Our Methodology
How we conduct our research
The goal of our charity research is to find the most cost-effective ways to improve people’s lives, and to share our recommendations with donors. Our distinctive approach is to take happiness seriously: we compare charities by how good they are at improving people’s subjective wellbeing – how people feel during, and think about, their lives.
Specifically, we evaluate charities on a single metric called wellbeing-adjusted life years (WELLBYs)3. The metric is simple: one WELLBY is equivalent to a 1-point increase on a 0-10 wellbeing scale for one year. WELLBYs allow us to impartially compare the impact of different charities, even if they address different problems, like comparing the impact of a medical intervention against the impact of cash transfers. Unlike indirect measures of wellbeing, like wealth or health, WELLBYs measure people’s wellbeing directly. This method, like any other, has limitations, but we think it is the best way of capturing what really matters – at least with our current tools.
We present our methodology across the following pages:
Note: this page describes our approach as of 2023, which may not match our older reports.
