Ian Harris recently delivered a masterclass on evidence-based decision making for charities, for the consultancy practice at the Centre for Charity Effectiveness, Cass Business School (Cass CCE).

Adapted from Z/Yen’s popular Predictive Analytics Appreciation Courses, the session proved to be informative and useful for all concerned. As Ian himself said in his response to the positive feedback from the group:

“…[I]t was a very thoughtful group coming at the topic from a different angle compared with our clients and previous audiences. This made it a useful learning experience for all of us.”

This particular sub group of Cass CCE experts mainly specialised in leadership and governance, so their take on measurement was mostly focussed towards proving and improving impact. This thinking links with Z/Yen’s previous work on Evidence of Worth for Charities, while highlighting the need to orient charity analytics towards such evidence.

This is not entirely new ground to Z/Yen and Cass CCE of course; we collaborated several years ago on Predicting the Effectiveness of Grant Making. One of the conclusions from the masterclass was that we should now deploy similar approaches in other aspects of charity sector work, such as return on social impact investment.

There were lively discussions on why emerging techniques might profoundly change charities’ decision-making at all levels, from operations through leadership to governance.

Another emerging idea was to build on the work that Z/Yen, Cass and the Institute of Directors (IoD) did last year on corporate governance benchmarking and deploy a similar approach for charities. Cass CCE is now actively seeking sponsorship for an initiative in this governance area.

For more details on this masterclass, similar courses and the interesting initiatives that might spring from same, please contact ian_harris@zyen.com and/or alex.skailes.1@city.ac.uk.