Debate Continues Over Plan to Use Federal Fund to Promote Effective Charities

Is the Obama administration pushing a bad way to measure charity efforts or is it injecting much needed rigior into such evaluations?

Two nonprofit experts disagree about the administration’s Social Innovation Fund and its focus on supporting effective nonprofit programs.

In an opinion article in The Chronicle, Katya Fels Smith, founder of the Full Frame Institute, a nonprofit organization that works with innovative social-service charities, questions the fund’s approach, especially it’s emphasis on so-called experimental-design studies.

Such scientific studies seek to examine the cause-and-effect relationship between grant making and social outcomes. For example, a study of drug treatment would compare people who received aid to an equivalent group of people who didn’t.

But Ms. Smith says this is unrealistic.

“Such studies require a very narrow definition of who is being studied, and people who face multiple intertwined challenges–who are the most in need–are excluded,” she writes. “So, for example, if a new approach to helping homeless mothers is under scrutiny, experimental-design evaluation would exclude battered women, those with chronic health problems, or those involved in the criminal-justice system unless everyone had the same problems. And that’s not real life.”

Ellie Buteau says Ms. Smith is wrong. The vice president of research for the Center for Effective Philanthropy, which examines foundation work, says experimental-design approaches are possible and badly needed in the nonprofit world where there is a dearth of good data on effective programs.

“Experimental designs allow us to rule out alternative hypotheses in a way that no other designs do,” she writes on the center’s blog. “When testing the effectiveness of a social program being offered to those most in need, doesn’t it behoove us to get as close to an understanding of causation as possible?”

She continues: “The field has a moral obligation to demonstrate, to the best of its ability, that a program works before funneling significant resources to expand it.”

What do you think? Are such rigorous evaluations possible for nonprofit work? Click on the comment button below to share your views.