This would be the most optimal use of $20k IMHO - giving to an organization that guides donations to more honest, better operated charities means more people effectively helped. $20k could be used to cover hosting and operations costs so that people like you and I have a resource to show us what will give the most bang for our collective buck.
Billions of dollars go to charities annually but high administrative costs and poor management means only a fraction reaches the intended target.
The recommended charities don't change often, so it wouldn't be much of a time saving. And it puts a lot of power into the trusts' hands.
OpenPhil is planning to give to substantially different charities from GiveWell recommended charities: http://www.open-philanthropy.org/
Giving to GiveWell or Giving What We Can means your money is spent on research and advocacy, probably resulting in a greater total impact: https://80000hours.org/2015/06/donating-to-giving-what-we-ca... Giving to GiveWell also has the effect of increasing the funds available to OpenPhil, since OpenPhil (to some extent) makes up the short fall in GiveWell's funding.
The Giving What We Can Trust is just a convenient way to have a Donor Advised Fund. The money goes to whichever charities you like. https://www.givingwhatwecan.org/trust
This other story on HN is not gaining any traction but it's interesting because a 33 year old Malayasian billionaire is financing using Watson to assist with cancer treatment.
"http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/national/2015/06/27/watsons...
"Jho Low, the 33-year-old billionaire who is bankrolling the $50 million MD Anderson project with Watson, said the effort grew out of his grandfather’s treatment for leukemia in Malaysia. Low said that he felt fortunate to be able to connect his grandfather’s doctors remotely with MD Anderson specialists to devise the best treatment plan. He believes everyone, rich or poor, should have the same access to that kind of expertise."
Every system has friction. You have to concentrate power to overcome friction and get things done. We'd be knocking off the world's problems a lot faster if we could "focus fire" on them. Ten diseases that might each take a decade to cure with 1/10th the donation could be solved half the time or less if each disease got a year of all the donations. But charity is more about signalling your clever pet cause than global optimization of future world-states, so nobody will let go of their second-best (or, realistically, 897th-best) charity.
Do you know of published research that supports this conclusion? I'm honestly curious.