Principles behind the effective giving movement

• Be confident that your donation will be used effectively. By relying on recommendations of where to give that are based on high-quality evidence about what works, you can be confident your donation will be well-used.
• Change incentives for charities. The more donations that GiveWell directs to charities through its website, the more donors can send a message that they care about effectiveness and are willing to invest in charities that are recommended based on transparency and evidence
• Have a bigger impact. By giving to the top recommended charities on GiveWell
  Givewell
  GiveWell is an American non-profit charity evaluator created in 2006 by two former finance industry workers, Holden Karnofsky and Elie Hassenfeld. GiveWell's goal is to use an evidence based approach by examining results empirically and avoiding anecdotes and appeals to stories. They investigate...
  
   or Giving What We Can
  Giving What We Can
  Giving What We Can is an international society for the promotion of poverty relief, in particular in the developing world.Founded by moral philosopher Dr Toby Ord in November 2009, Giving What We Can is not a charity itself: the aims of the organisation are instead to encourage people to commit to...
  
  , you can save a life for about $450 (by giving to the Stop TB Partnership
  Stop TB Partnership
  The Stop TB Partnership was established in 2000 to eliminate tuberculosis as a public health problem. Its 1000 partner organizations include international, nongovernmental and governmental organizations and patient groups...
  
  , for example).

Evidence-based giving

Charity Navigator focuses on overhead costs. But overhead costs don’t tell you anything about the impact of particular programs. What you need to know instead is whether there is good evidence that the program works. That is what GiveWell researches and presents to donors on its website.

Some problems are easier to solve with monetary donations. The Copenhagen consensus

Copenhagen Consensus

Copenhagen Consensus is a project that seeks to establish priorities for advancing global welfare using methodologies based on the theory of welfare economics. It was conceived and organized by Bjørn Lomborg, the author of The Skeptical Environmentalist and the then director of the Danish...

 2008 listed 15 problems to be most cost-effectively treated; on the list were (1) micronutrient supplements for children, (4) expanded immunization coverage, and (6) deworming.

Pledging to give effectively

On the webpage for his book The Life You Can Save

The Life You Can Save

The Life You Can Save: Acting Now to End World Poverty is a 2009 non-fiction book written by Australian philosopher Peter Singer. In it, Singer argues that citizens of affluent nations are behaving immorally if they do not act to end the poverty they know to exist in developing nations.The book...

, Peter Singer

Peter Singer

Peter Albert David Singer is an Australian philosopher who is the Ira W. DeCamp Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University and Laureate Professor at the Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics at the University of Melbourne...

 encourages people to pledge a certain percentage of their incomes to giving and recommends GiveWell as a source for where to give.

Giving What We Can

Giving What We Can

Giving What We Can is an international society for the promotion of poverty relief, in particular in the developing world.Founded by moral philosopher Dr Toby Ord in November 2009, Giving What We Can is not a charity itself: the aims of the organisation are instead to encourage people to commit to...

 is another group that is building a community of people who pledge a percentage of their income (at least 10%), and recommends where to give.

What type of evidence is high-quality

One way of thinking about effective giving is to focus on high-quality evidence of what works to create significant positive outcomes. Certain medical interventions (like vaccination) are already backed by high-quality medical research, and so there is a lower burden of proof for charities doing these types of programs.

There are a couple of academic groups that do randomized controlled trial

Randomized controlled trial

A randomized controlled trial is a type of scientific experiment - a form of clinical trial - most commonly used in testing the safety and efficacy or effectiveness of healthcare services or health technologies A randomized controlled trial (RCT) is a type of scientific experiment - a form of...

s on other types of interventions as well: Poverty Action Lab and Innovations for Poverty Action. See the founder of J-PAL, Esther Duflo, give a short talk about randomized controlled trial

Randomized controlled trial

A randomized controlled trial is a type of scientific experiment - a form of clinical trial - most commonly used in testing the safety and efficacy or effectiveness of healthcare services or health technologies A randomized controlled trial (RCT) is a type of scientific experiment - a form of...

s (RCTs)

Many of the people in the effective giving movement - GiveWell and Giving What We Can included - focus on this type of high quality evidence. Though RCTs are not the only kind of high-quality evidence these groups rely upon, they do play a major role.

Groups/blogs related to effective giving

• GiveWell
  Givewell
  GiveWell is an American non-profit charity evaluator created in 2006 by two former finance industry workers, Holden Karnofsky and Elie Hassenfeld. GiveWell's goal is to use an evidence based approach by examining results empirically and avoiding anecdotes and appeals to stories. They investigate...
  
  : GiveWell.org
• Giving What We Can
  Giving What We Can
  Giving What We Can is an international society for the promotion of poverty relief, in particular in the developing world.Founded by moral philosopher Dr Toby Ord in November 2009, Giving What We Can is not a charity itself: the aims of the organisation are instead to encourage people to commit to...
  
  : GivingWhatWeCan.org
• Peter Singer’s The Life You Can Save
  The Life You Can Save
  The Life You Can Save: Acting Now to End World Poverty is a 2009 non-fiction book written by Australian philosopher Peter Singer. In it, Singer argues that citizens of affluent nations are behaving immorally if they do not act to end the poverty they know to exist in developing nations.The book...
  
  : TheLifeYouCanSave.com
• Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA) Proven Impact Fund: Poverty-Action.org
• J-PAL at MIT (Research group): PovertyActionLab.org
• Good Intentions are not enough: Good Intentions are not enough