How many corporate, private and philanthropic foundations or CSR departments can you name that have commissioned an external assessment of programmes they funded for years – or stopped funding years ago – to determine whether beneficiaries’ quality of life genuinely improved, whether practices or policies truly changed, or whether increased knowledge and skills translated into meaningful, lasting impact?

Having spent over twenty years on the foundation and donor side, I can confirm that unfortunately very few do – and the reasons vary. Some foundations with generous budgets, multiple pillars and broad portfolios simply lose track of past programmes and focus only on what lies ahead. The broad picture remains, but the notion of real impact is lost along the way. In many cases, there is an underlying and misguiding assumption that successful programme delivery equates to impact. For some, the belief persists that being generous and doing good is already enough, making proof of impact seem unnecessary. Some say funding is the issue, and sometimes it is. However, for those genuinely interested in understanding their impact and how it can be strengthened, funding constraints are rarely the real barrier.

Private, philanthropic, and corporate foundations occupy a unique position. Unlike profit-driven corporations or publicly funded institutions, they are not always subject to external scrutiny, regulatory pressure, or performance-based funding. Many foundations operate independently, fund initiatives from their own resources, and answer primarily to boards and trustees. This independence can be a significant advantage, allowing agility, innovation, long-term thinking, and sustained support for a wide range of causes and beneficiary groups.

However, it can also create a structural blind spot: the absence of a compelling requirement to assess whether their programmes actually achieve meaningful impact, and if not – Why?

That is precisely why social impact assessment matters. Foundations, regardless of type, are accountable not only for what they fund, but for what actually changes as a result. Without external assessment, it is easy to mistake activity for progress, and progress for impact. Over time, this weakens learning, distorts strategy, and may ultimately leave beneficiaries no better off.

Some foundations conduct internal monitoring and evaluation of the programmes they support. These systems focus on activities and outputs – the doings. They help track implementation progress, manage performance, support learning during delivery, and enable timely adjustments. However, internal monitoring and evaluation are designed, managed, and interpreted by the foundation itself and can therefore be limited by institutional bias, selective interpretation, or a tendency to emphasise success over failure. A focus on doings alone, over the long term, can lead to doing a great deal for very few, at best, and achieving little over time. In some cases, it may even cause unintended harm to those the foundation aims to help.

External social impact assessment focuses on medium- to long-term impact. The following examples illustrate the difference between what internal reporting and an external social impact assessment report cover.

Doing is not Impact

Scholarships awarded, workshops delivered, events organised, campaigns conducted, river clean-ups organised, health check-ups arranged, and grants provided are activities or, at best, short-term results. A programme becomes meaningful only if the activities implemented lead to impact, such as better learning outcomes, stronger institutions, changed policies, improved practices, enhanced wellbeing, or greater equity.

A cautionary example is One Laptop per Child, a philanthropic initiative backed by major corporations including AMD, eBay, Google, and News Corporation. Launched in Uruguay and later expanded to numerous countries, the programme aimed to transform education through increased device access. External assessments found that while laptop access rose significantly – in Peru, the laptop-to-student ratio increased from 0.12 to 1.18 – this did not translate into improved enrolment or test scores in mathematics and language. The programme successfully expanded access but failed to deliver learning impact. Key issues went unaddressed: insufficient teacher training, lack of curriculum alignment, inadequate technical maintenance, and absent professional development. Without timely assessment, these gaps were never identified or corrected.

By contrast, the Mastercard Foundation illustrates the value of structured impact measurement. Its published impact strategy shows that independent evaluation was commissioned, and standards for outcome and impact measurement were applied at the programme, strategy, and systems levels. The Foundation emphasised learning, course correction, and the assessment of both anticipated and unanticipated outcomes, enabling it to go beyond outputs and evaluate outcomes such as employment rates, income gains, and long-term resilience. These are results that drive meaningful change.

Unintended Consequences are Real and They Can Hurt

Without proper social impact assessment, foundations may unknowingly fund interventions that create unintended negative effects or fail to address root causes.

Microfinance initiatives, once celebrated as a breakthrough in poverty reduction and heavily supported by numerous philanthropic and development organisations across the globe, later demonstrated mixed results across contexts. Various reviews and studies found that many programmes produced only modest social and economic impacts. In some cases, borrower vulnerability and over-indebtedness increased where credit was introduced without sufficient consumer protection, market support, or complementary services.

Studies also show that programmes supported by various organisations to promote women’s economic empowerment in low- and middle-income settings with patriarchal norms often provoked household backlash and conflict. The World Bank’s South Asia review of initiatives in Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka found mixed effects: some improved women’s participation and income, while others triggered negative male reactions to perceived threats to their provider role or authority. Even where incomes rose and domestic violence seemed to fell overall, controlling behaviours or male financial dominance increased within relationships.

While such programmes often appeared successful at the ideation stage and in press releases, they were, in some ways, failing in the lived realities of the women they were intended to serve, because baseline studies, if they were ever conducted, overlooked contextual gender dynamics, unintended relational consequences, and household-level ripple effects. This highlights the critical need for systems thinking and social impact assessment to anticipate and mitigate backlash in patriarchal contexts.

These examples do not invalidate education, microfinance, or women’s economic empowerment. They demonstrate the necessity of continuous social impact assessment to understand where, how, and for whom interventions work – and what should be avoided or strengthened.

Generosity 2.0

Being generous and wanting to help those in need is what this world needs. But good intentions alone are not enough.

Generosity must evolve into a more deliberate, evidence-informed approach – one that incorporates regular social impact assessment (SIA). This not only helps foundations create real and lasting impact but also demonstrates stewardship, ensures effectiveness for beneficiaries, manages resources responsibly, and refines strategy over time.

SIA also helps foundations reduce:

• Strategic risk: continued investment in ineffective or outdated approaches.
• Opportunity cost: failing to direct resources towards interventions that could deliver greater impact.
• Reputational risk: increasing scrutiny from media, partners, and beneficiaries.

In today’s interconnected and transparent world, even capital driven by the noblest intentions is, rightly, subject to public accountability. Building a bridge to support a community may stem from generosity, but if it restricts access or collapses under use, its value is judged by what it achieves, not by why it was built.

The article was written by Dr. Jasmina Kuka.

Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash.