What problem is the Top Charities Fund working on?

GiveWell’s Top Charities work to improve health and wellbeing in low- and lower-middle-income countries. Donations to the Top Charities Fund are committed to high-priority funding opportunities at GiveWell’s Top Charities no more than six months after being donated.

What projects does the Top Charities Fund support?

GiveWell’s Top Charities are the best opportunities its researchers have identified for donors looking to confidently make a significant impact with their gifts. Thoroughly vetted by GiveWell’s research team, these programs are evidence-backed, transparent, and able to use additional funding cost-effectively.

Supporting the Top Charities Fund allows GiveWell to direct funds to funding opportunities at its Top Charities where they will have the most impact according to its latest cost-effectiveness estimates and research on funding needs.

GiveWell’s Top Charities are:

See the Fund webpage for more information about how donations are allocated, past recipients, and plans for the future.

Unsure how a fund is different from a charity? See our page about why we recommend donors give to funds.

Why do we include the Top Charities Fund on our list of recommended programs?

We investigated the impact-focused charity evaluator GiveWell as part of our 2025 evaluator investigations and concluded that GiveWell’s recommendations and grantmaking approach are well-suited to helping donors maximise the impact of their “dollar” in the global health and wellbeing space. You can read our report on GiveWell here.

Please note that GWWC does not evaluate individual charities. Our recommendations are based on the research of third-party, impact-focused charity evaluators our research team has found to be particularly well-suited to help donors do the most good per dollar, according to their recent evaluator investigations. Our other supported programs are those that align with our charitable purpose — they are working on a high-impact problem and take a reasonably promising approach (based on publicly-available information).

At Giving What We Can, we focus on the effectiveness of an organisation's work -- what the organisation is actually doing and whether their programs are making a big difference. Some others in the charity recommendation space focus instead on the ratio of admin costs to program spending, part of what we’ve termed the “overhead myth.” See why overhead isn’t the full story and learn more about our approach to charity evaluation.