About Our Decision to No Longer Feature Possible on Our Best Charities List
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About Our Decision to No Longer Feature Possible on Our Best Charities List


Summary 

Recently, Possible notified The Life You Can Save of its intent to refocus its efforts on collaborative research to address evidence, implementation and policy gaps in equity, quality, and accessibility of healthcare. Possible’s implementing partner for the last decade, Nyaya Health Nepal (NHN), will take over the integrated healthcare delivery efforts in close collaboration with the government of Nepal. While Possible has always pursued its mission to improve healthcare for underserved communities through channeling resources to rural Nepal and innovation research, in light of this recent pivot in focus and organizational operations, our Panel of Experts has decided to remove it from our Best Charities List. 

Background

The Life You Can Save has been proud to recommend Possible as one of our Best Charities since 2013. For over a decade, Possible has improved healthcare options for underserved communities in Nepal and worked in coordination with its partner organization, Nyaya Health Nepal (NHN), and the Nepali government to design and implement integrated public healthcare systems and deliver affordable healthcare to millions of people. 

Recently, Possible notified us of its intent to refocus its mission and restructure its operations. In light of these changes, our Panel of Experts has decided to remove Possible from our list of Best Charities. We wanted to take a moment to explain these changes and our decision.

Possible’s mission is to “improve healthcare for underserved communities,” and the organization has always pursued this mission along two paths. First, Possible has worked to channel life-saving healthcare resources into rural areas of Nepal, largely by activating US-based donors interested in supporting direct care delivery conducted by Nepali non-profit organization, Nyaya Health Nepal (NHN). And, second, Possible has conducted healthcare delivery research meant to “address the challenge in access and quality of healthcare in low-resource settings.” 

Moving forward, Possible has decided to concentrate its efforts on conducting its healthcare delivery research and to hand over the operation of its integrated healthcare systems entirely to its partner organization, Nyaya Health Nepal (NHN). Possible hopes that narrowing its focus on research in this manner will allow it to expand its current research efforts while also cultivating new research and academic partnerships.

The transfer of all operations to Nyaya Health Nepal (NHN) is perhaps not as radical as it may seem at first glance because Possible and NHN have worked closely together for over a decade and, in fact, were once a single organization. But in light of such a significant restructuring, our Panel of Experts at The Life You Can Save felt obligated to revisit our decision to include Possible on our list of Best Charities. 

We initially chose to include Possible on our Best Charities list both because Possible earned a Standout Charity rating from GiveWell in 2011 (at the time, Possible was called Nyaya Health) and because of a comprehensive impact audit conducted by ImpactMatters in 2015, which concluded that “Possible improves health outcomes among people who otherwise lack high-quality care, and improves health access and health outcomes for the marginalized.” While we have no reason to doubt that Possible and Nyaya Health Nepal continue to do important work within underserved communities, our Panel of Experts was concerned that the information that guided our initial recommendation has since become outdated. The early audit format used by ImpactMatters has been subsequently updated. And, as Possible’s recent restructuring illustrates, the nature and scope of Possible’s work have likely shifted since that time. Since we do not currently have the capacity to conduct a fresh assessment of either Possible or Nyaya Health Nepal ourselves, the Panel felt we should remove Possible from our list pending future analysis.

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TLYCS Admin

The views expressed in blog posts are those of the author, and not necessarily those of Peter Singer or The Life You Can Save.