The
case for foundations to play a central role in research is
an old one. It is, after all, an essential part in identifying
the root causes of society’s problems, which so many
claim to tackle. Indeed, it is right at the heart of some
such as the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, founded over a century
ago to “seek out the underlying causes of weakness or
evil” rather than just dealing with their effects.
Yet, when it comes to social issues, the sector’s record
in supporting research is patchy. With a few notable exceptions,
foundations seem reluctant to fund it and some explicitly
rule it out. Of the 300-odd members of the Association of
Charitable Foundations (ACF), just a handful fund research
on a significant scale.
“There is a bit of a dearth,” says Anthony Tomei,
director of the Nuffield Foundation. “Some don’t
do it because they’re not asked to, and others exclude
it from consideration. Overall, not many fund it.” Not
surprisingly, Tomei reckons this is a mistake, and last month
he spoke at a seminar for ACF members with Joseph Rowntree’s
Anne Harrop to try and convince others that research is a
good use of foundations’ money.
Tomei’s arguments are not new. Indeed, he refers back
to a paper by Mark Kramer and Michael Porter in the Harvard
Business Review in 1999 – Philanthropy’s New
Agenda: Creating Value. This argued that if foundations
acted merely as conduits for giving to frontline charities,
they were essentially inefficient, delaying the social benefit
from a donation (by paying out perhaps just five per cent
of their assets each year) and adding extra administration
costs. To justify this, they should be seeking to add value,
and one of the major ways they could do so was to fund research.
Unfortunately, more than seven years later, most foundations
have yet to take this to heart.
“That article continues to have a lot of currency,”
says Kramer, now managing director at US non-profit FSG Social
Impact Advisors. “Research is an area where foundations
are very well positioned, with independence and longer-term
time horizons, but whether they are using that freedom is
open to question.”
Making the case
Of course, there are good reasons some foundations shy away
from funding research.
For a start, they are only a small part of the field. Universities
and the government have much larger roles, and some foundations
will fear they lack the requisite expertise to evaluate
research proposals. This is a real danger because, as Tomei
points out, poor research not only wastes a funder’s
money but can actually do harm by misleading those who later
rely on it to direct their work or inform policy.
Furthermore, as Mubin Haq at the City Parochial Foundation
explains, it can be difficult to persuade trustees of its
impact. “It’s a harder sell, because it’s
one step removed from the work, and you can’t necessarily
say what the effect of a piece of research will be,”
he says.
“The big problem organisations face is what they do
with the research once they’ve got it to stop it sitting
on a shelf gathering dust.”
Neither of these problems is intractable though. The first,
particularly, is fairly easily addressed. “The mechanisms
to be able to evaluate research proposals aren’t particularly
complicated to put in place,” says Harrop. Peer review,
for instance, is well established among researchers, so
that most charities should have little trouble finding academics
in their field to evaluate research proposals, and foundations
or charities wishing to conduct research may also benefit
from setting up partnerships with local universities.
Ensuring a piece of research has a practical impact is less
easy. As director of the Friends Provident Foundation Danielle
Walker-Palmour explains, it’s an issue some of the
biggest funders of research have had to struggle with. “Many
of the long-standing research foundations are based on a
kind of ‘enlightenment model’,” she explains.
“That supposed you could identify a problem through
research and others would automatically fix it. Unfortunately,
that’s not how it works.”
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The result is that those funding research must also ensure
it is disseminated, which is why foundations, such as Nuffield
and Joseph Rowntree, also run seminars or publicity campaigns
to ensure their research reaches the right audience.
In fact, according to Dr Diana Leat, director of Carnegie’s
Creative Philanthropy Programme, foundations should be wary
of using the term ‘research’ alone. “It
should be ‘research and dissemination’,”
she argues. “After all, what’s the point of
doing research if it doesn’t get to those people who
have the power to make changes as a result of it?”
And, in fact, this is the very reason foundations should
have a key role in research because, while academics aim
to have their findings published in journals, foundations
are looking for change on the ground. As Kramer says: “It’s
not about just having more research papers out there; it’s
making sure that what is known is implemented. That’s
the challenge, and that’s the one that the foundations
should be tackling.”
Practical experience
One way to ensure a piece of research will be worthwhile
is to use it to support the foundation’s own grant
making, according to Friends Provident’s Walker-Palmour.
For instance her foundation, which tackles financial exclusion
among other things, at one time received a number of applications
from homelessness charities wanting to help with their clients’
finances. “The problem was they all had different
assumptions,” recalls Walker-Palmour. “Some
basically argued that their clients had no financial know-how
because of their circumstances while others said they were
brilliant with money because they could live off nothing,
and these assumptions underpinned their approach.”
The foundation therefore decided to spend £6,000 for
some desk research on the available information about homeless
people’s finances before it made any grants. The findings
suggested many homelessness charities were effectively keeping
people dependent on them for their financial services. When
it came to its grants programme, the foundation therefore
insisted that applicants for funding showed how they would
help their clients move on to more mainstream arrangements,
such as banks or credit unions. “Our money followed
the findings,” explains Walker-Palmour.
Similarly, Vodafone UK Foundation, which generally doesn’t
fund research, has recently commissioned an extensive programme
to look into what triggers young people to turn to support
groups for information and whether they actually change
their behaviour as a result.
“I’m not into research for the sake of it,”
says the foundation’s head, Sarah Shillito.
“But, given that all our money goes to organisations
seeking to support young people, if those young people don’t
take any notice of that information when it’s available
then we’re just wasting our time.”
The other side of the equation
It’s not just in funding research that the sector
has a role; charities can also play a key part in conducting
it. However, if there is a lack of expertise among some
foundations as to funding it, this is just as true when
it comes to charities carrying it out.
“When you’re funding research it is crucial
to go to those who know what they’re doing and have
built up experience in the area, and there are very good
reasons that most voluntary bodies – particularly
smaller ones – haven’t done that,” says
Tomei. “After all, it’s not their business to
be experts in research anymore than it’s the universities’
business to be experts at caring for homeless people.”
It is perhaps in recognition of this that later this year
when the Big Lottery Fund launches its £25 million
programme to support research, it will encourage charities
applying to partner with universities and others in the
research community, although a spokesman says it also hopes
the programme will help build the sector’s capacity
in this area.
According to Harrop, who has sat on a number of funding
panels in the past, including those for the Big Lottery
Fund, a lack of experience in this area has sometimes caused
problems with applications. “I think experience in
this area is probably patchy,” she says. Nevertheless,
there are some that have built up real expertise.
And where they have, the charities argue that they have
a key role to play.
The Association for Real Change (ARC), for instance, is
a charity that supports services providers for people with
learning disabilities. Its information manager Jane Livingstone,
herself a trained researcher, argues that charities have
real advantages over universities when it comes to conducting
research.
“I think we have the benefit of being more in touch
with those on the ground, whereas some of the university
work can be very academic,” she says. “Research
can be done in different ways, and it doesn’t need
to be like that to have any credibility.”
In fact, she says, charities are also well placed to ensure
that the research remains practical and can be followed
through. “Otherwise, the research can identify an
issue but not much actually happens as a result,”
she warns.
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