Y-RISE Awarded GiveWell Grant of $1.35M for Core Operations
The Yale Research Initiative on Innovation and Scale (Y-RISE) at the MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies at Yale has received a grant of approximately $1.35 million for core operational support from GiveWell, a nonprofit “dedicated to finding outstanding giving opportunities and publishing the full details of our analysis to help donors decide where to give.”
Y-RISE advances research on the effects of policy interventions when delivered at scale. The GiveWell grant will fund a portion of Y-RISE core operations from July 2023-June 2026. Y-RISE plans to use this funding to hire more research and program staff to manage new projects and partnerships, seed ideas through grants to its network affiliates, and continue to build the field by actively engaging academics, implementing organizations, and policy makers through convenings and conferences such as the Y-RISE annual conference.
“We think that learning how to sustainably grow effective, evidence-based programs is an important and relatively neglected research topic,” said GiveWell’s team of their decision. “There are many interventions that look promising in studies but may have different effects when expanded to a large population under ‘real-world’ conditions. Understanding what those differences will be is key to understanding the cost-effectiveness of a program, yet more research often goes into studying new programs than following up on those programs later to see if they continued to live up to their promise. We believe Y-RISE is currently the only research center dedicated to exploring the complexities of delivering global health and well being programs at scale.”
Y-RISE founder and Scientific Director Mushfiq Mobarak, Jerome Kasoff ’54 Professor of Management and Economics at Yale University, said of the grant, “We are grateful to GiveWell for this investment in our operations. At Y-RISE, we are focused on advancing the science of scaling by applying rigorous scientific methods to understand scaling complexities. This investment will help us continue to build our team, our network of academic affiliates, and our institutional partnerships to advance that science to improve lives.”
GiveWell has funded Y-RISE in the past as Y-RISE supported the Bangladeshi government’s COVID-19 response. GiveWell also worked with Mushfiq Mobarak on his assessment of past GiveWell top charity No Lean Season and provided funding for an Innovations for Poverty Action study co-authored by Mobarak on the effect of face masks on COVID-19.
The Yale Research Initiative on Innovation and Scale (Y-RISE) at the MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies advances research on the effects of policy interventions when delivered at scale. Y-RISE identifies and tests promising policy interventions and, as they grow, conducts research on the challenges and implications of scale. In partnership with NGOs and governments, Y-RISE researchers progressively grow successful programs, devising and employing new techniques to measure the changes induced by scale. Y-RISE produces scholarship, guidance for policymakers, and in the process, facilitates large-scale implementation of tested programs.
Media Contacts:
Michelle Fielstra
Assistant Director of Communications
Yale MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies
Telephone: +1 203 432 0455
Email: michelle.fielstra@yale.edu