Elie Hassenfeld is the Co-Founder and Executive Director of GiveWell.

He helps set the strategy and oversee the work of Open Philanthropy, in addition to leading the History of Philanthropy project and serving as co-Executive Director of GiveWell. Elie has a degree in religion from Columbia University and spent several years in the hedge fund industry before co-founding GiveWell in mid-2007.

GiveWell

Elie Hassenfeld

On September 27th, I recommended a grant of $150,000 from this fund to Evidence Action's No Lean Season program. (Note that this was before GiveWell named No Lean Season a top charity.)

Earlier that day, Karen Levy, Director of Global Innovation at Evidence Action and our main point of contact at No Lean Season, called me to say that No Lean Season needed additional funding. She had tried to raise money elsewhere but had no other alternatives.

No Lean Season had underestimated the number of people who would take No Lean Season's loan offer, and needed funding to prevent having to turn interested borrowers away. This was particularly important because No Lean Season is currently running a randomized controlled trial of its program and wanted the program to reach as many people as possible to increase statistical power and increase the likelihood of measuring a statistically meaningful result.

I recommended a grant of $150,000 because Karen told me that this amount would allow No Lean Season to keep operating its program without interruption.

Easy access to the highly flexible pool of funds in this EA Fund made this grant possible. Evidence Action / No Lean Season were incredibly grateful that your donations filled this pressing funding gap so quickly.

Thank you!


Families receiving antimalarial bednets in Senegal

You can donate through the Giving What We Can website by following [this link](https://www.givingwhatwecan.org/funds/effective-altruism-funds) and clicking the “Make Payment” button on the bottom right.

You can find all information about tax-deductibility in the Payment Details. While we advise donors to give tax-effectively when possible, we believe impact is more important than tax benefits.


How do I make a donation an EA Fund?

The Global Health and Development Fund makes grants across a number of risk profiles.

It is currently looking for higher-risk, but potentially higher-return opportunities to grant to. These will typically be opportunities that GiveWell researchers have identified as having the potential to be very effective, but that are not established enough to be recommended as GiveWell top charities.

If the Fund cannot find any higher-risk, higher-return projects to grant to, it will periodically publish updates, and may choose to either roll the money forward and put it towards future opportunities, or to grant it to GiveWell top charities.

You can read a recent update about the Fund's grantmaking approach [here](https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/F42BX8su2ZEquaicL/a-change-to-the-grantmaking-schedule-of-the-effective). For more information on how we think about grantmaking risk, please read our [Risk Profiles page](/funds/about/risk).



What is the risk profile of the Global Health and Development Fund?

The Global Health and Development Fund will make grants as it identifies promising opportunities.

To ensure timely disbursement, it plans to allocate all unallocated funds in a six month period to GiveWell top charities in February and August. However, it may choose to hold funds for longer if it has already granted out a substantial proportion of the funds available during the preceding six months or is close to concluding an investigation into a promising grant.

The Fund has committed to publishing updates at least twice a year, explaining how it has decided to allocate its money.

_Previously, the Fund disbursed funds three times a year. You can read the rationale for updating the Fund's grantmaking schedule [here](https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/F42BX8su2ZEquaicL/a-change-to-the-grantmaking-schedule-of-the-effective)._

How often does the Global Health and Development Fund make grants?

The Global Health and Development Fund is managed by Elie Hassenfeld, [GiveWell](http://www.givewell.org)'s co-founder. GiveWell is an organization that conducts research into the most promising and effective charitable giving opportunities, with a focus on Global Health and Development.

This fund supports charities that the fund manager believes may be better in expectation than those recommended by [GiveWell](http://www.givewell.org/), a charity evaluator focused on outstandingly effective giving opportunities. For example, by pooling the funds of many individual donors, the Fund can support new but promising global health charities in getting off the ground (e.g. [Charity Science Health](http://www.charitysciencehealth.com/) or the [Innovation in Government Initiative](https://www.givewell.org/research/incubation-grants/innovation-in-government-initiative/december-2018-grant)).

If no such options are available, the Fund will likely donate to GiveWell for regranting. This means we think there is a strong likelihood that donating to the fund will be at least as impactful as donating in accordance with GiveWell’s recommendations, but could be better in expectation.

How is this Fund different from donating to GiveWell's top charities?

The Global Health and Development Fund is managed by Elie Hassenfeld, [GiveWell](http://www.givewell.org)'s co-founder. GiveWell is an organization that conducts research into the most promising and effective charitable giving opportunities, with a focus on Global Health and Development.

Elie believes GiveWell's top charities are excellent giving opportunities, which are evidence-based, cost-effective and could productively use additional funding to directly help people living in poverty. Donors who would prefer to exclusively fund this type of opportunity should either give to GiveWell for regranting to top charities at its discretion, or give directly to one of GiveWell's top charities.

More recently, GiveWell has been doing more [exploratory research](https://blog.givewell.org/2019/02/07/how-givewells-research-is-evolving/) to identify promising giving opportunities outside its traditional criteria, such as organizations working to assist in the creation of effective policy, or early-stage organizations. Donations to this fund are intended to support opportunities identified through that work, which was previously funded by Open Philanthropy through [GiveWell Incubation Grants](http://www.givewell.org/research/incubation-grants).

Thus, until GiveWell finds opportunities that surpass Open Philanthropy's available funding, donations to this fund are most likely to either:

(a) displace Open Philanthropy funding of Incubation Grant-like opportunities (and cause that funding to instead go to GiveWell's top charities), or

(b) go directly to GiveWell's top charities.

Nonetheless, donating to this fund is valuable because it helps demonstrate to GiveWell that there is donor demand for higher-risk, higher-reward global health and development giving opportunities.

If the Fund is managed by the head of GiveWell, why doesn't it just recommend that people give to GiveWell or its top charities?

The Global Health and Development Fund is not currently accepting applications for funding.

Can I apply for funding to the Global Health and Development Fund?

[GiveWell](https://www.givewell.org/) is a research organization that searches for the most cost-effective ways to help people living in low- and middle-income countries and publishes all its research online to help donors decide where to give.

GiveWell's research team supports fund recommendations in the following ways:

1. investigating new, high-impact giving opportunities in both direct intervention and policy; 
2. making recommendations for seed or scaling grants to promising charities that may eventually be recommended by GiveWell; and 
3. maintaining an ongoing understanding of the future needs and funding gaps of current recommended charities in order to recommend grants that maximize donor impact.

GiveWell Staff

The Global Health and Development Fund aims to improve the health or economic empowerment of people around the world as effectively as possible.