GiveBetter x SF

Vision To Learn

Conditional whole-organization health value of a $100,000 unrestricted gift

Research time: ~18 min on GPT-5.6 Sol Medium
  • Research — organization and evidence review.
  • Modeling — cost-effectiveness analysis.
  • Historical estimate for research done before time tracking.

Published: September 8, 2026.

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Summary

What do they do? Vision To Learn provides school-based screenings, examinations, fitting and glasses to low-income children nationally, including SFUSD and other Bay districts. This ordinary-gift model represents that clinical core while retaining organizational overhead and unquantified work. Actual clinics are verified; modeled extra child-courses are not a capacity promise. More

Why this approach interests us

  • Mobile examinations and glasses address real visual deficits; replacement-supported cohorts show sustained corrected vision. California donations may also enable federal financing.

Our main reservations

  • Pediatric preference utility, care otherwise received, wearing time, gift allocation and marginal financing are not measured for the next gift.

What do you get for your dollar?

Our conditional central estimate is $53.43 million per 10 SF-resident QALYs, $10.02 million for Bay residents including SF, and $801,000 nationally. These are explicit analyst judgments, not trial-measured QALYs or a priced funding offer. A favorable joint scenario passes $100,000 nationally but not for Bay or SF health. Inspect all model inputs, formulas and scenarios.

central donor cost / 10 qalys
$53.43M SF / $10.02M Bay / $801K US — The same gift produces .018716 SF, .099821 Bay and 1.247760 US QALYs. These are nested scopes, not additive.
whole gift
$100,000 once — Central $80,000 clinical delivery and $20,000 shared institutional work; all costs retained, allocation judgmental.
recipient
Vision To Learn · EIN 45-3457853 — Official provider disclosure; distinct from PHC adult glasses and PVF/Lions cataract care.
gross associated operating-resource envelope
$114,222 central — Includes assumed donated delivery resources and failed/replaced provision; not net incremental full societal cost. Family time and some opportunity costs are omitted.

1. What do they do?

Vision To Learn provides school-based screenings, examinations, fitting and glasses to low-income children nationally, including SFUSD and other Bay districts. This ordinary-gift model represents that clinical core while retaining organizational overhead and unquantified work. Actual clinics are verified; modeled extra child-courses are not a capacity promise.

Fund the whole organization

The core allocation funds complete delivery cash, including upstream screening and noncompletion. Shared administration, fundraising and other institutional work retain their cost.

Enable additional care

Financial additionality distinguishes newly enabled courses from replacement funding; a separate clinical-gap prior excludes children already adequately corrected.

Deliver and maintain useful glasses

Effective wearing time, not pair count, drives health. Second pairs and replacements preserve the same child's correction rather than create another health gain.

Count finite health by residence

After an explicit dispensing delay, useful correction lasts only until the no-gift care comparator catches up. No lifetime learning, earnings or blindness-prevention tail is added.

Scope of this review. Bay includes SF, within US. Regional resident shares are assumptions, not current output fractions. Overseas health is zero. Partner-provided care must not be counted again in another report.

2. Monitoring and information sharing

4,972 Baltimore school children prescribed glasses

Guo et al.2021 cross-sectional presenting versus best-corrected acuity. 70% gained at least two better-eye chart lines on refraction.

Our assessment. Supports optical correction, not sustained wear, untreated delay or preference utility.

Baltimore second/third graders;206 at first follow-up

Mudie et al.2022 prospective school cohort. Presenting distance acuity improved from .14 to .05 logMAR; improvement persisted into the next school year.

Our assessment. Two pairs and replacement support were supplied. No randomized usual-care comparator; does not validate two-year delay avoided.

Baltimore grades3–7

Neitzel et al.2021 randomized school rollout. Reading benefit at one year was not sustained at two years.

Our assessment. Academic effect is not converted to QALYs; its attenuation is not proof that visual benefit disappears.

Chinese children and Indian adults, respectively

Pediatric glasses-type QoL trial and adult economic evaluation. Pediatric NEI-RQL-42 is not preference utility; adult modeled utility is not validated US pediatric gain.

Our assessment. The model's0.02 utility remains an explicit analyst judgment.

California school vision services

Current DHCS MOS provider/financing guidance. VTL is a current provider; eligible private funding can draw federal CHIP funds.

Our assessment. No verified ordinary-gift match rate, headroom or new local slots. Existing reimbursement is not automatically incremental.

3. Qualitative assessment

Mobile examinations and glasses address real visual deficits; replacement-supported cohorts show sustained corrected vision. California donations may also enable federal financing.

Key reservations

  • Utility, adherence, clinical catch-up, marginal costs and regional shares are weakly calibrated judgments.
  • Two-year favorable correction requires replacement and follow-up within a low assumed cash budget.
  • Current Baltimore replacement copy inconsistently states18months versus one year; no national guarantee inferred.
  • Public reimbursement, donated glasses and public screening require partner-resource accounting and substitution checks.
  • Do not add school test-score gains, referrals, two pairs per child or partner counts as separate QALYs.

Benefits not included in our estimate

  • Academic attainment and economic welfare
  • Parent health and time benefits
  • Unquantified institutional research/advocacy
  • Medical-cost savings
  • Unproven lifetime amblyopia or blindness prevention

4. What do you get for your dollar?

Finite corrected-vision time, not test scores converted into health

Central dispensing begins 1.5 months after donation and the incremental window lasts one year; favorable starts after one month for two years, pessimistic after three months for six months. All delays and catch-up times are judgments. Health is discounted at 3% from donation; shared service harm occurs at dispensing and independent donor harm at donation.

A better life is our comparison unit of 10 additional quality-adjusted life years (QALYs), potentially spread across people. These are uncertain estimates, not measured returns or verified donation offers.

How we calculate the estimate

Health for each base or matching tranche: Q = children × financial additionality × (uncorrected fraction × effective wear × utility × discounted corrected-time − shared harm), discounted to dispensing; apply tranche residence shares, then subtract independent donor harm.
Central 1.247760 US QALYs / .099821 Bay / .018716 SF for the same $100,000.

Model inputs and assumptions
Direct cash / associated in-kind per delivered child
$225 / $40 (range: $150–$400 / $25–$75). Complete direct-course allocation includes failed screens, exams, noncompletion and follow-up. Historical below-$150 provider narrative is not a current quote. Favorable $150 must support two years. Analyst judgment.
Clinical share of whole gift
80% (range: 65%–90%). Remaining shared institutional costs retained; academic and broader benefits unquantified. Analyst judgment.
Financial additionality / uncorrected comparator
50% / 60% (range: 20%–80% / 30%–90%; zero tested). Different funding and clinical substitutes; no third blanket replacement factor. Analyst judgment.
Effective correction fraction
60% (range: 30%–80%). Includes loss and nonwear; not measured annual adherence or extra completion probability. Analyst judgment.
Preference utility while effectively corrected
0.02 (range: 0.005–0.04; zero tested). Unvalidated pediatric analyst prior. Chart-line and academic gains are not preference utility. Analyst judgment.
Ordinary base Bay / SF health shares
8% / 1.5% (range: 3%–15% / 0.3%–4%). Nested resident allocation priors, not measured marginal output. California match uses separate conditional Bay20% / SF3.75%. Analyst judgment.
New public matching cash
$0 central (range: Separate hypothetical $32,000). An assumed1:1 match on40% California core budget only. Not an available donor offer or statutory rate. Analyst judgment.

Same $100,000 gift; scenarios are not confidence intervals

  • central: SF: $53,429,092/10Q · BAY: $10,017,955/10Q · US: $801,436/10Q. QALYs SF 0.0187164, Bay 0.0998208, US 1.24776. Gross associated resource envelope $114,222.
  • favorable: SF: $933,846/10Q · BAY: $249,026/10Q · US: $37,354/10Q. QALYs SF 1.07084, Bay 4.01565, US 26.7710. Gross associated resource envelope $115,000.
  • pessimistic: SF: $59,606,301,161/10Q · BAY: $5,960,630,116/10Q · US: $178,818,903/10Q. QALYs SF 0.0000167767, Bay 0.000167767, US 0.00559225. Gross associated resource envelope $112,188.
  • central conditional public match: SF: $26,714,546/10Q · BAY: $5,008,977/10Q · US: $572,455/10Q. QALYs SF 0.0374328, Bay 0.199642, US 1.74686. Gross associated resource envelope $151,911.
  • zero financial additionality: SF: no positive ratio · BAY: no positive ratio · US: no positive ratio. QALYs SF 0.00000, Bay 0.00000, US 0.00000. Gross associated resource envelope $114,222.
  • zero clinical gain: SF: no positive ratio · BAY: no positive ratio · US: no positive ratio. QALYs SF 0.00000, Bay 0.00000, US 0.00000. Gross associated resource envelope $114,222.
  • no gain shared harm: SF: no positive ratio · BAY: no positive ratio · US: no positive ratio. QALYs SF -0.000132842, Bay -0.000708489, US -0.00885611. Gross associated resource envelope $114,222.
  • zero additionality independent harm: SF: no positive ratio · BAY: no positive ratio · US: no positive ratio. QALYs SF -0.00150000, Bay -0.00800000, US -0.100000. Gross associated resource envelope $114,222.
  • central three month catchup: SF: $215,897,415/10Q · BAY: $40,480,765/10Q · US: $3,238,461/10Q. QALYs SF 0.00463183, Bay 0.0247031, US 0.308789. Gross associated resource envelope $114,222.
  • central no sf residents: SF: no positive ratio · BAY: $10,017,955/10Q · US: $801,436/10Q. QALYs SF 0.00000, Bay 0.0998208, US 1.24776. Gross associated resource envelope $114,222.
  • central zero dispensing delay: SF: $53,232,043/10Q · BAY: $9,981,008/10Q · US: $798,481/10Q. QALYs SF 0.0187857, Bay 0.100190, US 1.25238. Gross associated resource envelope $114,222.

Uncertainty. Joint favorable inputs are not a verified offer or confidence bound. Null financial expansion or null clinical value produces no positive ratio; shared or independent health harm can make net QALYs negative. Independent harm geography uses ordinary resident-share priors, not a verified harm location. Zero dispensing delay reproduces v1 central for provenance.

5. Funding and previous grants

No verified marginal capacity, current complete cost quote, eligible matching headroom or pediatric QALY calibration.

Ordinary public reimbursement is baseline. Only the optional California match scenario adds NEW public cash, assuming eligibility, claims, capacity and a hypothetical rate. Base and match children have separate geography; the match does not fund non-California care. All public cash and in-kind allowances enter gross resource costs. Direct claims administration is assumed inside course cost; institutional capacity is not unlimited. This envelope counts committed failed/replaced provision and is not a net incremental societal CEA.

This review does not establish a verified marginal funding offer or a complete history of grants.

Donate

Opens the organization’s giving page. A general donation may not fund the specific activity modeled here; confirm allocation with the recipient.

6. Sources

  1. Annual Reports and legal identity. Vision To Learn. Official provider or partner disclosure. Published: current page, accessed September 8, 2026; retrieved: September 8, 2026.
  2. 2024–2025 Annual Report. Vision To Learn. Organization annual report, not audited financial statements. Published: FY2024–2025; accessed September 8, 2026; retrieved: September 8, 2026.
  3. A Decade of Progress. Vision To Learn. Official provider or partner disclosure. Published: 2022-era narrative, not a current quote; accessed September 8, 2026; retrieved: September 8, 2026.
  4. Northern California. Vision To Learn. Official provider or partner disclosure. Published: current page accessed September 8, 2026; retrieved: September 8, 2026.
  5. California regional report. Vision To Learn. Official provider or partner disclosure. Published: 2022–2023 output; accessed September 8, 2026; retrieved: September 8, 2026.
  6. Mobile Optometric Services Program. California DHCS. Official government program guidance. Published: current page accessed September 8, 2026; retrieved: September 8, 2026.
  7. MOS Frequently Asked Questions. California DHCS. Official government program guidance. Published: current page accessed September 8, 2026; retrieved: September 8, 2026.
  8. How do I become a donor?. California DHCS. Official government program guidance. Published: current page accessed September 8, 2026; retrieved: September 8, 2026.
  9. Visual acuity and refractive findings in children prescribed glasses from a school-based vision program. Guo et al.; Harvard author institution. Primary study abstract or author-institution record. Published: J AAPOS 2021; PMID34752908; abstract read September 8, 2026; retrieved: September 8, 2026.
  10. Effect of a Randomized Interventional School-Based Vision Program on Academic Performance of Students in Grades 3 to 7. Neitzel et al.; JAMA Ophthalmology. Primary randomized study, indexed publisher text. Published: September 9, 2021; indexed primary text accessed September 8, 2026; retrieved: September 8, 2026.
  11. Impact of Free Glasses and a Teacher Incentive on Children's Use of Eyeglasses. Yi et al.; Ophthalmology/PubMed. Primary study abstract or author-institution record. Published: 2015; primary abstract indexed September 8, 2026; subsequent open429; retrieved: September 8, 2026.
  12. Self-refraction, ready-made glasses and quality of life among rural myopic Chinese children. Zhou et al.; Acta Ophthalmologica/PubMed. Primary study abstract or author-institution record. Published: 2017; PMID27321197; primary abstract accessed September 8, 2026; retrieved: September 8, 2026.
  13. Ready-made and custom-made eyeglasses in India: a cost-effectiveness analysis of a randomised controlled trial. Angell et al.; BMJ Open Ophthalmology/PubMed. Primary study abstract or author-institution record. Published: February9,2018; primary abstract accessed September8,2026; retrieved: September 8, 2026.
  14. Baltimore Reading and Eye Disease Study: vision outcomes of school-based eye care. Mudie et al.; Johns Hopkins University. Primary study abstract or author-institution record. Published: February2022; primary institutional abstract read September8,2026; retrieved: September 8, 2026.
  15. Baltimore Reading and Eye Disease Study. Johns Hopkins Medicine. Official provider or partner disclosure. Published: current institutional page read September8,2026; retrieved: September 8, 2026.
  16. For Families. Vision for Baltimore. Official provider or partner disclosure. Published: current partner page read September8,2026; replacement windows internally inconsistent; retrieved: September 8, 2026.

Annual expenses: years and sources

Average annual expenses (three consecutive fiscal years): Not available. Organization size is separate from the modeled cost-effectiveness of a donation.

Vision To Learn

Three years of organization-level expenses have not yet been verified for this report. No other organization or fiscal sponsor budget has been substituted.