Thank you for this amazing write up. I had suspected that interventions at the level of charity would not work, compared to interventions at the level of funders. If funders require effectiveness, charities will care—but except some very newly started orgs, I’ve felt that institutional inertia stops them from caring about the mission and instead they just Goodheart the things funders want or institution has focused on.
This makes me update even more away from Local Priorities Research, and towards Contextualisation work even in countries where there must be some cost effective intervention to do. Perhaps a new cause area of “Funder Sophistication” or something is needed to make top-down changes in attitude?
Anyhow, thank you for your work and for this write-up!
Thank you for this amazing write up. I had suspected that interventions at the level of charity would not work, compared to interventions at the level of funders. If funders require effectiveness, charities will care—but except some very newly started orgs, I’ve felt that institutional inertia stops them from caring about the mission and instead they just Goodheart the things funders want or institution has focused on. This makes me update even more away from Local Priorities Research, and towards Contextualisation work even in countries where there must be some cost effective intervention to do. Perhaps a new cause area of “Funder Sophistication” or something is needed to make top-down changes in attitude? Anyhow, thank you for your work and for this write-up!