What's the most cost-effective charity to donate money to if you want to save the most lives per dollar?

Check out . This section of their website gives some great info on what they do and why they do it" http://www.charitywater.org/whywater/ They say on the website that: "A freshwater well costs $5,000 and can serve an average of 250 people with clean, safe drinking water for 20 years. Just $20 serves one person with clean, safe drinking water. Donate..." So, as to your Oxfam example, $200 could give 10 people clean water for 20 years. I'd imagine there's some significant life saving potential there.

An 'efficiency rating' (or whatever you'd call a number that denotes how much is spent on 'administration' as opposed to directly spent on fulfilling a charity's mission) isn't a very good measure of a charity's performance, at all. What most people want to know about a charity is how good they are at what they're trying to do. (In the context of this question, I suppose that's 'saving lives.') So you want to find performance-based information about that ... or at least indicators that that charity cares about performance. Breakdowns of administrative costs can be helpful (in many places, government regulation of charities will look at this anyway) but they're definitely not a good picture of 'performance data.' Remember most charities are tackling really complex problems, so they'd be doing something really wrong if they didn't have administrative costs (to cover keeping the lights on, doing proper financial accounting, keeping accurate records of their activities, etc.) There's a good explanation of this, in more depth, at this blog post. (It includes a comment from someone from CharityNavigator) http://goodintents.org/choosing-a-charity/charity-ratings-based-on-administration-costs-can-do-more-harm-than-good

I think giving the gift of education is similar to saving 3 or 4 lives because the educated person will support his immediate family as well as the families of all his/her sisters and brothers. And in most cases other related families as well. My dad grew up in a village in India where to this day they only have water for 2 hours a day. He was one of the few in the village who got into college and ended up supporting the families of his 2 brothers and 4 sisters. My favourite charity, which similar to Charity:Water, uses 100% of its funds for the beneficiaries is Foundation For Excellence. http://ffe.org . They give scholarships to kids who make the high grades to get into a college in India but cant afford to do so because their parents are economically challenged. Their administrative fees are paid for by a separate trust so 100% of the donations go to the beneficiaries. My friends and I have put 2 kids through our alma mater which is one of the best engineering schools in India. All these kids in turn donate to this cause when they are able to do so. In India, if you can get into a good school, your more or less assured a job. Another charity which is very effective, from what I saw from their premises, is  the SOS Childrens Village http://www.sos-childrensvillages.org/pages/default.aspx . They have a very unique system in which they essentially pair a number of children with a "mother" who they live with. The charity supports this family structure and the children till they become 23. They have one location in Bangalore, right next to where my brother lives, which I visited on my last trip. Children who "graduate" from these families keep coming back and provide a source of inspiration to the kids who have newly joined. They get full schooling and college tuition and live in comfortable homes with their foster mother.

If the only measure you're interested in is "most lives per dollar" then you have already received some very good recommendations. But I think the best answer so far came from Derek Weiss: there is more to charitable giving than metrics, heart has to be an issue. What do you care about beyond basic efficiency measures?If geography is at all important to you - IE: if you are in North America and care about your own community - you'll note that all the organizations that meet your "most lives per dollar" measure are working elsewhere. It's simply cheaper to feed somebody in Ghana than in Cleveland.For "most lives per dollar" I'd say buy mosquito netting. $10 can save a family of 5 or 6 people in many places around the globe. Meanwhile, it might take many thousand dollars to provide the services that get a homeless addict in your town into long-term recovery and the supportive housing that will allow him to reenter the work force. Both efforts are worthwhile; which one speaks to your heart?Do you just want to be able to claim that you saved X many lives? Or do you want to be part of saving one life in your own back yard?