This article first published in the Financial Times.

One big donation will be more effective than several smaller ones

Would you prefer to receive one big present this Christmas, or lots of little ones? Your
inner child will tell you that holding out for one major gift that you really want is often the best choice. And the same goes for charities, who will benefit from one big donation this Christmas rather than numerous small gifts.

In my last How to Give it column, I told you how the insurance group Aviva has been inviting public involvement to give away £1.75m to “at least 800” non-profit organisations. Yet the evidence suggests that making numerous small gifts is not a good idea. Continue reading →

Remarkably little is known reliably about how to do philanthropy well – how to use it to achieve particular aims – despite philanthropy’s long and varied history. Giving Evidence (and others) is trying to fix this – to create reliable data and insight about which ways of giving work best in particular situations. And we have a new analysis underway to that end.

Donors choose (often unwittingly) between various ways of giving, e.g.,

• being hands-on vs. hands-off
• working solo vs. with other donors
• whether to make many small grants vs. few larger ones
• how and whether the grant is tracked
• whether the donor gives, lends or invests
• how grantees are chosen – how prospective grantees are sourced, the selection criteria, the application process, who’s involved in the selection process
• and so on.

Probably some grants work out better than others. It would be useful to know which types of grant work out best in which circumstances. {We have now heard two stories of funders whose application processes are no better than random in terms of predicting grantee success, and one where one stage of the application process reduces the accuracy of predictions of grantee success. It’s worth knowing how to judge applications!} Continue reading →