Social Change Lab
Charity

Social Change Lab

Social Movement Research

Social Change Lab seeks to maximise the impact of social movements by conducting research on the best ways to accelerate positive social change.

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What problem is Social Change Lab working on?

Social movements have historically been crucial drivers of social change, yet little research and funding goes into understanding which strategies and tactics are most effective. Social Change Lab is dedicated to studying the impact of social movements on public opinion, public discourse, and policy.

Social Change Lab’s work revolves around three key themes:

  • Tactics: How do different protest strategies and tactics affect the likelihood of success?
  • Resources: What resources do protest movements need to be effective and how can they best access them?
  • Organisation: How do different ways of organising affect outcomes?

What does Social Change Lab do?

Social Change Lab produces research reports and runs workshops and trainings that provide actionable insights to help movements and funders be more effective.

It seeks to inform advocates, decision-makers, and philanthropists on the best ways to accelerate positive social change across a range of cause areas, including animal advocacy efforts, climate change, and building the effective altruism movement.

It is also exploring whether lessons from social movement research could be applied to reducing existential risks.

What information does Giving What We Can have about the cost-effectiveness of the Social Change Lab?1.

We don't currently have further information about the cost-effectiveness of Social Change Lab beyond it doing work in a high-impact cause area and taking a reasonably promising approach.

Please note that GWWC does not evaluate individual charities. Our recommendations are based on the research of third-party, impact-focused charity evaluators our research team has found to be particularly well-suited to help donors do the most good per dollar, according to their recent evaluator investigations. Our other supported programs are those that align with our charitable purpose — they are working on a high-impact problem and take a reasonably promising approach (based on publicly-available information).

At Giving What We Can, we focus on the effectiveness of an organisation's work -- what the organisation is actually doing and whether their programs are making a big difference. Some others in the charity recommendation space focus instead on the ratio of admin costs to program spending, part of what we’ve termed the “overhead myth.” See why overhead isn’t the full story and learn more about our approach to charity evaluation.

We have varying degrees of information about the cost-effectiveness of our supported programs. We have more information about programs that impact-focused evaluators (some of which our research team expects to investigate soon as part of their evaluator investigations) have looked into, as well as programs that we’ve previously included on our list of recommended charities. We think it’s important to share the information we have with donors as we expect it will be useful in their donation decisions, but don’t want donors to mistakenly overweight the extent to which we share information about some charities and not others. Therefore, we want to clarify two things:

  • When we include information about an organisation’s cost-effectiveness, this may not be the only evidence that exists. It is simply the evidence the GWWC research team has at this time.
  • When we don’t include information about an organisation’s cost-effectiveness, this does not necessarily mean there is no such information. However, it does mean the GWWC research team isn’t privy to any more information at this time.