Before making that purchase
pause
and Help Instead

In a world of one-click commerce, take a moment to Help Instead. With USAID now dismantled, your support matters more than ever.

As your browser's homepage, this site can be a gentle reminder—a pause button in our culture of excess. Before your next purchase, consider how that same money could transform lives through the organizations below.

These trusted partners are saving lives and helping those in poverty. They'd love your support.

We are a community of people who believe in taking action. Our role is to help you make the most effective donations possible in the fight against extreme poverty. Since our founding in 2013, we have compiled a list of research-backed charities working on interventions against the multidimensional factors of poverty, resulting in over $100 million donated to high-impact charities.

Our mission is to provide a preferential option for the poor in health care. By establishing long-term relationships with sister organizations based in settings of poverty, Partners In Health strives to achieve two overarching goals: to bring the benefits of modern medical science to those most in need of them and to serve as an antidote to despair.

Save the Children works in the United States and around the world to give children a healthy start in life, the opportunity to learn and protection from harm. When crisis strikes and children are most vulnerable, we are always among the first to respond and the last to leave. We do whatever it takes for children - every day and in times of crisis – transforming their lives and the future we share.

Helen Keller overcame tremendous obstacles to her health and wellbeing – and helped millions of others to do the same. Guided by her remarkable legacy, Helen Keller Intl partners with communities that are striving to overcome longstanding cycles of poverty. By delivering the essential building blocks of good health, sound nutrition and clear vision, we help millions of people create lasting change in their own lives. Together with a global community of supporters, we are ensuring that every person has the opportunity – as Helen did – to reach their true potential.

GiveWell is a nonprofit dedicated to finding outstanding giving opportunities and publishing the full details of our analysis to help donors decide where to give.

We recommend a list of Top Charities to donors. We also offer donors the option to give to our Giving Funds. GiveWell is focused on finding a small number of outstanding giving opportunities, not on reviewing as many organizations—or as many causes—as possible.

Muso's founders knew that the majority of deaths in the world’s poorest communities are due to curable diseases not treated in time. In the shadow of Mali’s capital, they witnessed neighbors struggle and often fail to access a health care system designed to exclude them, simply because they were poor. Patients got care too late, or not at all. Muso was born from the question: what would happen if we designed a different kind of health care? What if we could create a health system that functioned alongside patients, that reached and treated every patient early, in the first moments of their illness?

To end the child and maternal mortality crises and deliver universal health coverage at scale, Muso collaborates with policymakers and implementers to design, test, and scale evidence-based health systems that deliver care with speed: to all patients who need it, when they need it.

The Valentino Achak Deng (VAD) Foundation's mission is to empower children, youth, and women from poor communities in South Sudan through educational opportunities and other sustainable development initiatives.


While traditional schooling education is at the core of our strategy, the VAD Foundation believes that students and community members must be empowered to thrive beyond the classroom.


Our farming and vocational skills programs stimulate job creation while offering students, youth, and community members the chance to build livelihoods and pursue lifelong learning opportunities. Our goal, as an organization, is to promote economic development and security to provide a foundation for resilient and thriving communities in war-torn South Sudan.

Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) offers medical humanitarian assistance to people based solely on need, irrespective of race, religion, gender, or political affiliation. Our teams of doctors, nurses, logisticians, and other frontline workers are often among the first on the scene when peoples’ lives are upended by conflict, disease outbreaks, or natural or human-made disasters.

The decision to respond is based solely on our independent assessment of medical needs. We work to ensure that our teams can reach people in need without restriction and provide aid directly.