Thank you to everyone who has contributed to the All Grants Fund via Effective Altruism Australia. Your donations help support high-impact grant-making around the world, including the projects outlined below.
We’re pleased to share this update from our partner, GiveWell, highlighting recent grants and research supported through the All Grants Fund. The content below was written by the GiveWell team and is shared here with minor edits for clarity and attribution.
GiveWell All Grants Fund Updates
Continued USAID Response
GiveWell are continuing to monitor both the short- and long-term impacts of USAID funding cuts. The All Grants Fund has enabled them to respond flexibly to emerging needs—so far, GiveWell have approved around $28 million in grants directly responding to the 2025 US foreign aid cuts.
These cuts have created unprecedented challenges for global health programs, and 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, GiveWell CEO and co-founder Elie Hassenfeld spoke with Program Officer Dan Brown about GiveWell’s grants to create technical support units in six African countries. These units will provide support to the ministries of health in Burkina Faso, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Malawi, Nigeria, Uganda, and Zambia as they navigate funding transitions to maintain essential health services.
Thanks to generous support from donors like you, these grants were funded in part by donations to the All Grants Fund.
Exploring HIV/AIDS
HIV/AIDS has not historically been a focus for GiveWell due to substantial US government support through PEPFAR and other initiatives. But with potential HIV/AIDS funding cuts of 20% to 50% in the near future, GiveWell are assessing where significant cost-effective opportunities might emerge.
Listen as Elie and GiveWell Program Officer Alice Redfern discuss GiveWell’s initial exploration into HIV/AIDS programming, including why they’re focusing on prevention programs for high-risk groups, the unique “search problem” in finding cost-effective HIV/AIDS programs, and new innovations like long-acting injectables that could be game-changing.
GiveWell are working quickly to respond to emerging needs, leaning on partners and existing research to help them navigate the complexities and uncertainties of the HIV/AIDS funding landscape. This work is a core example of their ongoing efforts to identify where donor funding can have the most impact.
Valuing Contraception
GiveWell are considering funding programs that increase access to modern contraception in low- and middle-income countries. Over the past year, GiveWell’s cross-cutting research team has been developing a framework to understand and quantify the benefits of contraception, enabling them to compare these programs to others they might support. While this exploratory work is funded by donations to the Unrestricted Fund, GiveWell expect future grants for family planning programs could be supported by All Grants Fund donations.
GiveWell recently published a page outlining their current approach to valuing contraception. It details the outcomes they consider, how they estimate them, and the judgment calls involved. While this work is still evolving, the research positions them to respond quickly as funding opportunities emerge in family planning—an area that has been especially hard-hit by USAID funding cuts.
Grant Updates
The recent grants below represent just a slice of the All Grants Fund portfolio. Your donation supports a wide range of grants, including direct delivery programs, research, technical assistance to governments, incubation pilots, and more, depending on where GiveWell see the greatest potential for impact.
Johns Hopkins University—Cholera Hospital-Based Intervention for 7 Days (CHoBI7) RCT in Bangladesh
Purpose: To complete a randomized controlled trial (RCT) of an intervention (known as CHoBI7) designed to reduce diarrheal disease by promoting handwashing and water treatment for the household members of diarrheal patients admitted to health facilities. This trial will assess whether a less resource-intensive model of CHoBI7 effectively improves hygiene behaviors and water quality.
Summary: This grant of up to approximately $843,5001 is one of the first grants GiveWell made in direct response to USAID funding cuts. The trial had previously received USAID funding, but this was abruptly withdrawn six months into the trial—GiveWell’s grant will enable the trial to be completed, ensuring that ongoing data collection does not go to waste.
CHoBI7 targets a critical window for preventing diarrhea transmission in vulnerable households using proven methods like chlorination, and this trial tests a more scalable, lower-cost version of the program. GiveWell think the learning value of this RCT is highly cost-effective given its potential to inform program scale-up in Bangladesh and potentially in other high-burden areas. GiveWell believe CHoBI7 is one of the most promising interventions for potentially diversifying GiveWell’s water grantmaking portfolio beyond the two programs they have already funded at scale (chlorine dispensers and in-line chlorination). This diversification is a core goal for their water grantmaking team, as they think it could lead to significant additional, highly cost-effective grantmaking opportunities in the future.
Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research—Iron Repletion RCT in Bangladesh
Purpose: To establish a more accurate understanding of anemia’s health burden by measuring how different anemia levels actually affect women’s daily functioning and well-being. This RCT will use iron repletion to test whether current global anemia definitions accurately reflect real health impairments.
Summary: This $3.8 million2 grant to the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research will fund a randomized trial in Bangladesh that directly measures how anemia actually affects women’s daily lives, providing crucial data to improve global anemia interventions.
Current anemia burden estimates, which are based on statistical thresholds rather than real symptoms, create uncertainty in our cost-effectiveness analyses of iron programs. The trial will administer intravenous iron to over 1,500 women with varying iron deficiency levels, while tracking changes in fatigue, cognitive performance, and productivity to establish clear links between iron status and health outcomes. GiveWell think this research, with results expected in about four years, is a highly cost-effective investment that will critically improve their grantmaking accuracy for iron programs and potentially enhance global anemia guidelines and treatment strategies.
WHO Malaria Guidelines Development Group—Guidelines Review and Update
Purpose: To update key World Health Organization (WHO) malaria guidelines to reflect the latest scientific evidence on malaria prevention and treatment. These updates focus on two interventions: single low-dose primaquine for reducing malaria transmission and preventive treatment options for HIV-positive pregnant women who cannot use standard malaria prevention drugs.
Summary: This $416,292 grant will support the WHO Global Malaria Programme in completing these evidence reviews and publishing updated malaria guidelines by early 2026—approximately three years sooner than would otherwise be possible due to WHO’s funding constraints. Without this support, these reviews would likely not happen until 2028-2030, delaying potentially life-saving improvements to treatments.
GiveWell think the updated guidelines will influence national malaria policies worldwide, as they’ve heard from experts that most countries wait for WHO recommendations before implementing new treatment and prevention policies. This accelerated timeline allows the latest scientific evidence to help shape global malaria policy and practice years earlier, potentially improving treatment outcomes across numerous countries.
How GiveWell Use Donations to the All Grants Fund
Donations to the All Grants Fund are allocated on a rolling basis and may go toward any grant that meets their cost-effectiveness threshold. This could include grants to GiveWell Top Charities as well as grants to incubate newer programs, promote policy change, fund relevant scoping and research, or support other initiatives. This includes some that are substantially more uncertain, experimental, or riskier than their Top Charities. While GiveWell are often less certain about the individual grants they make via this fund, they believe that—in aggregate—these grants represent the highest-impact use of marginal funding.
You can learn more about how the fund works and all that your donations make possible on GiveWell’s All Grants Fund page. For more on the full scope of GiveWell’s grantmaking, see this blog post.
Thank you again for your continued support!
1 The grant total is conditional on need. Fundraising is ongoing for this grant, and the total amount funded by donations to the All Grants Fund could change. Currently, the grant is expected to be funded by approximately $668,800 from donations to the All Grants Fund and approximately $174,700 from donations to the Unrestricted Fund that were redesignated by the GiveWell board for granting. Figures may not sum to exactly $843,500.
2 Fundraising is ongoing for this grant, and the total amount funded by donations to the All Grants Fund could change.
3 The map shown was created using MapChart.
