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Programme evaluation is an endeavour in which foundations for the most part have had a very poor record. This may simply be because evaluation is always difficult, but particularly so in measuring social outcomes, but our deficiencies as a sector in this arena are not excusable. Indeed, the lack of a systemic culture of evaluation in the field points to a disturbing lack of accountability.

We are all committed to doing the best that we can to address the causes closest to our hearts. Foundations can do so at the utmost speed, since their expenditure is unhindered by the demands of shareholders (as in it would be in the private sector) or an electorate (as it would be in the public sector). However, as a result of this freedom, it seems to have become acceptable not to ask the difficult questions of what works and why, and what has not worked and why. In addition, a lack of emphasis on evaluation translates into lost opportunities for learning, and often the re-invention of faulty wheels.

Those who disagree with this view may argue that it is very difficult to provide measurements, or metrics, of effectiveness in this sector; this is the not-for-profit arena, after all, and assessments of human happiness are not easily reducible to figures on a balance sheet. But just because they are difficult to unearth, it does not mean that vigorous attempts should not be made in this regard. In fact, given the gravity of the problems that foundations seek to solve, they should be made more vigorously than ever.

Metrics and targets for efficiency can and do exist in the not-for-profit sector; organisations such as the Children's Investment Fund Foundation (CIFF) use them in the most complex of areas, such as poverty in the developing world, and are frank about when they do and don't meet them. Because it is one thing for your grant-making to fail; but it is another, inexcusable thing, not to know precisely why, or to share that learning with stakeholders and the broader field.

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