Why doesn’t Thankyou report ‘human impact figures’ anymore?

In our first decade, we only funded solutions that were easily tangible and quantifiable (most 'hardware'). We asked our partners to prove they were building every well, filter, and health clinic, because we could easily quantify the number of people based on how many were using this hardware solution. In this pursuit, we became part of the problem that contributes to unsustainable or non-impactful solutions known as the donor dysfunction. 

With our unrestricted funding approach, we’re committed to funding partners that are focused on delivering impact to communities living in extreme poverty, not projects (or easy-to-understand / quantifiable solutions). We know real change takes time, involves multiple stakeholders and cannot be reduced to just funding tangible solutions in the short term. 

In this new way forward, we are open to funding tangible AND more complex, systemic solutions. Because we are open to funding systemic solutions, which are harder to quantify (eg, a government influencing or advocacy program), we never want to over-claim or over-attribute our funding’s impact, and for this reason, the number of people WE have specifically helped is no longer a public claim we feel comfortable making. 

Rest assured, we still collect data on each of our partners’ organisational impact metrics, which you can find at thankyou.co/impact, as well as the number of people they serve and reach each year.