Encouraging Funders to Prioritize Impact: Seeking Insights & Learnings

By Erik Jentzen @ 2025-03-20T15:29 (+4)

How Can We Encourage Funders—Especially Philanthropic and Government Science Funders—to Standardly Adopt Impact-Oriented Prioritization Criteria When Awarding Grants?

Some members of the EA Switzerland community are interested in exploring ways to make research funding—both from private foundations and governments—more impact-oriented. Specifically, they want to encourage funders to adopt impact evaluations as a standard part of their grant-making process rather than relying solely on traditional academic metrics.

For example, it would be valuable if government funding agencies for research (especially in health and social sciences) prioritized funding for high-impact areas rather than assessing proposals exclusively based on conventional academic criteria, such as those outlined in the DORA Declaration (which emphasizes research outputs such as journal publications over real-world impact).

Potential Strategies We Are Considering:

• Encouraging funders to integrate impact evaluations: One model is the Wellcome Trust, which requires standardized impact measures (e.g., PHQ-9 for depression research) across funded projects.
• Leveraging a "leader-follower" strategy: If a few influential foundations adopt rigorous impact assessments, others may follow their lead.
• Prioritizing prevention over treatment
• Emphasizing cost-effectiveness analysis: Encouraging funders to integrate frameworks such as cost-benefit analyses and benchmarking against best-in-class interventions within a thematic field (e.g., nutrition).
• Considering Cash Benchmarking: Evaluating whether a funded intervention is more effective than simply giving cash directly to beneficiaries.

Questions for the Community:

1. Have you seen successful examples of influencing mainstream funders in philanthropy and government to adopt impact evaluations, particularly using EA-aligned criteria?
2. What strategies have worked (or failed) in persuading funders to implement more rigorous impact measurement?
3. Are there specific organizations, models, or individuals you’d recommend studying or engaging with?

We have skimmed the EA Forum and found some articles and organizations (Rethink Priorities here and here, Ambitious Impact here or the Effective Institutions Project) that have touched on this field, but we would be grateful to get pointed to more resources if they exist.

Leave your comments below or write an email to erik@effectivealtruism.ch!

Thanks for your support!
Erik from EA Switzerland