Funders spend enormous effort deciding which organizations to support. Far less effort goes into determining whether the method they use to find them actually works.
That is a remarkable omission.
Open applications, referrals, expert panels, scoring systems, site visits, and invitation-only processes are treated as operating procedures rather than testable hypotheses.
They should be experiments.
A funder could deliberately use several discovery methods, compare the organizations each surfaces, and follow their performance over time. It could examine not only its winners but its rejected applicants and overlooked prospects.
Because the most revealing evidence about an identification system may be sitting outside its portfolio.
If you want to know whether your system can recognize exceptional organizations, study the exceptional organizations it missed.
That could turn philanthropy from a sector with selection customs into one with a genuine science of finding.