Mesmerized by Metrics: Is Philanthropy Engaging in Magical Thinking?

This should be the moment when foundations realize that metrics, no matter how promising, do very little to sway policy decisions. Instead, they tell themselves that were it not for this one little election or unfavorable school board vote or budget crisis, the project would have worked wonderfully.

Foundations simply cannot face that fact that the old politics of interest and ideology—which numbers were meant to tame—in fact still rages beyond the tiny, fragile metric oases so painstakingly and evanescently carved out of the howling political wilderness.

We readily concede that this “evidence-based approach,” as we call it, has risks. Bill correctly notes, for example, that think tanks, which foundations like ours regularly rely on to conduct research, are often seen “as highly partisan number factories.” He is correct that the power imbalance between grantor and grantee means “grantees can ill afford to complain.” We agree, too, that foundation emphasis on “metrics” can force potential grantees to “shoehorn their work into metrics buckets.”

Bill fails to note, however, that these risks can be mitigated. Skepticism about think tanks? Wallace goes out of its way to work with researchers known for independence, objectivity and credibility, and we publish all evaluations, no matter what they find. Grantees afraid to speak truth to power? We join hundreds of foundations in asking our grantees to take part in a biennial, anonymity-guaranteed survey (by the respected Center for Effective Philanthropy) that gives us candid feedback on how our behavior stacks up against that of our peers – which enables us to work on fixing problems. Metrics mania distorting nonprofit endeavors? We select grantees already committed to the areas we are funding, so our grants do not torque them off mission.