Hi Blake! Thanks for the thought-provoking post, and thank you for your generous donation. I appreciate and sympathize with your desire to quantify the impact of your gift into one tidy figure (e.g. QALYs/$). However, in this case, it might useful to base your impact assessment on more than one figure.
You may consider looking to GiveDirectly as an example. The organization frequently reports impact/dollar, but they do so in many ways. In some studies, they focus on psychological wellbeing, in others food security, and in yet others educational outcomes. In each report, they measure many kinds of results using various methodologies and are also sure to look for potential negative impacts.
The lesson is that overall well-being has many complex inputs, and especially with small sample sizes, cannot be easily distilled into one figure. Your donation is but one factor in these children’s complex lives. I wouldn’t be surprised if, as a result of your gift, some aspects of their lives improve while others worsen. This is precisely why organizations like GiveDirectly perform studies with hundreds of participants.
I am no expert in social work or impact quantification, but I do know that what makes human lives go better is quite nebulous. The results of this cash infusion unfortunately won’t go far to predict the results of the next intervention, even if it looks similar.
Hi Blake! Thanks for the thought-provoking post, and thank you for your generous donation. I appreciate and sympathize with your desire to quantify the impact of your gift into one tidy figure (e.g. QALYs/$). However, in this case, it might useful to base your impact assessment on more than one figure.
You may consider looking to GiveDirectly as an example. The organization frequently reports impact/dollar, but they do so in many ways. In some studies, they focus on psychological wellbeing, in others food security, and in yet others educational outcomes. In each report, they measure many kinds of results using various methodologies and are also sure to look for potential negative impacts.
The lesson is that overall well-being has many complex inputs, and especially with small sample sizes, cannot be easily distilled into one figure. Your donation is but one factor in these children’s complex lives. I wouldn’t be surprised if, as a result of your gift, some aspects of their lives improve while others worsen. This is precisely why organizations like GiveDirectly perform studies with hundreds of participants.
I am no expert in social work or impact quantification, but I do know that what makes human lives go better is quite nebulous. The results of this cash infusion unfortunately won’t go far to predict the results of the next intervention, even if it looks similar.