Embracing Failure: The Importance of Transparency in Charity Work

"I think one of the reasons I took [shutting down my charity] so hard is because entrepreneurship is all about this bets-based mindset. So you say, “I’m going to take a bunch of bets. I’m going to take some risky bets that have really high upside.” And this is a winning strategy in life, but maybe it’s not a winning strategy for any given hand. So the fact of the matter is that I believe that intellectually, but l do not believe that emotionally. And I have now met a bunch of people who are really good at doing that emotionally, and I’ve realised I’m just not one of those people. I think I’m more entrepreneurial than your average person; I don’t think I’m the maximally entrepreneurial person. And I also think it’s just human nature to not like failing." —Sarah Eustis-Guthrie

In today’s episode, host Luisa Rodriguez speaks to Sarah Eustis-Guthrie — cofounder of the now-shut-down Maternal Health Initiative, a postpartum family planning nonprofit in Ghana — about her experience starting and running MHI, and ultimately making the difficult decision to shut down when the programme wasn’t as impactful as they expected.

Links to learn more, highlights, and full transcript.

They cover:

• The evidence that made Sarah and her cofounder Ben think their organisation could be super impactful for women — both from a health perspective and an autonomy and wellbeing perspective.
• Early yellow and red flags that maybe they didn’t have the full story about the effectiveness of the intervention.
• All the steps Sarah and Ben took to build the organisation — and where things went wrong in retrospect.
• Dealing with the emotional side of putting so much time and effort into a project that ultimately failed.
• Why it’s so important to talk openly about things that don’t work out, and Sarah’s key lessons learned from the experience.
• The misaligned incentives that discourage charities from shutting down ineffective programmes.
• The movement of trust-based philanthropy, and Sarah’s ideas to further improve how global development charities get their funding and prioritise their beneficiaries over their operations.
• The pros and cons of exploring and pivoting in careers.
• What it’s like to participate in the Charity Entrepreneurship Incubation Program, and how listeners can assess if they might be a good fit.
• And plenty more.

Chapters:

• Cold open (00:00:00)
• Luisa’s intro (00:00:58)
• The interview begins (00:03:43)
• The case for postpartum family planning as an impactful intervention (00:05:37)
• Deciding where to start the charity (00:11:34)
• How do you even start implementing a charity programme? (00:18:33)
• Early yellow and red flags (00:22:56)
• Proof-of-concept tests and pilot programme in Ghana (00:34:10)
• Dealing with disappointing pilot results (00:53:34)
• The ups and downs of founding an organisation (01:01:09)
• Post-pilot research and reflection (01:05:40)
• Is family planning still a promising intervention? (01:22:59)
• Deciding to shut down MHI (01:34:10)
• The surprising community response to news of the shutdown (01:41:12)
• Mistakes and what Sarah could have done differently (01:48:54)
• Sharing results in the space of postpartum family planning (02:00:54)
• Should more charities scale back or shut down? (02:08:33)
• Trust-based philanthropy (02:11:15)
• Empowering the beneficiaries of charities’ work (02:18:04)
• The tough ask of getting nonprofits to act when a programme isn’t working (02:21:18)
• Exploring and pivoting in careers (02:27:01)
• Reevaluation points (02:29:55)
• PlayPumps were even worse than you might’ve heard (02:33:25)
• Charity Entrepreneurship (02:38:30)
• The mistake of counting yourself out too early (02:52:37)
• Luisa’s outro (02:57:50)

Producer: Keiran Harris
Audio engineering: Ben Cordell, Milo McGuire, Simon Monsour, and Dominic Armstrong
Content editing: Luisa Rodriguez, Katy Moore, and Keiran Harris
Transcriptions: Katy Moore