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Why care about evidence when you give

You’re thinking about giving to charity – good for you! You’re in good company: over half of people in the UK give to charity each year, collectively donating £13bn.

But how do you know which charity will make good use of your donation? It’s not easy. Many charities deal with really tough problems: some programmes aiming to alleviate those problems work really well; some programmes work a bit; some have no effect at all; and some in fact make the problem worse. This can happen even when the work is well-intentioned.

A good example is helping people coming out of jail to break the cycle of re-offending. Some approaches reduce re-offending a lot, some reduce re-offending a bit, but some approaches make things worse and increase re-offending.

For example, the graph below shows the effect on re-offending of various programmes run by charities.

Giving to more effective charities means you’ll make a much bigger difference. You’ll also encourage charities to think carefully about the evidence about what they are doing, and help everyone improve. The Good Giving List is designed to help you find high-performing charities which operate in the UK. Look at our recommendations here.