Partner Charities

Effective Altruism Australia’s objective is to help others as much as possible for every dollar donated. To do this we support charities that are consistently ranked as highly cost effective by independent charity evaluators such as GiveWell and The Life You Can Save. Because of their focus on transparency, commitment to evaluation and follow-up, and scaling of proven interventions, we have high confidence that these charities can reliably transform the lives of the worst off. Read more about the process that GiveWell uses to assess charities here.

We partner with five charities: the Against Malaria Foundation (AMF), the Schistosomiasis Control Initiative (SCI), Evidence Action (Deworm the World Initiative), GiveDirectly and Malaria Consortium. We support these partners by fundraising on their behalf in Australia.

Against Malaria Foundation (AMF)

Preventing deaths from malaria in sub-Saharan Africa

Malaria is a major problem in sub-Saharan Africa. In 2015, around 440,000 people – mostly children – died from malaria. Insecticide-treated bed nets prevent deaths and many other non-fatal cases of malaria and are relatively inexpensive – A$3.50 per net or A$5-7 including the costs of its distribution partners. (For more details, see GiveWell’s full report on bed nets.) We believe that AMF effectively expands access to bed nets. Read the full report on AMF by GiveWell or The Life You Can Save.

Schistosomiasis Control Initiative (SCI)

Treating people for parasite infections in sub-Saharan Africa

SCI supports programs that treat people for parasitic worm infections that cause short-term symptoms such as anemia, and may cause longer-term developmental problems. These worms are extremely inexpensive to treat. (For more, see GiveWell’s full report on deworming.) We believe that SCI cost-effectively expands access to deworming treatment. Read the report on SCI by GiveWell or The Life You Can Save. 

Deworm the World Initiative (led by Evidence Action)

Treating children for parasite infections in developing countries

The Deworm the World Initiative, led by Evidence Action, supports governments around the world to eliminate the public health threat of parasitic worms through school-based mass deworming programs. More specifically, Evidence Action’s Deworm the World Initiative advocates for school-based deworming to policymakers and provides technical assistance to launch, strengthen and sustain school-based deworming programs. 220 million children will be dewormed in 2016 thanks to Evidence Action’s work. Read the report on Deworm the World by GiveWell or The Life You Can Save. 

GiveDirectly

Send money directly to the extreme poor

Directly transferring money to poor individuals allows them to purchase that which they believe will help them most. Strong evidence indicates that cash transfers lead recipients to spend more on their basic needs (such as food) and may allow recipients to make investments with high returns, with evidence showing no impact, or a negative impact, of transfers on alcohol or tobacco expenditure. (For more, see GiveWell’s full report on cash transfers.) We believe that GiveDirectly effectively distributes cash to extremely low-income individuals. Read the report on GiveDirectly by GiveWell, or The Life You Can Save. 

GiveDirectly Basic Income Research

Support rigorous research to assess the impact of basic income

You can earmark your funds to support GiveDirectly’s research on basic income, a Randomised Controlled Trial (RCT) that will be conducted in collaboration with MIT. This will run for 10-15 years and have an active arm of at least 6000 Kenyans. To run the research GiveDirectly will require $30 million, the first $10 million of which they will match at a 1:1 ratio. You can read more at GiveDirectly. Read the report on GiveDirectly by GiveWell, or The Life You Can Save. 

Malaria Consortium

Preventing malaria in children in sub-Saharan Africa

Malaria Consortium fights malaria by working with national governments to distribute preventive drugs for children under five years via seasonal malaria chemoprevention (SMC) programmes. Based on strong evidence, SMC is particularly effective at preventing malaria in those areas where it is seasonal. It is cost effective and saves lives. We believe that Malaria Consortium cost-effectively expands access to SMC programmes. Read more about Malaria Consortium and SMC here, or at their website. Read the report on Malaria Consortium by GiveWell.

Based on research from charity evaluators, we chose our partner charities based on these four criteria:

Estimated impact per dollar: The impact of each dollar donated depends on the good and service which it can be used to purchase of those in need. To ensure the maximum impact per dollar, we deliberately favour charities which work within poorer countries, where residents of these countries have relatively low incomes and living costs.

Estimated intervention effectiveness: The effectiveness of charity depends on the certainty with which it can be linked to positive outcomes. To ensure that all charities we support are reliably linked with creating positive social outcomes we focus on those which have been repeatedly studied, and have a demonstrated track record.

Transparency: Evaluating charities requires that they provide access their data and internal operations so that this data can be evaluated for effectiveness. To ensure certainty with our evaluation we only work with those charities that are willing to maintain high levels of transparency.

Room for more funding: Will your donation be put to good use and can the charity spend it in productive ways to help people?