Rethink Priorities
Global Priorities Research
Rethink Priorities aims to drive critical global improvements by conducting in-depth research and consultancy to improve the lives of humans and animals both in the present and in the future — through guiding evidence-based allocation of resources and neutering the development of organisations addressing these essential priorities.
What problem is Rethink Priorities working on?
Rethink Priorities is a research and implementation organization that identifies pressing opportunities and solutions to improve global wellbeing. Its work covers important and neglected cause areas, including animal welfare, artificial intelligence, climate change, global health and development, worldview investigations, as well as surveys and data analyses to understand movements focused on these issues. Rethink Priorities increases the impact of a variety of stakeholders, including policymakers, foundations, and nonprofits.
What does Rethink Priorities do?
Rethink Priorities works to uncover insights that can help address the most pressing issues facing the world today. As a think-and-do tank, it
- rigorously evaluates evidence and tests high-leverage interventions
- identifies solutions in neglected but promising areas to improve the lives of humans and animals – both now and in the future.
Its research and strategic advisory empowers other organizations to achieve measurable and sustainable results.
As part of this work, Rethink Priorities has:
- Conducted seminal reports that showed the neglectedness of lead exposure reductions to improve the health of children in the Global South, which RP reports have helped lay the ground for the founding of several non-profits and a global fund in this area.
- Researched whether invertebrates like shrimps might be sentient and wrote a guide to help animal advocates to reduce the harms of shrimp farming
- Developed various tools for philanthropists to help guide their decision-making under uncertainty
- Provided operational support to nascent high-impact projects such Epoch AI, Apollo Research, and Consultants for Impact to accelerate the fulfilment of their mission
- Conducted surveys and analyses e.g. on how to frame the risks from advanced AI to thought leaders and policymakers for broader appeal.
To learn more, check out all of Rethink Priorities' published work and updates about its strategy.
What information does Giving What We Can have about the cost-effectiveness of Rethink Priorities?1.
- It works across many of our high-impact causes.
- It has received several grants from an impact-focused expert grantmaker, Open Philanthropy, which is an indicator of its cost-effectiveness. (Note — Giving What We Can has also received funds from Open Philanthropy.)
- The impact-focused evaluator, Longview Philanthropy, shared that it thought their work on safeguarding the long-term future was highly cost-effective.
We’ve updated our recommendations to reflect only organisations recommended by evaluators we’ve looked into as part of our evaluator investigations. As such, we don't currently include Rethink Priorities as one of our recommended programs but you can still donate to it via our donation platform.
At Giving What We Can, we focus on the effectiveness of an organisation's work -- what the organisation is actually doing and whether their programs are making a big difference. Some others in the charity recommendation space focus instead on the ratio of admin costs to program spending, part of what we’ve termed the “overhead myth.” See why overhead isn’t the full story and learn more about our approach to charity evaluation.