Giving Compass' Take:

• On its 10-year anniversary in 2018, ideas42 delivered a report on the impact it has had, specifically through behavioral metrics.

• What can other organizations learn from ideas42's methods? Are social entrepreneurs and engineers putting enough measurements in place to assess impact?

• Here's how behavioral science can promote #HealthForAll.

Ten years ago, ideas42 started in a small office at Harvard University. Since then, we have partnered with foundations, non-profits, government agencies, and socially-minded companies to work on more than 100 projects in over 35 countries, using behavioral science to improve millions of lives around the world.

We recently released our first-ever Impact Report, taking stock of how a decade of behavioral interventions across finance, justice, environment, education, health, and poverty have positively affected so many lives. We feature snapshots of 40 of our many projects from our first 10 years, many of which are ongoing collaborations. We’ve also revealed just how many experiments we have conducted on ourselves, among other metrics demonstrating our commitment to doing everything playfully and through a behavioral lens. Highlights include:

Helping more Mexican citizens save for a secure retirement: To combat a high elderly poverty rate and encourage voluntary pension contributions, 20 million Mexicans now receive ideas42-designed account statements.

Keeping people out of jail in New York: Redesigning the summons citation form for low-level violations and sending text message reminders reduced failure-to-appear rates by 36%. This also reduces the number of warrants issued, as failing to appear in court automatically triggers an arrest warrant.

Encouraging water conservation in Costa Rica: Two interventions — adding colored stickers focused on social comparison to utility bills and goal-setting postcards — each reduced water consumption by up to 5.6%.

Helping more students in San Francisco stay the course in college: A social norms based video showed to low-income and underrepresented freshmen increased persistence to sophomore year from 83% to 91%.

Reframing HIV risks for South African teens: A computer game helped South African teenagers better assess their risks of contracting HIV, correcting dangerous misperceptions that had previously led to troublingly high rates of infection among teen girls.

Increasing access to healthy nutrition in California: We’ve made more than 40 actionable recommendations to improve access to WIC (Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children), and we’re now working with WIC programs in California design and test some of them.

Read the full article about using behavioral science for social good by Mitra Salasel at ideas42.