A favorite saying of foundation people is, “You can’t be afraid to fail. You have to be ready to take bold risks.”

I’ve thought about it, and I think they’re going too easy on themselves. I put it to you: we need both funders of innovative projects and funders who focus on what already works. But right now, the latter is the one we need more of.

I believe that foundations today almost exclusively focus on high-risk, high-reward, unproven, innovative projects. Exclusively, to the point where there is no mechanism for proven, effective, scalable projects to get as big as they should be. My evidence is not as concrete as I’d like it to be, because foundations are too busy cowering behind locked doors to tell anyone anything about what they do. But here it is anyway.

• Exhibit A: from the horse’s mouth. Joel Orosz, Insider’s Guide to Grantmaking (pg 19): “Most foundations focus on encouraging innovation rather than on supporting the ongoing programs of nonprofit organizations.” Orosz reasons that individual donors, who give far more, will pick up the slack of funding what works. Problem is, they have no way of doing so. Take it from a guy who tried.

  As I’ll argue below, figuring out what works is actually far harder than figuring out what might work. That’s where foundations’ staffs and resources are most needed.

• Exhibit B: from the charities. Check out our Round 1 instructions, especially these parts:
  • “We know that helping people can be difficult to measure, but we have a strong preference for methods that we see strong reason to believe have helped people in the past.” (Pg 2)
  • “we suggest that you pick an existing, established, well-documented program for which you have thorough information readily available.” (Pg 3)
  • “Please focus on your existing programs and activities … [we] will likely not award programs for which little precedent exists. Rather, we are looking for organizations whose activities have worked well …” (Pg 4, emphasis in original)

  Now check out the Round 1 submissions (available under each cause on www.givewell.org). Note that even though we worked exclusively with large established charities and asked for projects that have worked before, we still received huge numbers of proposals for completely new projects. The only explanation I can think of is that charities are that accustomed to sending in new ideas, and that unaccustomed to talking about what they already do.

  Now check out the applications that didn’t misread our instructions, and did talk about existing programs. The evaluations are, frankly, a mess, with practically no exceptions. They’re in draft form, they’re disorganized, they neglect to mention clear methodological concerns … for the most part, not even our finalists were able to show us in a clear and readable way what their programs have accomplished in the past.

  I don’t blame charities, I blame foundations. We thought our questions would be easy for charities to answer, but as it turns out, “what do you already do?” is a question that none of them seem ready for. If foundations were asking this question, I have to think they would be.

• Exhibit C: the logic of laziness. There is no pressure on foundation people to do anything – so I expect them to take the easy way out. Although many point to their “courage” in taking on high-risk projects, in reality a high-risk approach is the easy way out for a funder. When you’re looking at what might work, instead of what does work, you don’t need any analytical abilities; you don’t need to interpret data; and you don’t need to be ashamed when you fail, because after all, you were taking a risk. You can follow your gut and your personal relationships all day long, and shrug your shoulders when it doesn’t pan out. I’m not saying there’s no place for this type of grantmaking, but it sure seems less sweaty than grantmaking based in the here and now.

Since Straw Man boxing is a favorite sport in this sector, I expect many of those who read this to respond, “But what would we do if nobody funded new innovative ideas?” I’m not suggesting that nobody fund new innovative ideas. GiveWell exists because some people took a chance on an idea. So does every other charity. What I’m saying is that right now, foundations work almost exclusively in the high-risk sphere, and that we desperately need more people identifying and scaling up what already works.

We need to learn more about what already works, so we can get those low-risk dollars from individuals to fund it and help lots of people. We need funders who go beyond people they like with ideas that sound cool, and get into the messy business of learning how the world actually is. We need more people who hold themselves to a high burden of proof, and the hard work and analysis that comes with it. We need more people who are afraid to fail. Could you be one of them?

There’s a saying that I think about a lot: “If you can’t explain it to your Uncle Bob, you don’t understand it.” (Note: may be a rewording of a real saying, or not a real saying at all; I’m not sure. If it’s unclaimed, mark it down as mine, thanks.)

How many times have you sat down to write something – for a blog, for a report, heck, for an email – that you were 100% sure of, then realized as you were writing that you have to rethink things entirely? It happens. When you’re talking to no one but yourself, everything you vaguely recall and intuitively believe sounds reasonable; you’ve got no check on it. When you’re talking to your fellow Program Officer, there’s a little more of a check, but the two of you are still in the same bubble, and you can still use jargon to skip over concepts you should be reexamining. When you talk to your Uncle Bob, that’s when you have to be clear – and that means getting clear in your own head.

That’s why, as we’ve written up our reviews for our public website, our opinions have changed drastically. Because as I write a review, I’m not trying to explain my reasoning to Elie, I’m trying to explain it to Uncle Bob. I’m trying to put it down so I can literally send a link to my grandma and have her understand why I’d rather give to Year Up than St. Nick’s. And even before anyone actually reads it, this makes me think much harder about it, question all the little assumptions I’ve been making (without knowing I’m making them), recheck all the sources for things I’ve been vaguely recalling, and get really clear on what I think.

I put it to you that in terms of clarifying and improving your thoughts, there is no substitute for the process of explaining your decision to a general audience. Everyone who thinks for a living knows this. Except, perhaps, for Program Officers at foundations.

Cause what I’m saying comes down to this. I believe that what we’re doing is exactly what every foundation, everywhere, all the time, should be doing: documenting everything we decide, with links to every single material we used to decide it, and releasing it so that anyone can see it and critique it. The benefits are obvious in terms of public information sharing, but one of the lame objections that is sometimes raised is that documenting your views for the public is “too time-consuming.”

Well heck yeah, it’s time consuming. But not because of the typing – because of the thinking. We’re spending ungodly amounts of time writing up decisions we think we’ve already made … and we’re getting every second’s worth back in terms of improving our decisions, clarifying them for others and for ourselves. Even before anyone has jumped in the ring to challenge our views (and a few people have), we’ve gotten a good dose of skepticism, feedback, and improvement from Uncle Bob.

Every single foundation should be writing up its decisions in public. Uncle Bob is fine with that statement. Who wants to challenge it?

Look, another story where a foundation is accused of violating its original funders’ values.

It’s ridiculous to accuse the foundation. The funders violated their own values, the second they handed over their money to an organization set up to exist forever.

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