King's College London

This is the seventh instalment of the School for Government’s comment series on the future of evidence-based policy. Look out for more contributions to the series in the coming weeks.

From my viewpoint, in a think tank focused on the impact of the charity and philanthropy sector, the emergence and development of the What Works movement has been fascinating to watch. New Philanthropy Capital, where I have worked since 2004, has for the last two decades worked to synthesise existing knowledge and evidence in order to guide philanthropic and charity strategies.

The What Works Centres have been key allies in the drive for more evidence-based decision-making. They have aimed to bridge the chasm between academia and practice by centralising the identification, synthesis, analysis and communication of research so that it can be harnessed and implemented by practitioners.

And yet, from my vantage point, the centralised approach – of What Works Centres – has shown itself to have serious flaws. I believe we can draw inspiration for how to develop the What Works movement purposefully if we reflect on the use of evidence as a type of capacity-building, among many others.

Practitioners – from youth workers to counsellors, advice providers to key workers, coaches to community organisers – are beset by ongoing efforts to build their capacity. Whether it’s around the use of digital technology, data, evidence, or the current refrain that everyone should be working out how to use generative AI, practitioners are always being told to upskill in one way or another. How realistic those calls are is questionable – most practitioners within the charity or public sectors certainly lack the time or resource to do all of their day job, let alone level up continuously.

Consider a teaching assistant in a primary school reception class, being asked to implement an evidence-based early learning programme. How likely is it that the programme has been designed around the typical demands of the classroom on that teaching assistant, to fit in effortlessly alongside and go with the grain of their work?

Capacity-building is designed by the capacity-builders. Not by the practitioners who are supposed to benefit.

And while the What Works movement has embedded practitioner perspectives to varying extents, in my experience it is quite clear that the agenda has been set by stakeholders on the evidence side, not those closest to practice.

What would a practice-centric approach to What Works look like? I think we can find inspiration in many contexts, from the overall shift to more equitable and inclusive approaches in the charity and philanthropy sectors to specific examples such as Project Evident’s unapologetically practitioner-centric work on Next Generation Evidence.

In general, these shifts would place key questions in the hands of practitioners as well as experts by experience. What research questions should we answer? Which challenges and opportunities should we prioritise? What are the gaps in our knowledge? What do we need to know to take action, and what action will we take as a result?

So what would a decentralised approach to What Works look like? It would start with the practitioner, or even with the person receiving or seeking a service or intervention. If we imagine a question they might ask – seeking an appropriate response to their situation – they would need to find the right answers in the places they would look. Whether that’s through their existing community of practice, or an AI assistant, or a helpline – the right channel is where that person already is – in the schools, hospitals, police stations. And information would have been curated by those with a depth of experience of practice, so that they can bring the right evidence to bear for the practical situation.

Ultimately, I think we can envisage a very different world where there is significant investment in the communities of practice where practitioners share and build their knowledge and a body of knowledge. Where academics are embedded, alongside and around practice, rather than the other way around. Where the community of practice generates key research questions, and its collective intelligence and sensemaking drives the priorities of research and evidence-building. Some of these communities of practice exist already – like student social workers in networks with universities, networks of youth workers – though investment has fallen over the last generation.

The question is whether we have the collective vision and appetite genuinely to invest in practice, which is much more complex and messy than our nice tidy worlds of academia and research. Whether we have the humility required to recognise that evidence is worth little without action, and that makes the practitioner more important than the academic.

Tris Lumley is Founder & Director of Open For All, New Philanthropy Capital, and Entrepreneur in residence at Ashoka.