Giving What We Can is maintaining its list of recommended charities this year: we continue to recommend Against Malaria Foundation, Deworm the World, Project Healthy Children, and Schistosomiasis Control Initiative. We believe these organizations remain the best charities to which to give and we hope you’ll support them with your donations this holiday giving season!

Last year, GiveWell raised concerns about AMF's room for additional funding. We're pleased by the progress AMF have made in distributing funds to support net distributions. Beginning the year with approximately $12.5M, AMF has committed $10.3M to fund distributions in Malawi and the DRC, whilst raising around $2.65 in donations. They are currently engaged in a number of negotiations, though current funding levels would allow AMF to take on a maximum of three out of the distributions currently in discussion. AMF are also planning to partner with the Liverpool School of Tropic medicine to assist in studies designed to assess the extent of insecticide resistance in areas such as the DRC. We continue to recommend AMF as a top charity and we’re happy to see that GiveWell has placed AMF back on its list of top charities in the most recent update of their recommendations.

GiveWell’s recommendations this year also includes a second tier of stand-out charities: Development Media International, Living Goods, GAIN, and ICCIDD. We’re looking forward to learning more about these promising organizations in future. DMI has previously been on our radar: they are an exciting organization currently trialling a 5-year mass-media campaign designed to reduce childhood mortality and morbidity in Burkino Faso, with final results expected in the second half of 2015. Living Goods provides health counselling and sells health-products door-to-door: they are also engaged in an RCT of their program, with published results expected soon. Like Project Healthy Children, GAIN and ICCIDD work on micronutrient fortification: these organizations are focused on reducing iodine deficiency via salt iodization.

In terms of membership growth, we’ve had a fantastic year. We had 394 members at the beginning of 2014. There are now 690 Giving What We Can members in all! That means 296 people have signed the Pledge this year, compared to just 119 in 2013. We’re very happy that so many more people have been inspired to take the Pledge and we’re thankful to all our members, new and old. We can’t wait for the new year!