Research
You want to know your donations are actually reaching people in need, which is why we do the work to make it easy for you to identify where your gifts will be most impactful. We look at the data to determine the best interventions across the many dimensions of poverty. Then we identify the highest-impact charities delivering those interventions, ensuring that we are helping the most in need, in the best known ways possible. With our research-backed recommendations and ongoing evaluation, you have best-in-class giving advice readily accessible to support you on your impact journey.
We have the data to understand where poverty hits hardest, the evidence to understand what works to create outsized impact, and the network to identify excellent leaders and organizations. With our ongoing research and due diligence, we create bridges for donors to support doers.
How We Define Poverty
“Measuring poverty with a single income or expenditure measure is an imperfect way to understand the deprivations of the poor since, for example, markets for basic needs and public goods may not exist. Complementing monetary with non-monetary information provides a more complete picture of poverty” – United Nations, 2015
The World Bank defines extreme poverty as living on $3 per person per day or less, however economic deprivation alone is only one of the many aspects affecting the life of a person experiencing poverty. The concept of multidimensional poverty has gained traction in the field of international development. The term is based on the understanding that various dimensions of human life, such as access to healthcare, education, empowerment, and working conditions, affect a person’s overall well-being and should therefore be considered when assessing and measuring poverty. For example, if a diet that provides all of your essential nutrients costs an average of $3.54 a day, and yet the average person experiencing extreme poverty lives on less than $3 a day, we see that it is impossible for those impacted by poverty to pay for food that will promote and sustain healthy living. The experiences of economic deprivation and malnutrition are interlinked.
The Multidimensional Poverty Index, or MPI, is an international measure of acute multidimensional poverty and recognizes the interconnectedness of the different dimensions of poverty. It was developed by the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI) in collaboration with United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and is based on Amartya Sen’s capability approach. The MPI complements traditional monetary poverty measures through an index that captures the acute deprivations in three dimensions:
- Health
- Education
- Living standards
Read more on how we define poverty directly in our Evaluation Framework.
Global MPI – Dimensions, Indicators, Deprivation Cutoffs, and Weights
The Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) breaks down the three dimensions of poverty into ten indicators, which are weighted. A person is identified as being multidimensionally poor if they are deprived in a third of the weighted indicators. The intensity of poverty is then measured by the percentage of deprivations the individual or community are simultaneously experiencing. Table 1 shows the indicators and their weights.
Table 1. The Global Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI): 2020 revision
| Dimension | Indicator | Deprived if living in a household where… | Weight |
|---|---|---|---|
| Health (1/3) | Nutrition | Any person under 70 years of age for whom there is nutritional information is undernourished. | 1/6 |
| Child mortality | A child under 18 has died in the household in the five-year period preceding the survey. | 1/6 | |
| Education (1/3) | Years of schooling | No eligible household member has completed six years of schooling. | 1/6 |
| School attendance | Any school-aged child is not attending school up to the age at which he/she would complete class 8. | 1/6 | |
| Living Standards (1/3) | Cooking fuel | A household cooks using solid fuel, such as dung, agricultural crop, shrubs, wood, charcoal, or coal. | 1/18 |
| Sanitation | The household has unimproved or no sanitation facility or it is improved but shared with other households. | 1/18 | |
| Drinking water | The household’s source of drinking water is not safe or safe drinking water is a 30-minute or longer walk from home, roundtrip. | 1/18 | |
| Electricity | The household has no electricity. | 1/18 | |
| Housing | The household has inadequate housing materials in any of the three components: floor, roof, or walls. | 1/18 | |
| Assets | The household does not own more than one of these assets: radio, TV, telephone, computer, animal cart, bicycle, motorbike, or refrigerator, and does not own a car or truck. | 1/18 |
Source: Alkire, S., Kanagaratnam, U. and Suppa, N. (2020). ‘The global Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI): 2020 revision’, OPHI MPI Methodological Note 49, Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative, University of Oxford.
We use the MPI to define The Life You Can Save’s priority geographies. We focus on countries and regions characterized by the highest levels of multidimensional poverty, as well as the highest numbers of people experiencing it. This helps us identify the main problems driving extreme poverty that we focus on.
Read more on how we identify those most in need and the problems that we focus on directly in our Evaluation Framework.
How We Evaluate Interventions
In our approach, interventions refer to the solutions or programs that directly address the key drivers of extreme poverty and improve well-being. We focus on identifying those interventions that have the greatest potential for impact. To do this, we review:
- Evidence: Is the intervention backed by rigorous evidence?
- Cost: Is the intervention cost-effective?
- Scale: Does the intervention have the potential to reach a high number of beneficiaries?
- Depth: How many indicators of multidimensional poverty does the intervention address?
- Durability: Is the change achieved by the intervention sustained over time?
Read more on how we find the most impactful interventions directly in our Evaluation Framework.
How We Evaluate Charities
We measure the impact of organizations based on the:
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Dimensions of poverty they aim to address
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Specific outcomes they are seeking to achieve
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Depth of an intervention, or the degree to which it addresses multiple indicators or dimensions of poverty
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Durability of the intervention, or the degree to which the change achieved can be sustained over time through government involvement, markets and/or social systems adoption
In our review, we consider opportunities where philanthropic investments can help organizations grow. This includes supporting them to expand their reach and position themselves to access larger funding from multilateral agencies. We appreciate that all assessments inherently involve a degree of uncertainty and require professional judgment from our team.
We evaluate organizations based on their:
- Dimensions of poverty they aim to address
- Specific outcomes they are seeking to achieve
- Depth of an intervention, or the degree to which it addresses multiple indicators or dimensions of poverty
Read more on how we find the most impactful charities directly in our Evaluation Framework.
How We Measure Our Impact
The Life You Can Save’s impact can be conceptualized as the additional impact our donors have based on our work. Furthermore, we want to use funds to strengthen the ecosystem of high-impact nonprofits in countries with high incidence of multidimensional poverty. Relying on a strong evaluation framework allows us to confidently advise donors and increase their impact across these spheres.
To put this graphically, a donor wanting to achieve more impact has two options:
We measure the impact of our own organization based on:
- How much money we move to high-impact charities. This gives an indication of how successful we are at our mission of improving the lives of people living in poverty by changing the way people think about giving and how they donate.
- Our leverage ratio, which is the ratio of our own operations costs and the amount donated to our recommended charities. Currently, our work results in an average of $10 additional dollars given to our recommended charities.
- How many positive outcomes donations enable our recommended charities to achieve.
- For health interventions, we calculate impact in terms of the number of Disability-Adjusted Life Years (DALYs) averted by an intervention. A DALY averted can be understood as giving someone one additional year of healthy life by preventing or reducing disease and disability. For education interventions, we calculate the number of Learning-Adjusted Years of Schooling (LAYS) gained through a program. This is equivalent to giving a child one year of high quality education. For living standards interventions, we use Return on Investment (RoI) to capture the economic returns generated per dollar spent. We use monitoring data from the organizations that we recommend to estimate these metrics (DALY, LAYS and RoI). We aim to increase the number of DALYs, LAYS and RoI achieved thanks to the donations that we influence across our portfolio over time. We consider that we are having an increased impact when we are able to facilitate more of these outcomes across our recommended charities.
- How donations to our recommended charities contribute to their success. Key questions we seek to answer are:
- Do our grants achieve what they set out to achieve, i.e., do our recommended charities achieve their goals year by year?
- Do nonprofits access more funding and scale their programmes?
If the organizations we support manage to scale successfully and attract considerable amounts of funding, we can consider this a success for our team.
We will track and improve our work based on the metrics above, by monitoring new research and evidence, connecting with other high-impact donors to catalyze funds, and influence more individuals to donate to our recommended list.
Our Process in Action: Teaching at the Right Level Africa
If we use ‘education’ as a dimension of extreme poverty, how would we conduct an assessment of a charity and make recommendations? We first research what are the key problems behind poor educational outcomes. Based on this research we identified that low levels of learning in schools in sub-Saharan Africa is a large driver behind this. Second, we research what are effective interventions in improving the learning that children obtain in schools in low and middle income countries. Following this we identified that the Teaching at the Right Level (TaRL) intervention has rigorous evidence behind it and it is cost effective. Third, we research what organizations implement this intervention in The Life You Can Save priority geographies. Based on this process we identified Teaching at the Right Level Africa. The organization works to promote teaching students at their actual learning levels in over 12 countries across Africa.
Step 1: Evaluating the problem
- Which MPI dimensions does the problem affect?
The problem directly affects the Education dimension, and indirectly Living Standards. - Which key MPI indicators does the problem affect?
The problem affects school attendance, years of schooling and in the longer term assets. - Does the problem affect people at scale in priority geographies?
Yes, learning poverty affects almost 250 million children globally. In sub-Saharan Africa, over 80% of children complete primary school without being able to read and understand a basic paragraph. - How solvable is the problem?
It is highly solvable. There are evidence backed interventions that can address the problem (e.g., Teaching at the Right Level or TaRL).
Step 2: Evaluating the intervention
- Does the charity implement an evidence-based intervention?
Yes, adjusting instruction to students’ level has been identified by multiple evidence-based reviews as one of the most impactful interventions to improve students learning outcomes. - Does the solution have an impact across multiple dimensions of poverty?
Yes, based on the available evidence, our team estimates that improved learning outcomes leads to positive impact on future income and health. - Does the solution have the potential to have an impact at scale?
Yes, previous implementations of the solution show that it can be implemented cost-effectively at scale. - Does the solution lead to durable impact?
Yes, based on the available evidence, our team estimates that each additional year of improved learning can lead to a 10% increase in future income, with positive indirect effects on households.
Step 3: Evaluating the organization
- Does the organization implement the intervention in geographies where the problem is prevalent?
Yes, TaRL Africa focuses on improving basic skills in over 12 countries in sub-Saharan Africa. - Does the charity implement the intervention cost-effectively?
Yes, our team estimates that the intervention, when implemented by TaRL Africa, achieves approximately 3.5 high quality learning years (i.e., learning adjusted years of schooling or LAYS) per $100. - Does the organization have the ability to operate at scale?
Yes, in 2024 TaRL Africa reached nearly 1.9 million children across its core countries of Côte d’Ivoire, Zambia, and Nigeria. - Is there evidence of high organizational quality?
Yes, there is strong evidence of high organizational quality, demonstrated by a clear understanding of the foundational learning challenge, a well-defined mission and vision, and a proven ability to adapt and rigorously evaluate evidence-based solutions in local contexts. - Is the organization embedded in local ecosystems and drives system improvements?
Yes, TaRL Africa collaborates and assists governments in sub-Saharan Africa to test and implement their own educational program. They do this through evidence-generation and technical assistance to government officials. - Does the organization uphold beneficiaries’ dignity in their work?
Yes, the TaRL Africa team is local and shows high respect for the beneficiaries’ priorities. They collaborate closely with local implementing partners and adapt their programming to different contexts and local needs. - What is the organization’s funding need?
The organization’s funding need is medium, with a high capacity to effectively absorb additional funds to scale its impact.
After completing this assessment, Teaching at the Right Level Africa was added to our list of recommended charities and fund beneficiaries.
