Instead of donating directly to VillageReach, I'm going to just donate to GiveWell. They pool the funds they get and distribute them to their top charities, and I trust their analytic, evidence-based, largely utilitarian approach. Mostly, however, I think the work they're doing gathering and distributing information about charities is critically important. If more charities actually competed on evidence of efficacy, the whole endeavour might be a lot different.

Seems sensible; note that according to GiveWell's plan for 2011: top-level priorities :

We aim to raise our annual revenue from around $200,000 to around $400,000 (if we do not make it all the way to $400,000 we will cut some staff going into 2012, as outlined in our overview of our financial situation). I (Holden Karnofsky) will be taking primary responsibility for this task, and expect it to take a fair amount of time.

so that GiveWell has room for more funding.

According to the most recent board meeting GiveWell has been (and will continue for the foreseeable future to) avoid soliciting the general public in order to avoid the appearance of conflict of interest in the eyes of people who are unfamiliar with the organization and looking for charity recommendations, but for people who are already sold on GiveWell's mission and trust the staff to use funding wisely; giving directly to GiveWell makes sense. As you point out, in the past GiveWell has redistributed excess funds to its top rated charities.