What happens when a program is removed from the Giving What We Can donation platform?

We may remove programs from our donation platform if they no longer meet our inclusion criteria, or in other extenuating circumstances, at the discretion of the research team. The program’s balance will be calculated and paid out in full, and Giving What We Can will work with the program for a smooth transition.

If a donor has set up a recurring donation to a program that will no longer be available, we will make every effort to inform the donor of this change, find a similar program available on the platform to switch the donations to (which they are free to change!), and in some cases inform them of alternative similar programs they may wish to consider.

Our general approach for selecting a similar program:

If the program is housed in one of our high-impact cause areas, we switch donations to the relevant cause area fund, since these funds are intended to be default giving options for donors who want to support that cause area.

An alternative approach – and one that we strongly considered – would be to try to find the most structurally similar program. However, we determined that the relevant cause area fund is likely a better guess for the best available option to a donor who has supported a program within that cause area. This is because:

• It’s not clear that a structurally similar program would best reflect the donor’s preference. For example, perhaps they donated to program X because evaluator Y found it to be a cost-effective intervention, but since then, evaluator Y has discovered X is not as effective (or they found Z, which is even more effective).
• It can be very difficult to arbitrate how similar is similar enough; additionally, there are often multiple structurally similar programs so choosing only one of these can be somewhat arbitrary.

If the program is outside of one of the core cause areas in which we actively maintain giving recommendations (and thus we don’t have a relevant cause area fund) we will select the most similar program we can find, at the discretion of the research team.

Note: Giving What We Can does not benefit from donations made to our cause area funds – they are merely a collection of the charities and programs we already offer on the website. (For example, our Global Health & Development Fund currently grants directly to giving opportunities selected by GiveWell.)