Methodology of the Philanthropic Impact Pioneers Programme
The Philanthropic Impact Pioneers Programme builds on the work done by the Asia Pacific Social Impact Centre in the Philanthropy: Towards a Better Practise Model from 2011-2014. We’re using a mix of qualitative and quantitative research methods to get the insights we need.
What we’re doing now
We are currently in the quantitative phase in which we are taking a baseline measurement of information from grantseekers and grantmakers to establish the different perspectives on the existing relationships. We’ve used an online survey in Qualtrics to collect information from both grantmakers and grant seekers for this phase as we need to cover a vast number of organisations in a short amount of time.
What we’re doing next
Once the baseline has been measured, we’ll run a series of semi-structured interviews with our participants as our qualitative phase. We’ll work with observational data collected from participants in the form of reflective exercises undertaken as part of the PIPP programme. Our research is exploratory, collecting the data in this way will help inform us on what’s coming next and where we need to centre our efforts as the study goes on.
Why we’re using these methods
The study we’re doing needs answers to both how many and why. We’re trying to find out whether behaviour has changed since the results of the last study were published, how many organisations have changed their ways, and how many haven’t. Another thing we’re looking at is why the changes of behaviour have happened or why the organisations have chosen to maintain their previous course of action. The publication of the Towards a Better Practise Model report revealed a number of areas where improvements could be made, and now we want to know who has been willing to make those improvements. We also want to know whether these changes will be long term or short term to see if there will be any real institutional change in the future. Using purely quantitative or qualitative research methods would only give us half of the story we need.
