Client project: Charity Futures

The client:

Charity Futures is a think-tank. It was working on creating an new academic institute to study charity and philanthropy. This became the announce Institute of Charity at the University of Oxford. Giving Evidence is highly aware that research – particularly academic research – can be very separate and distant from practice. Hence we have worked in various sectors to identify the unanswered questions that practitioners would most like researchers to address. We learn a lot in this process from the James Lind Alliance which does exactly this in healthcare / medicine. We did this here.

What we did:

Charity Futures commissioned Giving Evidence to do two related pieces of research, both to inform the work of a proposed new academic centre about charities and philanthropy. One looked at the ‘supply’ of existing academic research about charities and philanthropy, for which we did a systematic review of the literature, working with University College London. The other studied ‘demand’ for new research, by consulting widely with charities and donors. This was a complicated project involving multiple focus groups around the UK and two rounds of open surveys, plus various analyses. We combined the results of both studies to identify priority gaps in the existing research. The findings of both studies are here, together with much more detail about the process. 

Client’s view:

“Giving Evidence brought deep expertise, and relevant experts, to the design and execution of both these projects. It ran a complex process smoothly and professionally, as well as presenting about the projects at various sector conferences. The findings, and Giving Evidence’s advice based on them, helped Charity Futures’ thinking considerably”. 

–  Stephen Bubb, founding director of Charity Futures