GiveWell commits $5M to support new DIV Fund investments aimed at improving water quality

The DIV Fund and GiveWell are announcing a new $5 million commitment to identify and support promising innovations aimed at improving water quality and access for vulnerable populations around the world. 

27% of the global population (2.2 billion people) lack access to drinking water that is clean, safe, and available at home, and more than 750,000 deaths each year can be linked to unsafe water. With this new commitment, GiveWell, which is dedicated to helping people in need as much as they can by researching and directing donations to the most cost‑effective ways to save and improve lives, is supporting the DIV Fund to accelerate the discovery, testing, and enduring adoption of new cost-effective solutions for providing safe water at scale. 

“We’re excited about the potential of this grant and collaboration with the DIV Fund to help us scale our search for highly cost-effective opportunities to help communities lacking access to safe water,” wrote GiveWell in their blog post.

The DIV Fund uses a tiered funding approach, providing smaller amounts to early-stage innovations and larger awards to innovations with strong evidence supporting them:

• Stage 1 grants of up to $200,000 to support real-world pilots of promising innovations. By the end of Stage 1, we want to know whether the innovation works in practice, if people will use it, and if it shows enough promise to warrant deeper investment.
• Stage 2 grants of up to $500,000 to determine if an innovation with successful pilot testing measurably and meaningfully improves people’s lives and has a viable path toward scale. By the end of Stage 2, we want to know if the innovation significantly improves lives, is cost-effective, and has a clear model for scaling.
• Stage 3 grants of up to $1.5 million to support the transition of proven innovations from piloting and testing to widespread scale. By the end of Stage 3, we want to know that the innovation can achieve sustained impact at scale without ongoing grant dependence.

Organizations working on high-potential solutions for improving water quality or access are encouraged to read and respond to the DIV Fund’s Request for Proposals (RFP). The RFP remains open across all sectors, but GiveWell’s funding will specifically support selected water innovations over the next three years. 

Applications are now open and accepted on a rolling basis.