“Although we have developed metrics and evidence to use in developing social policy and practice, we have not applied the same framework to philanthropy—but we should. Good intentions and generosity are not sufficient in practice and they ought not to be in philanthropy.”

Richard Gelles, Ph.D.
Dean of the School of Social Policy & Practice at the University of Pennsylvania, Joanne and Raymond Welsh Chair of Child Welfare & Family Violence

evidence-based & actionable

While there is an increasing number of organizations supplying information and advising services to philanthropists, our approach is uniquely guided by a necessity to be both actionable and evidence-based.

evidence-based

By evidence-based, we mean accessing the best available information from three sources: rigorous research, informed opinion, and field experience. From all three sources, we seek an empirical understanding of where the unmet needs are, what practices address those needs well, what social impact they generate, and how much change costs. By tapping all three sources, we leverage the strengths of each, while mitigating its weaknesses. Where all three sources point to the same practice or model, we see a high impact philanthropic opportunity.

actionable

But evidence alone does not lead to impact. Action does. To ensure our resources are actionable, we work to understand how individual philanthropists can make decisions on investing their capital. It means answering questions such as “Can this program make not only a measurable, but a meaningful difference in the lives of others? How would an individual philanthropist invest philanthropic capital to achieve that impact?” Furthermore, since all practical allocation decisions require an understanding of the link between cost and impact, we provide cost-impact profiles in our in-depth case examples. Finally, we conduct the hard work of translating our evidence into language that is easily accessible to individual philanthropists and their advisors.

 

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