Does anyone have any thoughts on giving to AMF vs giving to GiveWell? It sounds like GiveWell still believes that donations to GiveWell are more effective. I believe that they are being honest about this, but I wonder to what extent I should take into account the biases inherent in self-evaluation. I am also unsure how, if at all, the existence of Good Ventures should influence this decision.
Last year I directed most of my donation to GiveWell without restrictions, because I feel our goals overlap to the extent that I was comfortable with them serving as my proxy and/or using the funds to further their research and advocacy.
I believe GiveWell has to be relatively circumspect about self-promotion in order to avoid undermining their credibility with skeptical consumers of their research.
I'd give to them if you trust them as much as you seem to, and don't disagree with the premises of their analysis sufficiently to want to tweak the dollar allocations. They expend a lot of mental effort trying to avoid completely overriding the preferences of their influenced donors (for example, if you want more money to go to SCI and less to GiveDirectly).
You can find the new recommendations at the usual Top Charities page. They also have a blog post going in more depth on the updates.
(I confess I'm a bit surprised no one else has linked this yet... Sorry if I'm stepping on someone's toes!)
Judging by GiveWell's Twitter and Facebook feeds, the post is mis-dated -- it only went live about 8 hours ago (at time of writing my comment), rather than 2 or 3 days ago.
I know. I'm surprised it took 8 hours :)