Elie Hassenfeld on GiveWell

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4.7 • 4.3K Ratings

🗓️ 2 October 2023

⏱️ 72 minutes

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Summary

When then-hedge fund manager Elie Hassenfeld began his philanthropic journey in 2006, he knew that he wanted to get the most charitable bang for his buck. He quickly realized, however, that detailed data on charitable impact simply didn't exist. So he and Holden Karnovsky founded GiveWell, an organization inspired by effective altruism that identifies the charities that save or improve lives the most for every dollar given. Listen as Hassenfeld, GiveWell's CEO, explains to EconTalk's Russ Roberts how GiveWell determines the small number of charities they recommend to achieve optimal impact. They also discuss the dangers of an over-reliance on data and the case for bucketing our philanthropy to allow for local or personal giving.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to Econ Talk, Conversations for the Curious, part of the Library of Economics
0:07.0	and Liberty.
0:08.0	I'm your host, Russ Roberts of Shalem College in Jerusalem and Stanford University's Hoover
0:13.0	Institution.
0:14.0	Go to econtalk.org where you can subscribe, comment on this episode and find links down
0:18.6	the information related to today's conversation.
0:21.6	You'll also find our archives with every episode we've done going back to 2006.
0:26.8	Our email address is mail at econtalk.org, we'd love to hear from you.
0:37.8	Today is September 7th, 2023, and my guest is Ellie Hasenfeld, co-founder and chief executive
0:44.0	officer of Givwell, Ellie Welcome to Econ Talk.
0:47.8	Russ, it's a pleasure to be here.
0:49.7	Our topic for today is Givwell, the nonprofit you started with other folks in 2007.
0:56.8	Let's start with how it came to be and what it does.
1:00.8	Yeah, so back, first in 2006, I was working at a hedge fund where I'd gotten a job right
1:06.8	at a college.
1:07.8	And after having been there for a couple of years, a friend of mine, Holden Karnofsky and
1:12.1	I both wanted to give to charity.
1:14.8	And when we went looking for information on what charities do and how well it works, essentially
1:20.4	what can you get for the dollar that you give, we were really surprised that we couldn't
1:25.4	find useful information that would help guide our decisions.
1:29.0	As an example, I was interested at the time in giving to clean water in Africa.
1:33.5	And I remember charities telling me things like $20 provides a child water for life.
	...

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