Category Archives: Uncategorized

A lovely interview on US radio station The Business Of Giving with Denver Frederick. We discussed lessons for philanthropy / nonprofits from Galileo, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance; how nonprofits sometimes harm, how we don’t yet have good frameworks for … Continue reading →

We were busy this year! Pushing forwards substantially on improving the quality and use of evidence in our three areas of interest: assessing interventions, assessing charities, and assessing ways of giving. Read our 2015 Year In Brief.

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 →

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 →

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 →

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 →

Jake Hayman was right in his recent blog Not Fit For Purpose: Why I’m Done With the Foundation World – there are major problems with charitable funding. We can see this just from the fact that charities normally pay between … Continue reading →

Well done Malcolm Gladwell. On Wednesday this week, Harvard announced its biggest gift ever, $400m from the American hedge fund manager John Paulson for its school of engineering and applied sciences. Gladwell ridiculed it: ‘It came down to helping the … Continue reading →