Giving myth: Why you shouldn't give based on what feels good

The myth: You should follow your heart and give to things that feel good

The reality: If you give based on evidence, you will almost certainly do much more good

There is an inverse correlation between how popular a charity is/how effective its marketing is, and how much good the charity achieves.

For example, if you consider the top 20 charities in the UK in terms of the popularity of their brand (see p20 of this report) then around half of them are known to be underperforming charities, achieving only a bronze rating under the SoGive ratings, with no Gold-rated charities (and several have a "more info needed" rating).

Why do charities with effective marketing tend to have lower impact?

We don't believe there's any real robust evidence to explain why it works this way, however our experience suggests that the following factors matter:

• Charities only have a finite amount of time available to work on things other than achieving their core work (e.g. on tasks like fundraising)
• Tasks like producing excellent fundraising materials use time, and so do tasks like thinking carefully about the evidence behind your work and how much impact you achieve
• It is rare for charities to have the capacity to do both

Of course, this isn't a hard and fast rule, and the things which pluck at your heartstrings may also be high impact charities.