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Recent Posts
- What evidence to use at each stage of a programme
- Prince Andrew’s patronage of charities didn’t help
- Was Prince Andrew any good as a charity patron? We’re finding out
- What evidence exists about women & remand in the UK, and what does it say?
- Shifting the power in philanthropy: Types of initiative
- Most grant-makers don’t seem to know if they are effective
- More UK foundations are reporting the diversity of their staff and trustees
- Measuring children’s safety in organisations: Evaluating the strengths and limitations of currently-used measures
- Why the Fdn Practice Rating doesn’t assess the same foundations each year, and why that’s fine
- How diverse are UK foundations’ staff and boards?
- Surprising churn in the top UK foundations
- Why the system for charities applying to foundations is so expensive, and what can be done about it
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Author Archives: carolinefiennes
NSPCC’s stats on child addiction to porn don’t stand up to scrutiny
Oh dear. The NSPCC seems to have lost the moral high ground to – of all people –Vice magazine, a trendy periodical that is mainly about trainers and unconventional sex. The children’s charity recently claimed that a tenth of the … Continue reading
Posted in Fundraising, Great charities
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Talk of charities ‘proving their impact’ is dangerous and misleading
Proof is a big concept, and in social science – which is what impact research is – it almost never happens Suppose you hear of a new intervention that’s never been tried or tested before. What are the chances of it … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
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Dear Santa, please bring us some curiosity!
In 1929, Werner Forssmann, a junior doctor in Eberswalde, Germany, found in an obscure 19th century journal a diagram of a man passing a tube through a horse’s jugular vein into its heart to measure changes in ventricular pressure. He wondered if … Continue reading
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The charity sector should use more systematic reviews to leverage what’s already known
Any single piece of evaluation research, designed to understand the effect of an intervention, has limitations. It will examine the effect of a particular intervention on some particular outcomes in a particular group of people (‘population’), at a particular time. That’s … Continue reading
Posted in Effective giving, Impact & evaluation
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Charities should stand on the shoulders of giants
If campaigns to raise awareness of global poverty and progress fixing it are only reaching people already interested, what should we do? The Gates Foundation is one of many bodies concerned about this, and asked various communicators and academics to … Continue reading
Effective campaigning, dark matter and Stephen Lloyd
The church in Berkeley in Gloucestershire has a plaque that commemorates “the many virtues and great usefulness of Miss Sarah Merrett Pike of this town”. How delightful: I’m sure we’d all like to end our days reputed for our “great … Continue reading
Posted in Impact & evaluation
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TV coverage of charity effectiveness and impact evaluations
The closure of Kids Company on August 5th raised the question of charity’s management and effectiveness. Caroline spoke to BBC News about it: And, once it emerged that there are 60,000 children’s charities in the UK, she spoke about whether there … Continue reading
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Measuring long-term outcomes: new plan!
Like those of many social programmes, the goals of taking young people on Sail Training voyages are long-term: In this case, to improve life chances, involvement in employment and training, and sound mental health. However, many organisations which provide Sail … Continue reading
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Some grant decisions should be made at random(!)
Don’t laugh. The notion that grants should be given at random rattled around when the National Lottery was set up over 20 years ago: the joke was that since prize-winners are chosen at random, maybe grant-winners should be too. Perhaps we … Continue reading
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