Giving Evidence works to make charitable giving more effective by encouraging and enabling charitable giving based on sound evidence.
Happy 10th birthday to It Ain’t What You Give, a guide for any donor on giving well! “One of my favourite books on charitable giving. Recommend reading for donors, however much you’re giving” – Chief Executive, William Grant Foundation. Get your copy here.
Giving Evidence does three types of work:
Advice on your giving
We advise all types of donor: individuals, families, foundations, companies, government agencies, in many countries and across many sectors. Our advice includes:
- Finding strong organisations to fund
- Reviews of existing strategies and programmes
- Creating new strategies and programmes
- Adapting programmes to new geographies or situations
- Identifying co-funding partners
We are currently:
- advising a family who are totally new to giving;
- advising a family foundation on whose grants we have advised for ~10 years.
We recently:
- Created a giving strategy for an int’l company new to giving, and
- Reviewed, re-freshed and re-designed the giving strategy of a UK company whose growth had outstripped its former giving mandate.
Research and analysis
Our published research looks at both charity effectiveness and donor effectiveness. It includes:
- The Foundation Practice Rating: our independent and annual assessment of UK foundations. First year results published in March 2022.
- New research showing that foundations with few people (staff or trustees) tend to perform weaker on diversity, accountability and transparency.
- Original research showing that many charities are too small to ever produce rigorous evaluations.
- How to get research to influence policy and practice: a literature review, and summary of loads of interviews with people who do that.
- What rigorous evidence exists about institutional response to child abuse, and what does it say?
- Systematic review of the rigorous ‘what works’ studies about outdoor learning
- What are Royal patronages of charities, who gets them, and do they help?
- The evidence systems in medicine / health and in education in low- and middle-income countries.
Speaking and writing
This is to raise awareness that donors’ choices and behaviours really matter, to explain how charities and giving really work, and to guide donors to give well.
We speak and write in the press: see here. For example, Giving Evidence’s Director Caroline Fiennes recently had a letter in The Economist about anti-malarial bednets: see here.
A recent talk to a group of German-speaking foundations about evidence-based philanthropy, and the Foundation Practice Rating.
We talk at events: videos of many talks are here, and events are listed here.
We teach at universities and private events.
Our blog posts cover loads of topics about giving well and evidence and influencing practice. Start here & use the menu of the right!
Recent webinar about evidence and child abuse, and one funder’s journey to find, understand and use the existing ‘what works’ evidence.
All of Giving Evidence’s work looks at effectiveness across the two decisions that donors face:
- What to fund: i.e., effectiveness of charities and operating organisations they might support
- How to fund: i.e., effectiveness of the donor themselves, such as the amounts they give, any conditions attached, the processes they run (e.g., application, reporting processes, how/ whether they partner with other donors), any non-financial help, and how they organise their decision-making processes.
What is evidence-based philanthropy, why does evidence matter in philanthropy, and what types of evidence do donors need? An in-depth discussion, for a group of Austrian donors:
giving-evidence.com 