Organizations
AMF: The Against Malaria Foundation (AMF) is a non-profit that funds the distribution of long-lasting insecticidal nets (LLIN) to areas with high incidence of malaria, mostly in Africa. Givewell has recommended AMF as a top charity several times. In 2013, Givewell estimated that it costs AMF about $6.13 to distribute one LLIN and $3,400 to save the life of one child.
Animal Charity Evaluators investigates the most effective ways of reducing non-human animal suffering. Since there are many non-human animals living in extremely painful conditions on factory farms, animal suffering could be a very highly effective altruistic cause.
CEA: The Centre for Effective Altruism (CEA) is a coalition of projects related to EA. Giving What We Can and 80,000 Hours are both part of CEA. They also run the Global Priorities Project and other special projects and raise public awareness of EA.
Center for Applied Rationality runs 4 day workshops on, no surprises here, rationality. They often give significant discounts to effective altruists, and a lot of people report benefiting from doing one.
CS: Charity Science want to revolutionize doing good the same way that science revolutionized medicine. They consider which activities actually help people and which don’t, looking at the science. CS advocate for the most evidence-based and cost effective interventions.
Effetive Altruism Ventures is a VC fund designed for incubating projects that create a lot of social value.
FHI: The Future of Humanity Institute (FHI) is a research center at Oxford that is leading producer of primary research on existential risk. FHI’s main areas of research are global catastrophic risk, applied epistemology, human enhancement, and future technologies.
FLI: The Future of Life Institute are a charity and outreach organization working to ensure that tomorrow’s most powerful technologies are beneficial for humanity. They catalyze and support research and initiatives for safeguarding life and developing optimistic visions of the future, including positive ways for humanity to steer its own course considering new technologies and challenges.
GiveDirectly: GiveDirectly is a non-profit that makes direct cash-transfers to poor households in Kenya and Uganda. These cash transfers are unconditonal – recipients may spend them as they see fit. GiveWell has recommended GiveDirectly multiple times.
GiveWell: GiveWell is a non-profit that evaluates charities in order to find outstanding giving opportunities. In particular, GiveWell seesk out charities who provide strong evidence of impact-per-dollar and room for more funding, and who can demonstrate trustworthiness and transparency. GiveWell recommends just a few charities at a time, and many of these recommendations inform the donations of many effective altruists.
GWWC: Giving What We Can (GWWC) is an international society dedicated to eradicating extreme poverty. GWWC recommends cost-effective charities and encourages individuals to sign its pledge, which represents a commitment to donate a fraction of one’s incoome to effective anti-poverty charities, GWWC also has local chapters that meet in cities in the UK, USA, and elsewhere.
LEAN: The Local Effective Altruism Network works on connecting, supporting and growing the network of local EA groups. LEAN provides a decentralised way for groups to help one another while maintaining their independence. Several local organizers around the world have got involved, sharing resources and knowledge with other groups in the network and providing support.
MIRI: The Machine Intelligence Research Institute (MIRI) is an non-profit whose mission is to “ensure that the creation of smarter-than-human intelligence has a positive impact.” MIRI’s main activity is to conduct research on a few topics: How can a machine reason coherently about its own behavior? What is a better formalization for decision-making under uncertainty? How can we specify an AI’s goals to ensure that it matches our intentions, even as the AI modifies itself? What AI-related interventions are the most beneficial?
Raising for Effective Giving, a project from EAF, encourages touring poker players to donate 2% of their winnings (which sometimes totals tens of millions).
SCI: The Schistosomiasis Control Initiative (SCI) is a non-profit that works with local Ministries of Health across sub-Saharan Africa to treat children and at-risk adults for schistosomiasis and other parasitic worms. GiveWell has recommended SCI as a top charity, and in 2013, estimated that it costs $0.80 to deworm one child, with SCI paying about 70% of these costs (see “leveraging donations”).
TLYCS: The Life You Can Save (TLYCS) is a non-profit founded by philosopher Peter Singer. It promotes effecitve altruism – with a focus on reducing poverty and economic inequality – through public outreach. TLYCS seeks to create local groups of informed givers and a global online community, and encourages individuals to sign its charitable-donation pledge.
80K: 80,000 Hours (80K) is an organization that offers free, one-on-one career advice to individuals seeking to use their careers to do the most good in the world. 80K also publishes general research on the social impact of careers to its website.
.impact is an open community for independent effective altruist projects. It provides venues for anyone to share their own. Its focus projects team runs LEAN (the Local Effective Altruism Network), the EA Hub and more.
Several organizations are focused on existential risk and the far future of humanity. The Future of Humanity Institute (FHI), the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk (CSER), and the Future of Life Institute (FLI) use the tools of mathematics, philosophy, and science to research big-picture questions about the future of humankind. In January 2015 FLI received a donation of $10 millionfrom Elon Musk and in the same month, Nick Bostrom (from FHI) joined Stephen Hawking, Max Tegmark, Lord Martin Rees, Jaan Tallinn among others, in signing FLI’s open letter warning of the potential dangers associated with artificial intelligence.
Additionally, many individual writers and other sites have interesting material on effective altruism, some of which can be found here.