Establishing a Livelihoods Evaluator
Short Summary
An active and vibrant charity evaluation sector is key to a strong non-profit ecosystem.
Few evaluators focus on evidence and cost-effectiveness at scale, and most prioritize health impacts.
A new income-focused evaluator could fill a crucial gap in the evaluation market and direct more funding toward effective organizations.
Thus, we recommend a new evaluation non-profit dedicated to identifying top income-focused interventions.
The Problem
What’s the problem?
More non-profit evaluators are needed to address several gaps in the current evaluator ecosystem.
Many potentially high-impact charities remain unevaluated.
Independent second-opinion evaluations are rare.
Existing evaluators’ moral weights often prioritize health over livelihoods, leaving certain areas underexplored.
Why does it matter?
Rigorous evaluations help redirect funding to more effective non-profits and can also attract additional funders, increasing overall donations.
The Solution
What’s the proposed solution?
Incubating a new evaluator that approaches evaluation from a livelihoods perspective—focusing on interventions that improve incomes, education, and economic well-being rather than those that avert deaths’.
The evaluator would be rigorous and produce public recommendations, similar to GiveWell and other leading evaluators.
Why do we trust this solution?
A strong team with research expertise and the ability to effectively communicate findings could expand the pool of high-quality recommendations and strengthen the field of charity evaluation.
How robust is the evidence?
We primarily draw on theoretical arguments and the track record of existing evaluators that have scaled successfully to identify key aspects of their strategy we aim to emulate, as well as points of difference.
Several evaluators have successfully directed between 6 and 31 times their operating budget to high-impact organizations—a promising indicator that others could achieve similar results.
However, early entrants likely benefitted from limited competition, so new entrants may face different challenges.
Our informal consultations, including a survey (n=11), with experts in non-profit evaluation and affiliated efforts suggest that a livelihoods-focused evaluator was marginally the most favored option among the three we considered, though opinions varied on funding sources, talent availability, and implementation feasibility.
The Impact
What impact could this have?
We are highly uncertain about the maximum potential funds an evaluator could move. Nevertheless, we expect it to far exceed operating costs and, as such, do not expect the evaluator’s cost-effectiveness to fall below our target bar.
Estimated cost-effectiveness:
We conducted a fairly conservative back-of-the-envelope calculation, assuming a 56% probability of success, a 70% discount on the average annual funds moved by existing evaluators in their first five years, and an average donation approximately five times that of GiveDirectly. Under these assumptions, the evaluator would exceed our cost-effectiveness bar achieving 56 income doublings per USD 1,000—well above our target.
Who is best suited to do this?
The founding team should have strong research skills and experience in charity or intervention evaluation and/or in effective marketing research.