Lost Causal: Debunking Myths About Causal Analysis in Philanthropy

Abstract

When philanthropy seeks to drive change — especially in messy, complex, and dynamic systems — it can feel like strategy development and implementation takes place in the proverbial “black box.” We select ideas that are promising, have reasonably high confidence that positive short-term outcomes will occur, and then hold out hope that the strategy will eventually add up to more than the sum of its parts.