Videos

The Foundation Practice Rating: launch of the Year Three results – March 2024

The full results are in a long report & a summary report here.

The Foundation Practice Rating: launch of the Year Two results – March 2023

How can philanthropy help achieve the Sustainable Development Goals – given that there is a massive gap between the funding that that requires and the funding available? Giving Evidence Director Caroline Fiennes spoke about this at a Devex conference in London in October 2022.

Answer: Philanthropy helps by influencing things bigger than itself, e.g., commercial investment, government funding, and by ensuring that institutions are fair (non-corrupt), transparent and competent:

“Some stuff that I have noticed about data and evidence re foundations and non-profits which might be interesting and/or useful to you” – a talk to a ‘learning circle’ group of foundations in lovely Canada (August 2022). Weirdly, though Caroline’s voice & slides appear here, her face doesn’t because her camera was off.

Presentation to a group of foundations in Germany, Austria, Switzerland about evidence-based philanthropy, and the Foundation Practice Rating. Vielen Dank fuer die Einladung mitzusprechen! (April 2022)

Getting research into practice: Keynote at Global Evidence and Implementation Summit, 2018: Caroline Fiennes gave a keynote presentation at the Global Evidence and Implementation Summit in Melbourne, October 2018. To watch, click on the photo and wait a second: you will need to log in but any email address will suffice. Excuse the surprise didgeridoo interruption!

Launch of the Foundation Practice Rating! March 2022

Shift the Power: webinar with the Cambridge Centre for Strategic Philanthropy, about moving power  from funders to grantees and intended beneficiaries, and from the Global North to the Global South (October 2021)

Webinar with Alfanar (venture philanthropy fund in the Middle East) about effective funding practices, particularly funding overheads, and avoiding mission creep (January 2021):

The potential and pitfalls of evidence-based philanthropy: Keynote talk at the Philanthropic Foundations of Canada, Toronto, Oct 2018.

Notice the all-female panel 🙂

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 was given in Vienna (notice how Caroline had accidentally turned up basically wearing the Austrian flag…), which is why bits of it are in German. More here.

The Big Money Questions! Caroline talked to The Daily Mail. Click on the picture below to watch (~20 mins).

Explanation of two projects that we did to understand the current supply of, and demand for, research about charities and philanthropy:

Video lesson with the Fitzroy Academy: (click on the picture to watch)

What can philanthropy learn from medicine about using decent evidence? Six minute audio-interview!

‘Ask an important question and answer it reliably‘: how to do evidence-based philanthropy. This talk was given to an invited group of major donors. (18 mins)

How Giving Evidence supports donors and foundations:

The closure of Kids Company (high-profile UK charity) on August 5th 2015 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 should be consolidation:

Caroline was also on BBC Radio4’s PM programme on the same day, which FeedbackLabs turned into a podcast, here.

The problems establishing the effectiveness of KidsCompany illustrate a wide-spread problem in the charity sector, which Giving Evidence and others are actively trying to solve. More here. Caroline Fiennes discussed many aspects of charities and giving with SIBE at Warwick University, including:

Does it matter which charity a donor chooses?