As donors and investors increasingly look for advice on how best to use their resources, Evaluasi provides a systematic evaluation of the evidence base for charities and social investment. Improving on existing charity evaluators and ‘sustainable’ investment indices, Evaluasi develops rankings and recommendations that fully incorporate a full range of scientific evidence from nearly 1,000 randomized controlled trials worldwide.

1. Ranking the most ‘bang for your buck’ in philanthropic giving

Existing charity raters, such as ‘Givewell’ and ‘Charity Navigator’ are useful but limited. Although they draw from the existing RCT evidence in economics and compute cost effectiveness from annual statements, the ratings do not make full use of the available data. For example, there are useful studies from epidemiology, political science, sociology and public health that are conspicuously absent. They also neglect to do meta-analysis, where multiple studies are combined to improve the analytic strength of the findings. At Evaluasi, we use all available evidence, including doing our own meta-analyses to guide donors in choosing the best charities.

2. Identifying responsible investment opportunities

There are numerous “environmental, social and governance” (ESG) indices and ‘socially responsible’ investments (SRI) funds available, such as those compiled by Thompson Reuters, Morningstar, Calvert and MSCI. Although these ratings seek to comprehensively evaluate the environmental and social implications of constituent companies, they are not able to distinguish effort from effectiveness. At Evaluasi, we use meta-analysis of high-quality research to determine whether purported ‘sustainable’ or ‘responsible’ activities indeed are backed up with evidence, reweighting the ESG indices accordingly.

3. Education for responsible investment and philanthropy

Evaluasi conducts executive and team learning workshops that introduce the importance of evidence in making investment and philanthropy choices. The sessions equip participants to use our charity and investment indices and to be a sophisticated consumer of information from the wide array of purported green and socially-responsible options now on the market.