Philanthropists and the leaders they support share a common goal: to achieve meaningful impact for the communities they serve. However, understanding if you’re making a difference in the social and education sectors is a complex task. Many philanthropic efforts are focused on tackling some of society’s biggest challenges, influenced by a web of interwoven factors and with root causes that are not always clear. How can impact-driven donors and practitioners (leaders and program staff at nonprofits and social impact organizations) understand and improve their progress?

The Importance of Data and Evidence

That’s where data and evidence come in. Data and evidence are remarkably powerful tools, helping us understand what’s working and what isn’t, for whom, and why. They guide critical decision making and enable continuous learning, innovation, and improvement. And they deepen a shared understanding between funders, nonprofits, and community members.

Before going further, we must also acknowledge that there can be a flip side to data and evidence. While they have the potential to drive more equitable outcomes, the dominant approach to evidence and evaluation in the social sector remains inequitable. Funders and policymakers too often demand data from nonprofits with narrow ideas of what constitutes effectiveness. One common example of this is the emphasis often placed on a nonprofit’s overhead costs, where organizations with the lowest overhead are deemed efficient and those with higher overhead are suspected of being wasteful, or worse—of intentionally misusing funds. In reality, a nonprofit’s overhead costs vary greatly depending on the type of activities the organization pursues, and “indirect” and “administrative” costs are often critical to an organization achieving its mission. Furthermore, tensions between the power of evidence and its dangers persist, especially in communities that have been historically exploited. For instance, predictive policing programs that are predicated on biased data only serve to exacerbate criminal justice inequities that exist for Black communities. That’s why we must take a new approach to how we think about building and using evidence for impact— one that acknowledges power dynamics, builds on past learnings and failures, and is inclusive of a wider range of data points and viewpoints.

Read the full PDF from Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors.