Big Bet Philanthropy
Big Bet Bonanza
Big Bet philanthropy — think eight or nine figure grants from funders like Mackenzie Scott and The Audacious Project — hasn’t found its groove yet. Kevin gives a formula for how to make the most of a Big Bet: Assume you’ll only get one, and do something transformative with it.
Stanford Social Innovation Review
Our Best Bet Is a Long Bet
An earlier take from two doers: James of Last Mile Health and Maharshi of Educate Girls use a memorable analogy to explain the dilemma that comes with Big Bet philanthropy. They compare their pre-big-bet organizations to small cars, powered by traditional internal combustion engines. Big bet philanthropy upgrades them from driving a single fossil fuel car to a fleet of electric vehicles. The problem: the chargers are missing (AKA the “funding cliff”).
Stanford Social Innovation Review
So. Economic Growth in Sub-Saharan Africa
The World’s Poorest Countries Have Experienced a Brutal Decade: Why Has Development Ground To A Halt?
Without economic growth, governments don’t have any money. If governments don’t have any money, the innovations in our portfolio will hit a scale ceiling. In fact, no progress on this means no progress on much. The above graph — and the accompanying article — should obsess anyone funding or working in Africa.
Source: Chang-tai Hsieh and Peter J. Klenow, “The Life Cycle of Plants in India and Mexico”
Want Growth? Kill Small Businesses
There are a lot of good organizations working to help people start microenterprises, but most people don’t want a business — they want a job. A country’s economic growth can be understood as the aggregate of the growth of its individual firms. When firms stay small, countries are stuck with low-value manufacturing that creates relatively few jobs. We need to help businesses in Africa get bigger. One of our newest Rainer Arnhold Fellows is working on just that: Growth Teams coach governments to solve problems that hold back firms, resulting in more and better jobs. This piece could be their PR strategy.
Could T-shirts Be The Way To Industrialize An African nation?
Many countries find their way out of poverty through manufacturing. This fascinating piece on Benin's experiment to grab more of the cotton value chain and stem the tide of manufacturing decline. It says a lot about the obstacles blocking this route for African nations writ large.
Hmmm. Social Sector Effectiveness
Reviewing the Liberia Education Advancement Program (LEAP)
Liberia’s education system was in shambles when this public-private partnership for out-sourced management of government schools was launched. The very notion of private involvement in public education seemed to piss off a lot of people. A too-early RCT and common misconceptions about start-up costs really muddied the waters. Tom Kagerer, previously of LGT Venture Philanthropy, gives an overview of their long running investment in LEAP, and he makes the case that it takes a bit of patience to achieve economies of scale and generate meaningful evidence.
Why We Shut Down
This is a great piece by two founders who shut things down when they realized that their intervention didn’t work. Their account is fascinating, but what we found especially compelling was their discussion of why more nonprofits don’t go out of business. They make the critically important point that nonprofits are only (really) accountable to their funders, and if funders don’t hold them accountable for impact, no one will. What that really means is that if the social sector is inefficient, then it’s our — the funders — fault. Yesss!!
Asterisk Magazine (another plug for their recent edition on Development)
On Fables and Nuanced Charts
As you can see above, we spend a lot of time looking at charts and trying to help organizations communicate their impact effectively. Data visualizations appear to present information objectively, but it’s good to remember any data viz is laden with assumptions. This piece is a great primer on how to spot manipulations, and conversely gives you some tips on how to be a better storyteller through charts.
From The Archive
Impact comes from behavior, so we pay a lot of attention to the research. Emotions are the most powerful driver of behavior, and perceptions of justice and fairness generate very strong emotions. Here are some monkeys showing us just how deep this stuff goes.
And Finally…
If you don’t get it, take a read of We’re Beating Systems Change to Death
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