NPR

On #GivingTuesday, How To Get The Most Bang For Your Charity Buck

The nonprofit group GiveWell has just published its annual list of charities they can recommend based on hard evidence.
Source: Katherine Streeter for NPR

Editor's Note:This story was originally published in November 2016 and has been republished with updates.

It's the sixth annual #Giving Tuesday — a holiday marketing tradition inspired by Black Friday, Small Business Saturday and Cyber Monday, but with a twist. Today thousands of charities are asking us to open our wallets. But how can we be sure the group we donate to is effective — that we're getting the most bang for our charity buck?

That question was vexing Elie Hassenfeld several years ago. He worked at a hedge fund, and he and a colleague wanted to give money to charity. Since they are numbers-oriented finance types, they wanted to maximize the results from their donation by finding groups that could offer the biggest impact per dollar.

"We were shocked by

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