View all newsletters
Have the short, sharp Spear's newsletter delivered to your inbox each week
  1. Impact Philanthropy
March 3, 2014updated 11 Jan 2016 2:06pm

Five easy tools to help you be a more effective philanthropist

By Spear's

Every philanthropic decision can be fraught: was this the right cause? Was it the right amount? How do I know if it’s working? In an attempt to take the fuss out of philanthropy, a consultancy has devised a toolbox of questions donors should ask.

Giving Evidence, headed by Caroline Fiennes, has come up with ‘five easy tools’, each looking at a different aspect of the grand process:

Are our grants succeeding?

Is the patient getting better?

Could we release hidden funds by streamlining our processes?

What do our grantees think of us?

What have we learnt?

The tools, described in the new white paper ‘How funders can better understand their performance’, are meant to be easy, feasible and not perfect but sufficient to give a snapshot of performance.

Content from our partners
Meet the females leading in the FTSE
A cut above: Charles Sanford on why HNW clients choose LGT Wealth Management
How the Thuso Group’s invaluable experience and expertise shaped the Spear’s Schools Index 2024

Philanthropists are at liberty to give money and intervene where they like – this is the power of their wealth – but there is ‘little or no external scrutiny’ to guide them, unless they want it.

Of course, there is no guarantee your grants will pass any of the tests, the paper concedes, but you won’t know either way without them. Part of the challenge is getting donors to admit where things go wrong, for example in publishing their success (and thus ‘failure’) rate.

To this end, Fiennes says the first tool is the most important: ‘If I could only get people to do one of these it would be number one and I would get them to publish their answers. Everyone has a different style of giving and everyone has an opinion about why their style is so great, but we have no data about this – no data at all.’

The tools are broad brushes, the report says: exact results for one funder’s complete giving are too hard to come by and trying to associate outcomes with inputs can be ‘messy and meaningless’.

Soon after Spear’s finished our conversation with Fiennes, she emailed: ‘News just in… A family foundation has just said that, having read the white paper, they’re going to implement it all.’

For more info, see Giving Evidence

Select and enter your email address The short, sharp email newsletter from Spear’s
  • Business owner/co-owner
  • CEO
  • COO
  • CFO
  • CTO
  • Chairperson
  • Non-Exec Director
  • Other C-Suite
  • Managing Director
  • President/Partner
  • Senior Executive/SVP or Corporate VP or equivalent
  • Director or equivalent
  • Group or Senior Manager
  • Head of Department/Function
  • Manager
  • Non-manager
  • Retired
  • Other
Visit our privacy policy for more information about our services, how New Statesman Media Group may use, process and share your personal data, including information on your rights in respect of your personal data and how you can unsubscribe from future marketing communications.
Thank you

Thanks for subscribing.

Websites in our network