provides technical assistance to governments in low- and middle-income countries, to help them implement and scale evidence-based policies. The program is backed by the renowned Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL).

Instiglio

 Instiglio is an organization which assists in the technical design of results-based financing mechanisms. Instiglio is currently working with GiveWell, UBS Optimus, and the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria to design a $50-100m Health Outcomes Fund, focused on primary health care.

Direct delivery:

Malaria prevention

Malaria kills hundreds of thousands of people every year (most of them children under 5 years of age), but methods to prevent it are cheap to implement, and have been largely responsible for substantially reducing the death rate over the last 20 years. The Fund has granted to the Against Malaria Foundation, which distributes insecticide-treated bednets, and to Malaria Consortium’s Seasonal Malaria Chemoprevention program, which distributes antimalarial drugs at peak times of the year.

Global health and development is a highly tractable area: even small donations can have a huge impact on improving people’s lives and preventing premature deaths.

The problem is also very large in scale. As of 2015, over 700 million people were living under the international poverty line of $1.90/day. The UN Inter-agency Group for Child Mortality Estimation estimates that nearly 15,000 children under the age of 5 die each day from preventable causes associated with extreme poverty.

While many organizations work on helping those in extreme poverty, the scale of the problem means there are still many outstanding giving opportunities with room for more funding.

The Fund makes grants to organizations directly serving people in low- and middle-income countries, as well as promising but higher-risk opportunities to help the global poor. As such, it is suitable for donors who want to take calculated risks, but who support more straightforward giving when the fund manager is unable to identify riskier opportunities they believe to be more effective (in expectation).

You prefer particular types of giving opportunities within global health & development

The Fund has a broad remit, making grants to support both straightforward and higher-risk giving opportunities. It also makes grants to improve people's lives in multiple ways, including preventing early deaths, improving health, and increasing economic empowerment.

Donors who have a strong preference for a particular risk profile or type of benefit may want to focus their giving more narrowly. Donors who prefer their giving to focus on more straightforward opportunities should consider supporting GiveWell, which can reallocate their donation to its top charities based on their funding needs.

You want to focus on causes outside global health and development

You might also choose not to support the Fund if you believe that shaping the trajectory of the long-term future is of overwhelming importance, and that global poverty interventions are not the best mechanism for shaping the future. Specifically, you might not support the fund if you believe some version of the following from Nick Beckstead’s PhD dissertation:

The importance of the far future: From a global perspective, what matters most (in expectation) is that we do what is best (in expectation) for the general trajectory along which our descendants develop over the coming millions of years or longer.

In such a case, you might want to consider donating to interventions focusing on the long-term future.

Alternatively, you might want to focus your donations on improving animal welfare, or effective altruism community-building.

You don’t know much about GiveWell, or trust its research

This fund will be heavily influenced by GiveWell's research. You therefore might choose not to support the fund if you don't have a high level of trust in GiveWell's research and judgment.

You can learn more about GiveWell's research here.