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Charities worthy of special recognition

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Organizations on this page do not rate well enough on our criteria to merit our strong confidence and recommendations, but display a prominent and unusual commitment to self-evaluation and/or transparency. While we encourage donors to support our top-rated charities, we also want to highlight other organizations for further research, if they fit more closely with one's personal giving priorities.

Table of Contents

Stands out for publishing monitoring and evaluation reports

AMREF

AMREF is a notable organization, receiving 1 / 3 possible stars (our 3rd highest rating). (What do our ratings mean?)

AMREF implements a highly diverse set of health, infrastructure, and training programs.1

AMREF publishes an Annual Program Report that offers a comprehensive review of its year's activities, providing (a) an overview of each project; (b) its cost; and (c) the titles of evaluation reports for each project. You can view the latest one online2 or download old reports from AMREF's publications page.3

Publicly publishing reports such as these is extremely rare among developing-world charities we've reviewed, and we recognize AMREF for its commitment to monitoring and evaluation. However, the details in this report did not meet our criteria for proven impact, and we therefore did not proceed further with AMREF.

CARE

CARE is a notable organization, receiving 1 / 3 possible stars (our 3rd highest rating). (What do our ratings mean?)

CARE implements a highly diverse set of development-related programs. (For more, see CARE's website.)

Standing out from many similar charities we reviewed, CARE publicly publishes a large project-by-project database with links to project-level evaluations.4 CARE also undertook a "meta-evaluation", a review of project-level evaluations.5

Publishing reports such as these is extremely rare among developing-world charities we've reviewed, and we recognize CARE for its commitment to monitoring and evaluation. However, the details in this report did not meet our criteria for proven impact, and we therefore did not proceed further with CARE.

Stands out for assessing its impact through a high-quality evaluation in progress

(For more on our definition of high-quality, see our standards of evidence.)

LivingGoods

LivingGoods is a notable organization, receiving 1 / 3 possible stars (our 3rd highest rating). (What do our ratings mean?)

LivingGoods recruits women to serve as community health promoters (CHPs) who go door-to-door selling basic, health-promoting goods including oral rehydration salts, iodized salt, and deworming tablets (see our report on the deworming intervention).6

LivingGoods is working with the Poverty Action Lab to perform a rigorous evaluation of its program.7 The evaluation is currently ongoing; data on impact are not available yet, but we are looking forward to the results of the evaluation and will revisit our analysis of LivingGoods when it is published.

Additional information submitted by LivingGoods to GiveWell about its operations and activities is available in this ZIP file.

The Hunger Project

The Hunger Project is a notable organization, receiving 1 / 3 possible stars (our 3rd highest rating). (What do our ratings mean?)

The Hunger Project's "epicenter strategy" mobilizes villages to take control of their development and hosts several empowerment and social capital programs, such as literacy classes, women's empowerment, HIV awareness and agricultural training."8 For more, see The Hunger Project's website.

The Hunger Project is working with Innovators for Poverty Action to perform a rigorous evaluation of its program.9 The evaluation is currently ongoing; data on impact are not available yet, but we are looking forward to the results of the evaluation and will revisit our analysis of The Hunger Project when it is published.

Stands out for publishing a negative review of a program

Doctors without Borders

Doctors without Borders is a notable organization, receiving 1 / 3 possible stars (our 3rd highest rating). (What do our ratings mean?)

Doctors Without Borders implements a highly diverse set of health-related programs.10 We have marked this organization as "notable" because it has publicly published a negative review of a program it implemented.11

The summary states:

"MSF started the Nujiang TB assistance program in March 1999, after signing a Memorandum of understanding with the Nujiang Prefecture Health Bureau and the Public Health Bureau’s in Fugong and Gongshan Counties. The Directly Observed Treatment Short-course (DOTS) WHO TB control guidelines were followed. After the initial set-up phase of nine months, enrollment of patients started in January 2000. In April 2000 low cure rates (< 60%) were registered which led to a mid-term evaluation of the program under supervision of Professor Zhao Fengzeng in August 2000. Professor Zhao and his team recommended increasing the patient detection rate, to strengthen DOTS and the laboratory work, to consolidate the training and (implicitly) to cooperate well with county governors and PHB directors. MSF wrote a response document to the evaluation report, revised the TB control guidelines, organized refresher training together with PHB and implemented new working methods from February 2001 onwards. In June 2001 the MSF-H Health Advisor visited the project and came to the conclusion that these changes had had little impact on the treatment outcomes. In August the TB advisor of MSF-H performed a technical evaluation and recommended to stop enrolment of patients."

In our experience, charities are very rarely willing to share evidence of disappointing impact. We believe that any charity that does so is being unusually honest about the challenges of international aid, and unusually accountable to donors. We expect that charities capable of spotting, documenting and sharing disappointing results are better positioned to improve our time.

Sources

  1. 1.

    AMREF's website

  2. 2.

    AMREF's Annual Report 2007

  3. 3.

    AMREF's publications page, accessed 6/30/09

  4. 4.

    www.careevaluations.org, accessed 6/30/09.

  5. 5.

    Meta-Evaluation of Goal Achievement in CARE Projects 2002

  6. 6.

    LivingGoods' website

  7. 7.

    Poverty Action Lab Evaluation of LivingGoods

  8. 8.

    Innovators for Poverty Action Evaluation of the Hunger Project

  9. 9.

    Innovators for Poverty Action Evaluation of The Hunger Project

  10. 10.

    Doctors without Borders website

  11. 11.

    China Tuberculosis Assistance Project, End of Evaluation Report 2002

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