Valuing Information as a Philanthropic Funder

GiveWell directs around $10 million per year to fund new randomized controlled trials. Funding for new research has a high opportunity cost, as it requires us to spend less directly on programmatic activities. However, it may enable us to direct substantially larger sums of money more cost-effectively in the future if it updates our views about the program. We present the value of information framework, which we use as one input to assess whether to fund new research and show examples where the studies we funded affected tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars in subsequent programmatic grants.