2019 High Impact Giving GuideWelcome to our annual High Impact Giving Guide, designed to help donors make a bigger difference with their philanthropic gifts.

In the beginning pages of this guide you’ll find eight high impact opportunities handpicked by our team and analyzed for evidence of impact and cost-effectiveness (pages 5 to 12). With each opportunity, we provide background on a specific cause, an organization working effectively in that space, ways to contribute to the charity, and additional organizations doing similar work.

This year our analysts focused on organizations working with society’s most vulnerable—and arguably forgotten—people: those recovering from substance abuse, hard-to-reach communities lacking access to basic healthcare, and students at various stages of life at risk of being left behind.

In some cases, many of these individuals are considered among the hardest to help. The programs and organizations we profile demonstrate daily that it can be done. The opposite page, for example, describes how one group helps those with substance use disorders get access to temporary emergency housing, medical treatment, and meals. A donation of $50 can provide emergency shelter and food to someone at risk of dying from addiction.

Recovery from drug and alcohol addiction is challenging in its own right and even more grueling for women, as traditional treatment programs rarely take into account the additional burden of pregnancy or caring for children. On page 6, we detail how one program helps women and their children heal together by housing the children onsite and providing both parenting as well as youth services. A $75 donation provides one month of career services while $500 pays for three months of individual counseling sessions, both critical supports that help a mom and her children move on to more stable, healthier lives.

Donor dollars, when supporting the right efforts, can transform people’s lives and communities. On pages 7-9 we feature three different organizations using community-based approaches to deliver healthcare. While distinct in their own right, these organizations deliver care to communities that are isolated due to physical distance, cultural discrimination or extreme poverty. Partners in Health on page 9, for instance, manages complex chronic diseases such as HIV or emerging infectious threats like Ebola through cost-effective home visitation programs and support groups. A donation of $100 can provide essential community-based care and nutrition for a malnourished child in Haiti, while $700 can provide a woman with full breast cancer treatment.

As in past years, we’ve updated our Disaster Relief guidance (page 13) emphasizing once again the importance of philanthropic support for long-term recovery efforts. This year, in addition to featuring specific organizations, we’ve also included profiles of two program models that allow donors to focus on the kind of advocacy and coalition-building that can create even greater, population-level impact (page 18).

Read the full 2019 guide at Center for High Impact Philanthropy, or check out the 2020 guide.