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Recent Posts
- 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
- Getting evidence to influence public policy
- The curious relationship between the number of staff and number of trustees in foundations
- Having Too Few Personnel Compromises Foundations’ Performance on Key Issues
- One donor’s fantastic work to encourage use of evidence, and production of more, to fight factory farming
- Reducing the Administrative Burden Placed on UK Charities by UK Donors and Funders
- Letter in The Economist about anti-malarial bednets
- Rating UK foundations on their transparency, accountability and diversity
- Why most ratings of charities are useless: the available information isn’t important and the important information isn’t available
- Webinar: intro to evidence, and the evidence about child abuse
- Many (many!) charities are too small to measure their own impact
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Category Archives: Impact & evaluation
We tried to update our analysis of charities’ performance and their admin costs, and you won’t BELIEVE what happened next!
Many people believe that charities waste money on ‘administration’, and hence that the best charities spend little on administration. A strong form of this view is that the best charities are by definition those which spend little on administration, i.e., you … Continue reading
Why I’ve joined a board of the Flemish Red Cross
I know. You’ve never heard of the Flemish Red Cross. You realise that such a thing probably must exist but you’d never hitherto realised it, right? Well, you should know about it because it’s amazing. Of all the operational charities … Continue reading
Posted in Great charities, Impact & evaluation
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Evidence-based philanthropy made easy
This talk explains what evidence-based giving is, why it matters, and how it needn’t be soooo complicated. Even the first 30 seconds here show why minimising administrative costs to keep an aid programme ‘cheap’ is a bad idea. This talk … Continue reading
Breaking the hunger cycle for the price of a bus ticket
Modern philanthropists adopt an evidence-based approach This article first published in the Financial Times in March 2017. The Christian tradition of giving things up for Lent comes, it is said, from making a virtue out of necessity. Last year’s harvest, … Continue reading
Posted in Effective giving, Great charities, Impact & evaluation
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How impact measurement can be more useful
This article first published in Civil Society Magazine. Most of the impact data charities gather does not help raise funds or improve performance This opinion piece is a response to an article titled How do you measure the value of … Continue reading
Posted in Effective giving, Impact & evaluation
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When charitable donations cost more than they give
Popularity contests for funding waste time and resources This article first published in the Financial Times in November 2016. Some charitable donors are a net drain: they cost organisations they seek to help more than they contribute. Others come pretty … Continue reading
Posted in Effective giving, Impact & evaluation
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Creating a sector-wide research agenda: Industrial Farm Animal Production
‘Ask an important question an answer it reliably’ is a central tenet of medical research. Yet much ‘impact research’ in the charity and social sectors (including monitoring and evaluation’) isn’t like that. Instead, we ask lots of questions, and answer … Continue reading
Posted in Impact & evaluation
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What is evidence-based giving and why does it matter?
Interview with Caroline Fiennes, Director of Giving Evidence (16 mins): This interview was made possible by the Skoll Foundation. It was recorded in Oxford in April 2015, in a single take and with no notice of the questions. More … Continue reading
Posted in Impact & evaluation, Promoting giving
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What would have happened otherwise?
First published in the Financial Times in August 2016. Did the charity make it happen, or would it have happened anyway? The purpose of a charity’s work — and your support for it — is to create a benefit beyond what … Continue reading
Posted in Impact & evaluation
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How to give it: Why charity should begin in the science lab
This article first published in the Financial Times in April 2016 Not all charities are good causes. This may sound surprising, because we’re used to thinking of them all as being somehow virtuous, but they vary in their effectiveness. Smart donors … Continue reading
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