Welcome to GiveWell’s podcast sharing the latest updates on our work. Tune in for conversations with GiveWell staff members discussing current priorities of our Research team and recent developments in the global health landscape.
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GiveWell Podcasts
GiveWell is a nonprofit dedicated to finding outstanding giving opportunities and publishing the full details of our analysis to help donors decide where to give.
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Taking Lessons from a Year of Aid Cuts into 2026: December 29, 2025
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Global health programs faced major disruptions to their funding in 2025. Back in March, we published our first podcast episode to share a timely snapshot of the immediate impacts caused by the foreign aid freeze and GiveWell’s initial response strategy. It was unclear whether and when funding would resume, and what the medium and long-term implicat…
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Growing Needs, Shrinking Aid Webinar Recording: December 15, 2025
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On Thursday, December 4, 2025, GiveWell hosted a live webinar titled “Growing Needs, Shrinking Aid: Cost-Effective Action in a Year of Funding Cuts.” Major cuts to foreign aid this year created deep uncertainty for global health programs. In this live-recorded discussion, co-founder and CEO Elie Hassenfeld moderates a panel of GiveWell researchers …
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Behind the Planet Money ALIMA Grant Story: December 9, 2025
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This episode follows up on the November 26, 2025 episode of Planet Money, “Saving lives with fewer dollars,” which covered GiveWell’s evaluation of a grant to the Alliance for International Medical Action (ALIMA) to maintain primary healthcare, hospital services, and malnutrition treatment in two subdistricts of North Cameroon following unexpected …
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Bridging an Uncertain Time for a Lifesaving Program: November 20, 2025
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Despite significant progress over the past several decades, malaria remains a leading cause of death globally for children under five. This year’s cuts to foreign aid funding disrupted highly effective programs to prevent malaria, such as seasonal malaria chemoprevention (SMC). SMC provides antimalarial medication to children under the age of five …
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Beyond the Spreadsheets: Malawi Site Visit Days 5 and 6
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Our Beyond the Spreadsheets mini-series lets you ride along with our leadership team on their recent weeklong site visit to Malawi. Recorded daily during the trip, the series shares the behind-the-scenes experience of a GiveWell site visit through real-time reflections and clips of conversations. On day five, the GiveWell team visited a school in L…
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Beyond the Spreadsheets: Malawi Site Visit Day 4
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Our Beyond the Spreadsheets mini-series lets you ride along with our leadership team on their recent weeklong site visit to Malawi. Recorded daily during the trip, the series shares the behind-the-scenes experience of a GiveWell site visit through real-time reflections and clips of conversations. On day four, the GiveWell team visited community pro…
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Beyond the Spreadsheets: Malawi Site Visit Day 3
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Our Beyond the Spreadsheets mini-series lets you ride along with our leadership team on their recent weeklong site visit to Malawi. Recorded daily during the trip, the series shares the behind-the-scenes experience of a GiveWell site visit through real-time reflections and clips of conversations. On day three, the GiveWell team visited a rural heal…
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Beyond the Spreadsheets: Malawi Site Visit Day 2
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Our Beyond the Spreadsheets mini-series lets you ride along with our leadership team on their recent weeklong site visit to Malawi. Recorded daily during the trip, the series shares the behind-the-scenes experience of a GiveWell site visit through real-time reflections and clips of conversations. On day two, the GiveWell team met with district heal…
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Beyond the Spreadsheets: Malawi Site Visit Day 1
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Our Beyond the Spreadsheets mini-series lets you ride along with our leadership team on their recent weeklong site visit to Malawi. Recorded daily during the trip, the series shares the behind-the-scenes experience of a GiveWell site visit through real-time reflections and clips of conversations. New episodes will be released weekly over the next m…
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A Frontline View of Foreign Aid Cuts with CHAI’s CEO: September 11, 2025
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Foreign aid funding cuts are reshaping the global health landscape, creating urgent funding gaps and forcing difficult prioritization decisions across health systems worldwide. To understand the real-world effects, it’s essential to hear from the organizations working on the front lines with government partners to navigate the funding crisis. The C…
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The Fragile Foundations of Global Health Data: August 21, 2025
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GiveWell’s ability to find and fund highly cost-effective health programs relies on a foundation of credible data. A key source of that data, the Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS), recently had its primary funding from USAID discontinued. This creates the potential of a significant challenge for GiveWell’s research—and for evidence-based grantma…
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Advancing GiveWell’s Work on Family Planning: August 7, 2025
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As GiveWell’s research team grows, that increased capacity and expertise allows us to evaluate a wider range of programs to find the most cost-effective opportunities to help people. Over the past year and a half, we’ve been investigating a new research area—family planning services that help people decide whether and when to have children. Family …
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Malaria Funding at a Crossroads: July 18, 2025
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Malaria is the cause area where GiveWell has directed the most funding over our 18-year history. We’ve recommended over $1 billion to malaria programs, which we estimate will avert over 200,000 deaths, mostly in young children, through support for programs like Against Malaria Foundation’s insecticide-treated nets and Malaria Consortium’s seasonal …
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Deepening GiveWell’s Focus on Livelihoods Programs: July 10, 2025
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GiveWell has long grappled with fundamental questions about how to value different positive impacts and make funding decisions across diverse programs. In particular, how much more valuable it is to save a life than to substantially improve it? And how can we prioritize between programs that achieve those outcomes in different measures when there’s…
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Forecasting the Future of Global Health Funding: June 26, 2025
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In the face of potential major cuts to foreign aid, how can we anticipate the impact on global health and effectively direct resources to the areas of greatest need? In this episode, GiveWell’s CEO and co-founder, Elie Hassenfeld, speaks with Principal Researcher Alex Cohen to discuss the forecasting work GiveWell has undertaken to better understan…
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Exploring HIV/AIDS Funding Cuts and Emerging Needs: June 5, 2025
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The US government has historically been a major funder of HIV/AIDS programs, providing around $5 to $6 billion annually through PEPFAR and other initiatives. With anticipated major reductions in US government foreign aid, including potential cuts of 20% to 50% to HIV/AIDS funding, GiveWell is assessing where new, cost-effective needs might emerge. …
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Supporting Governments Navigating US Funding Cuts: May 15, 2025
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Cuts to US government foreign assistance have created unprecedented challenges for global health programs. Countries that have relied on this funding must now navigate substantial gaps and make difficult decisions about program priorities. In the fourth episode of GiveWell’s podcast series on these cuts, GiveWell CEO and co-founder Elie Hassenfeld …
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Making Cost-Effective Grants Amid Uncertainty: April 23, 2025
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The US government has historically spent approximately $12 billion to $15 billion annually in foreign assistance dedicated to global health. The funding cuts announced in the first few months of 2025 disrupted the global health landscape and created the possibility of enormous funding gaps that are still coming into focus. In response, GiveWell has…
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Addressing Urgent Needs in Seasonal Malaria Chemoprevention: April 3, 2025
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Our first episode shared a broad overview of the impacts of US government aid cuts and GiveWell’s initial response. This time, GiveWell Program Officer Natalie Crispin joins CEO and co-founder Elie Hassenfeld to zoom in on a specific case, focusing on grants we’ve made to support urgent funding gaps for seasonal malaria chemoprevention (SMC). SMC i…
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GiveWell’s Response to USAID Funding Cuts: March 19, 2025
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In this discussion between GiveWell CEO and co-founder Elie Hassenfeld and Senior Program Officer Julie Faller, we provide snapshots of how US funding changes are affecting global health programs: Immediate program trade-offs: As funds are paused, country governments are having to choose between essential health services, including one country that…
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Chelsea Tabart, Sarah Ward, and Sean Conley discuss being a new employee at GiveWell and their experiences working here so far.(Music: 8bit Five by Cullah.)By GiveWell Podcast
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Episode 3 - The Against Malaria Foundation
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Elie Hassenfeld and Sean Conley discuss GiveWell's #1 ranked top charity, the Against Malaria Foundation.(Music: 8bit Five by Cullah.)By GiveWell Podcast
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Catherine Hollander, Howie Lempel, and Sean Conley discuss GiveWell's history and mission and GiveWell's process for finding top charities.(Music: 8bit Five by Cullah.)By GiveWell Podcast
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