SMARTER DATA
‘Thanks for the tissue,” says Maria English at the door of her Wellington office, by way of goodbye. English is the chief executive of Impact Lab, founded two years ago to help the country’s givers and spreaders of almost $4 billion of charitable funds annually.
Earlier, there were tears. Charity, of course, is emotionally given and driven. Isn’t it? Somewhat so for English, but definitely not in the case of Impact Lab. At the company, empathy comes with a robust, factual foundation for what English categorises as a purpose-driven enterprise aimed at enhancing individual lives by making the charitable dollar go further.
The tissued-away tears were very real, but English’s skills are in the field of hard social data and Impact Lab’s aim is to guide funding and charitable organisations to factor in that data.
English reports that Impact Lab has so far estimated the effect of $115 million of investment in 90 charitable programmes making a difference to the lives of 380,000 New Zealanders. It’s a modest but targeted chunk of the billions New Zealanders give each year. Philanthropy in this country is substantial in per capita terms, compared with most of the rest of the world.
New Zealand is third in the list of most generous countries – “and even a small charity can make a big difference”.
New Zealand is third in the list of most generous countries, based on data captured in the Gallup World Poll for the period 2013-2017. It is behind only Indonesia and Australia and ahead of the United States, which comes in fourth, and the United Kingdom, sixth.
“Even a small charity can make a big difference,” says English. Both funders and charities have reported that Impact Lab’s tools enable them to increase the
