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What is actually happening with the money that you are donating? Are you having the impact you want? What does the word impact really mean? Welcome to this class on making sure I have an impact. As a philanthropist, I'm sure that you give with the best intentions. You maybe wish to end poverty, provide access to education or protect the planet, but have you ever wondered what happens with your donations? And can you really tell that you are having an impact? My name is Tom Hall and I am the Global head of UBS Philanthropy Services. I've worked in philanthropy for almost two decades in the field, but also advising philanthropists to have more impact with their giving. I've seen the great things that philanthropy can achieve. But also the damage that it can create when wrongly implemented. Nothing drives me more than seeing how philanthropy can drive impact at scale to solve some of the world's most pressing issues. So today I'm going to share with you my tips and best practices to help you have a real impact. In this class, we aim to understand what having an impact means, why we need to radically shift how we do philanthropy, and how you can maximize your philanthropic impact. So let's get started. One thing that I hear over and over again in the conversations I'm having with philanthropists is how do I know I'm having an impact? I usually answer the counter question. Ask them what is the evidence of your results? How are you measuring it? If you don't have the answer to that question, you could be wasting your money or making problems even worse. So what does having an impact really mean? Impact is any effects arising from an intervention. This includes immediate short term outcomes as well as broader longer term effects. These can be positive or negative, planned or unforeseen. But when we talk about having an impact in philanthropy, what we should aim for is to positively change the lives of as many people as possible solving problems at scale. And ideally even changing the system so that the problem no longer exists. Let me give you an example from one of our UBS Optimus Foundation grantees called Rising Academies, a growing network of schools in West Africa where in school learning really lags behind and youth literacy is shockingly low. So Rising Academies mission is to unleash the full potential of every student equipping them with the knowledge, skills and character to succeed and further study, work, and day-to-day life. Their concept builds on three pillars. One, a curriculum, which they developed with international education experts and adapted to the local settings they operate in. Two, coaching, so that teachers receive intensive on the job training and three, data, meaning they have field teams who collect data on learning progress and operational data to enable Rising Academies to continuously improve their schools. And they do so very successfully. Independent evaluations in Sierra Leone and Liberia have found that Rising Academies students make two to three times more progress in reading and numeracy every year compared to their peers in other schools. What really amazes me about this case, though, is that they don't only provide quality education in their own schools. Rising Academies also uses their knowledge to operate Private Public Partnerships and engage in licensing deals through which they are able to reach even more students. It's been inspiring to see them go from an emergency education provider for children that were kept out of school by the Ebola epidemic, to scale their solution to over 100,000 children directly and more than 25 million children indirectly with their Rising on Air program.A ready-to-air radio show and SMS content, which enables them to leverage their proven high quality structured curriculum content for delivery via technologies widely available around the globe. This example illustrates a crucial take away for impactful philanthropy. Your philanthropy must focus on results and not on activities. Ultimately, with the resources you have available, you should aim to minimize your activities and output and maximize your outcomes and impact. Let me put this differently, it's not the effort that matters, but meeting the objectives, ideally with the least effort. It's like being an archer who wants to hit the target with his arrows. In the ideal case, he would hit it in one go, optimizing the use of his resources. But for you to do this, you have to have a clear goal so that you can actually measure your impact against that goal. Now why is that important? And why should you aim to maximize your impact? I believe you should maximize your impact because traditional philanthropy, the kind where you write a check to pay for services, simply doesn't work. That doesn't mean we should all go home before 've even started. But it does mean that philanthropy as we know it is dead. Now, the good news is that I believe we're at the beginning of a new era of philanthropy, philanthropy that is IMPACTFUL. Philanthropy that is RADICAL in taking risks on promising solutions with potential for massive scale. A philanthropy that's CATALYTIC by actively focusing on expediting results and impact and philanthropy that is above all collaborative by partnering with and for others, sharing lessons and eliminating go-it-alone resource waste. Philanthropy like this is needed now, more than ever, and in many senses. It's now or never, particularly when looking at some of the big issues we're facing, like the 1 billion people without access to basic healthcare or the 50% increase in global CO2 emissions since 1990. So the next eight years leading up to the ambitious 2030 agenda will require bold action and audacious optimism, and I believe that our privilege comes with great responsibility and that philanthropy is the risk capital that supports brave people like you who can stand up to challenge the status quo. So now the question is how can you maximize your impact? How do you make sure that your funding actually achieves positive results? At the end of the day, it all comes down to evidence. Unfortunately, many philanthropists are still flying blind. Billions of dollars are being donated without strong evidence about which ways of giving are effective. So, I cannot stress this enough, focus on evidence, from the first funding decision, to monitoring throughout, to the final assessment. We have a dedicated module on how to measure your impact, so I won't go into the details of measuring and evaluating in this class, but I will share a few examples and tips you can apply to help you make the most out of your giving. First, have a clear vision and make a plan for taking any actions. Define clearly what issue you are trying to solve and make sure you understand the issues. The better you understand the issue and the ecosystem around that issue, the better you'll be able to add value. At this stage, I suggest you conduct a landscape analysis to understand the root causes of the issue, the symptoms, the solutions that already exist. But also understand who the current players are, what they do and where they act. You also want to make sure that you have a plan and a strategy. If you want to learn more about planning your philanthropy, I suggest you watch the videos in module 2. Secondly, aim for scale and system change. There is nothing wrong with treating symptoms and in some situations like an emergency, that might be the only thing you are able to do. But it's only by addressing the root causes and aiming to change the systems that create these problems that you can solve them for good. To do this, you will need to engage with multiple stakeholders, ranging from government agencies, private enterprises, and other civil society organizations. When done well, these partnerships can lead to lasting changes. Let me give you an example. Prior to the 1950s, white lines were only painted in the middle of roads. Industrial chemist Doctor John Dorr assumed that at night and during bad weather, drivers hugged the central line, causing frequent accidents. He believed that lines should instead be painted on the outside of the roads. Dorr managed to convince the local Highway Commissioner to let him test his hypothesis. The test proved successful in reducing accidents dramatically. Dorr then campaigned to get these lines adopted nationally. A few years after this initial breakthrough, the shoulder line, the line on the outside of the road, gained universal acceptance, thus transforming road safety around the world. This example shows nicely how you can drive systems change, which usually happens in three distinct phases. It often starts by a research and innovation phase - at this stage. you're looking to identify an issue by finding new and more efficient ways to solve it. It's like a research and development phase where you probably try some ideas that will impact a few people. In a second step, the piloting and evidence gathering phase, you want to test out the idea and measure the effectiveness, meaning you want to make the case. In this phase, collaboration is getting more and more critical, especially as it will set the basis for a later scale up. At this stage you will directly impact still only a few people - those who benefit from your intervention. And the last step is scale and replication. This is all about bringing the most successful interventions to a maximum of beneficiaries. So at this stage you will impact a very large number of people. And this is exactly when system change can happen ... when intervention is so effective that it gets adopted and becomes normal and part of the new system. Just like the lines on the sides of the road. At this stage the impact multiplies hugely and becomes sustainable. So how do you find scalable solutions? There are different approaches that you can take to bring things to scale. You can, for example, replicate your solution in a different context. You can find a way so that government eventually ends up paying for your solution through advocating for change in policy and social norms. Or you can find a way to make your solution commercially viable. Let's take a look at these approaches in more detail, starting with scaling across context. If an intervention works in one city, why not try it in another? Or if your intervention works in one country, why not try it in another country with similar challenges? Scaling across context means that your impact per donation can increase with each iteration. Once a concept has proven itself in one location, bringing the same intervention to another location can be faster, easier and cheaper. Let me give you an example from one of our programs that we supported through the UBS Optimus Foundation called Vision for Nation. They pioneered an approach to integrate local eye care services into the National Health System in Rwanda. They trained thousands of nurses at local healthcare clinics across the country to conduct eye examinations, supported by the Ministry of Health to build the supply chain for affordable medication and eyeglasses and mobilized Rwandans to use the financially self-sustaining service rolled out across the nation's local villages. Their intervention has proven to be so successful that UBS Optimus Foundation is now supporting them to bring their model to Ghana. Another approach you can take is engaging with governments so that they eventually adopt your intervention for most development issues, governments and major players. In fact with issues like health and education, governments are THE primary player. So it's vital to coordinate with governments and improve how they operate. Now, HOW you can influence governments varies depending on the intervention. It might involve working with the Government Department to show the feasibility of an intervention, its value, or simply how to do it. Wonderful example here is Last Mile Health. At the invitation of the Liberian government Last Mile Health developed an innovative model to deliver primary healthcare to Liberia's most remote communities. You have to imagine that over a quarter of the population lives at least 5 kilometers from the nearest healthcare facility. So they developed a model for supporting community health workers with training, supplies, supervision and pay to reach these communities. They started very small, but quickly expanded their solutions when the country was hit by Ebola in 2014. In areas where Last Mile Health was present, treatment rates for malaria, diarrhea and upper respiratory infections in children more than doubled, whereas in communities without their intervention, treatment rates completely fell. Today, Last Mile Health focuses on working with the Liberian government on policy reform and coordination, data systems, performance management, quality assurance, training, finance and recruitment. Another way you can influence governments is by campaigning for policy change. A good example here is the work of Hope and Homes for Children who closely collaborate with governments to reintegrate children from orphanages into families, preventing family separation and putting in place alternative family based care like foster care for children who need it. Removing children from institutional care by finding them permanent families makes a significant difference to those individual children, but without an accompanying change in attitudes and practices there is a risk that for every child removed from an orphanage, another child is bought in to replace them. That's why Hope and Homes for Children is also educating and encouraging social workers and the courts to use other options. And lastly, you can scale your solution by being an enabler for larger investments and more fundamental systemic changes by attracting more capital towards the issue you were trying to solve. Back in 2015 for the first time, more money was invested in renewables than fossil fuels for electricity production. And now renewable power prices are competitive with traditional sources of power, turning what was once a novel approach to energy generation into a big viable business. Nowadays, solar photovoltaic and wind energy plants are more profitable than fossil and nuclear plants in a fast growing number of regions around the world. Now of course that requires that investors feel confident in the investments and get an acceptable return. To build this confidence, it's important to establish a track record of well performing solutions across different geographies. Advanced systems modeling and comparison. Public finance can also step in at an early stage. But markets need to start internalizing the costs and benefits through better legislation and extended liability. As a philanthropist you can invest in developing new policies that reflect those goals and unlock large commercial investments. Of course, systems change does not happen overnight, but as a philanthropist, you can contribute along the way, either by starting a new idea, but even more so by adding resources and advocating for interventions that work. Most importantly, you don't need to try and reinvent the wheel, and you don't need to walk this journey alone. Collaborate with peer philanthropists to combine your efforts. So the next time you ask yourself, do I have an impact? Ask yourself, do I have an impact at scale? In my view, this is when your philanthropy contributes to systems change. Of course, I can understand the challenge that you might face when you see someone who needs your help right now. It's almost a philosophical question. Do you want to feel good about helping a few people now? Or do you want to aim to help millions later? I guess you could do both by putting in place a clear strategy and carefully choosing the program to support. And this leads us to the end of our class on making sure I have an impact. Today, we've looked at what having an impact means, why we need to radically shift how we do philanthropy and how you can maximize your philanthropic impact. And now it's up to you to make sure you're having an impact with your philanthropy. Thank you for watching this class and have a great day and I'll see you soon in person or virtually.