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(Cross post here)
Three tools for giving
1) Philanthropists used to have just one major channel for giving: find and support great individual organizations. This remains a strong way to give. If an organization produces great outcomes, it’s worth betting big.
2) In 2007, GiveWell started and popularized a second giving channel: give to a professionally-managed “mutual fund” that impartially allocates resources to achieve high-confidence, high-impact outcomes using world-leading research. Together with the explosion of other collaborative funds, donors have recognized the value of a professionally-managed, diversified portfolio of grants.
These two channels are both sensible ways to allocate philanthropy. Nearly every philanthropist should allocate some of their giving portfolio this way, if they seek to maximize impact.
3) There is a third channel growing quickly, which I like to call Big Goal projects. These projects identify a clear, singular global goal like “eliminate lead poisoning” - and make a big push to accomplish that goal in many countries.
I think Big Goal projects are worth including in one’s giving portfolio. To declare interest, I am co-founder of Prevail, one of the organizations that creates Big Goal projects. We are one of many institutions doing this work including Renaissance Philanthropy, Coefficient Giving, Livelihood Impact Fund, and even innovative non-profits like CHAI and Evidence Action.
The reason to pursue Big Goal projects is not just to have a bigger impact - there are specific features of these projects that in my opinion result in greater cost-effectiveness (e.g. increasing returns to scale) and lower risk per dollar. I use two contemporary examples: Coefficient Giving’s Lead Exposure Action Fund (LEAF) and Prevail’s own literacy and numeracy fund, to illustrate those factors.
What is similar, and what is different about Big Goal projects (sometimes referred to as thesis-driven funds) - and why are they worth considering as part of a philanthropic portfolio?
What is similar
Big Goal projects build on the solid foundation of prior giving movements, particularly the effective giving movement. If we want each donor dollar to have the biggest human impact, we must:
- A) Be guided by rigorous research.
- B) Focus dollars on the most cost-effective impact. This leads us to mostly focus on well-validated projects in Africa and South Asia, helping the world’s poorest to survive and thrive.
- C) Embrace transparency about the good and the bad - and clearly report on carefully-measured end outcomes to all stakeholders.
What is different
Rather than cost-effectively deploy dollars on the margin, a Big Goal project steps back and makes big pushes around systemic solutions to a narrow global problem. As I mentioned in an earlier article, sticking your finger in the proverbial leaky dam is different than pouring a curtain of cement over the whole thing.
One example of a Big Goal project is Coefficient Giving’s Lead Exposure Action Fund (LEAF), launched in 2024 with $104 million, and with now over $200 million in commitments. Roughly one in three children worldwide has elevated blood lead levels, most of them in low- and middle-income countries, and lead exposure imposes a substantial cognitive burden and contributes to an estimated 3.5 million premature deaths each year. A traditional funder might have chosen the best organizations fighting lead and given them more. Coefficient does that too, but has also taken a field-level approach: helping implementers scale, bringing new organizations into the field, and supporting work with governments and industry to address the sources of lead exposure through regulation, enforcement and safer production practices. There are major advantages to this approach.
- D) Lasting solutions. We can still allocate donor dollars cost-effectively. But we can do this in a way that is more likely to lead to lasting change - for example by supporting projects that leverage government and market forces. Coefficient’s grantee partners help African and Asian governments to set lead regulations - and also support, for example, paint companies to switch away from lead to safer ingredients. Once government and private producers have switched to cleaner ingredients, the new status quo will tend to last a long time.
- E) Cost-effectiveness levers. When we make a big push, real economies of scale come into play. For example, Prevail has launched an initiative that funds NGOs to support their country’s public school systems to improve foundational literacy and numeracy instruction in Africa and South Asia. We found dozens of NGOs with proven results, but most of them were operating in just a few school districts - in many cases, their government partners wanted them to scale faster. We are funding these NGOs not just to grow a little bit - but instead, supporting them to reach whole-country scale over several years. As they grow out of small scale and chronic resource-starvation, their cost-effectiveness per child is likely to be significantly higher.
- F) Cross learning and global infrastructure. When making a big push around a global goal, a bigger quantum of funds goes out. This creates opportunities to create valuable global infrastructure. LEAF is investing in nationally representative blood lead level and lead source identification surveys in LMICs, a public good and an upstream driver of progress on lead. By credibly quantifying children’s exposure, these surveys raise the issue with governments, focus mitigation on the largest exposure pathways, and establish baselines for prioritization and follow-up. Big Goal Projects also carry high potential for rapid cross-learning. In ordinary circumstances, what works in one country might take years to make it to a second country. In a big push, there are clear ways for learning to rapidly travel in a matter of months, to dozens of organizations and countries.
- G) Clear success metric. If you have a single success metric, you can get really good at measuring that one metric - and it’s relatively simple to add resources when the metric is being achieved cost-effectively, or subtract resources when not. Prevail’s literacy and numeracy education fund, for example, adds more funding when kids are reading and doing numbers better - and we are getting good at measuring this. We are currently involved in and/ or paying for 20 different high-quality studies on education attainment that will directly inform our and others’ grantmaking. Having clear metrics also makes it more obvious when we are failing in a region.
What needs improvement
Big Goal projects aren’t perfect, by any means. Because of the large sums required for these pushes (ranging from $200m spread across 4 years to $1B across 10+ years), most of the organizers of Big Goal philanthropy appeal to large gift sizes. That’s because it takes a long time to generate a base of medium-size giving.
This is a real shame, because a lot of philanthropic dollars are given in small sums, and there are good questions about power dynamics. We could massively accelerate social change, if we could find ways to tap public giving. The initial polio eradication effort in the US was raised by the March of Dimes, which mobilized extremely small gifts (often ten cents at a time). Perhaps other donation-aggregating institutions could also pursue Big Goal giving?
Another major problem with Big Goal projects is that there aren’t many projects in the world that have a seasoned, well-established set of implementing grantees to move that goal forward. There are hundreds of hypothetical big push social change projects out there - but very few that have the right set of grantee partners that are ready to grow. There are many strategies to change that reality - that’s perhaps one for another article - but for now, that capacity constraint is real. Coefficient’s recent Launchpad Funds initiative is a great leading initiative to expand future capacity of this field.
Big Goal projects are still in their infancy - but are growing extremely rapidly. I believe there is a case that these may represent some of the highest cost-effectiveness bets out there - or at a minimum, should be a major channel for givers to consider as part of their overall giving portfolio. Of course, it is still a great option to give to individual organizations, or to professionally-managed collaborative funds. However, I hope that giving to accomplish singular big global goals will also become a regular third tool in the giving toolkit, over time.
Thanks Andrew for so clearly articulating the new methodologies and mindsets we’re seeing around thesis-driven funds. This is the best explainer I’ve seen.
Broadly, I think this is a very exciting approach to giving. I’ve appreciated that funders like Prevail, Coefficient Giving, and now Renaissance Philanthropy have thought carefully about identifying core priority areas that suit these big goals.
One concern I hold with this methodology is how we define the big goals and set metrics of success around them. For goals such as eliminating or significantly reducing lead, most people would reasonably agree that the unintended consequences are minimal. However, I see risks in poorly defined thesis-driven funds, where portfolio managers or directors myopically seek to reduce or eliminate issues that look good on the face of it but may have significant unintended consequences.
Reducing South Asian Air Quality, for example, looks like a great opportunity for a thesis-driven fund. But efforts to reduce air pollution could affect livelihoods, education, or even the provision of primary health services. How does a thesis-driven fund weigh and minimise the risk of these consequences, especially when the power that comes with moving large amounts of funding may give little incentive to investigate them deeply? Many such consequences could also emerge over longer periods and go unobserved by short-term monitoring and evaluation.
That said, my key comment is that the thesis-driven approach is exciting and has great potential. I believe the sector has an opportunity to think more deeply about how we define these funds and minimise the risk of unintended consequences and other systemic influences.