For charities
How a charity earns its place here.
We don’t rate charities ourselves, and no one can pay to be listed. A charity appears here when an independent evaluator has published a review of its work that we can quote, and its place depends only on what that review says. This page explains the rules, so you can see where you stand.
What gets a charity listed
- An independent evaluator has reviewed the work. For saving lives we follow GiveWell; for wellbeing and mental health, the Happier Lives Institute (why these evaluators). A recommendation, a designation or a grant from one of them, published on its own site, is what brings a charity into view.
- The evaluator’s figures, exactly as published. We show the evaluator’s own cost per outcome with its period and a link to the page. If it hasn’t published one, the charity shows “not yet rated”: we never estimate one.
- A person checks every addition. Nothing is listed automatically. Meeting these rules makes a charity eligible to be considered, not certain to be listed, and we can’t promise when.
Your own reports, impact statements and case studies are welcome reading, but on their own they can’t put a charity on this site. That isn’t a judgement on the work: rigorous, repeated evidence exists for only a fairly small set of programmes.
How labels are earned
Every label on a charity page is the evaluator’s, not ours. There are two kinds.
Designations
The evaluator’s own category for the charity, as it publishes it.
| Label on our pages | Given by | What it means |
|---|---|---|
| GiveWell Top Charity | GiveWell | The evaluator’s highest recommendation. |
| Happier Lives Institute Top Charity | Happier Lives Institute | The evaluator’s highest recommendation. |
| Happier Lives Institute Promising Charity | Happier Lives Institute | The evaluator thinks the work looks cost-effective but wants more evidence. |
| Happier Lives Institute honourable mention | Happier Lives Institute | Noted by the evaluator, below its recommendations. |
| Happier Lives Institute benchmark | Happier Lives Institute | The comparison point the evaluator measures others against. |
| Funded by GiveWell | GiveWell | GiveWell has funded the work; that is not a Top Charity recommendation. |
| Formerly recommended by GiveWell | GiveWell | GiveWell recommended it in the past and no longer does; we keep the history. |
| Fund run by GiveWell | GiveWell | A pooled fund the evaluator runs and grants from. |
| Fund run by the Happier Lives Institute | Happier Lives Institute | A pooled fund the evaluator runs and grants from. |
Evidence labels
One short label for how strong the evidence is behind the kind of programme, in the evaluator’s own words, such as GiveWell’s “exceptionally strong” or the Happier Lives Institute’s “low to moderate”. What each label means.
Sometimes we add a few vivid words, like a tasting note. They only restate what the evaluator found. We never give points, stars or scores, and nothing we write changes an order.
A self-check
The same questions donors bring to every charity, from our donor’s tasting card. If you can answer yes to most of them, an evaluator is more likely to be able to review you.
- Has an independent evaluator published a review of your programme, on its own site?
- Do you know what would have happened without you, from a comparison group rather than a before-and-after?
- Is there a cost per outcome, with the period it covers and how it was worked out?
- Have you said what you would do with more money, and how much more you could use well?
- Do you publish your follow-up, including results that disappointed you?
- Are your legal name and registration public (for a US charity, your EIN)?
For how evaluators think about this, read how we know whether giving worked, and GiveWell’s and the Happier Lives Institute’s own published criteria.
How corrections work
- Facts about you. A wrong name, link, registration or description is fixed once we can check it against a public record.
- Figures and labels. These change only when the evaluator’s published page changes. Then we update the figure and keep the old one in a permanent, dated follow-up record, so the history stays visible.
- Nothing is quietly erased. A correction is added with its date; the record it corrects stays readable.
A corrections address is coming soon. Until it is ready, the evaluator whose figure is wrong is the fastest route: once its page changes, ours follows.
What money can’t buy here
We don’t sell placement, take referral fees or fundraise for anyone. If a listing were ever marked as sponsored or featured, that label could not change an order, a figure or a label, and we test for this automatically every time the data changes. We never handle donations: donors give on your own site or through an evaluator’s fund. Read our standards.