I think that’s a bit too pessimistic! Founders Pledge has made some progress on this (link goes to pdf) and I think we can do pretty well by taking a kind of journalistic approach. For example, we can speak to charities, experts, and government officials and see if the charity’s claims about who they spoke to and when are true, if the timelines match up, and if it seems like the government would have made changes anway. Check out pp. 8-10 of the linked doc.
I do recognize that this is much more difficult than looking at the results of an RCT. We’ll never be as sure that the effect is causal and it takes a lot of time from both us and the organisation we’re looking at. These costs are the main reason we’re not continuing our growth work at this time.
I think that’s a bit too pessimistic! Founders Pledge has made some progress on this (link goes to pdf) and I think we can do pretty well by taking a kind of journalistic approach. For example, we can speak to charities, experts, and government officials and see if the charity’s claims about who they spoke to and when are true, if the timelines match up, and if it seems like the government would have made changes anway. Check out pp. 8-10 of the linked doc.
I do recognize that this is much more difficult than looking at the results of an RCT. We’ll never be as sure that the effect is causal and it takes a lot of time from both us and the organisation we’re looking at. These costs are the main reason we’re not continuing our growth work at this time.