01 · Understand
What does your support make possible?
The work being funded, the people it reaches, the intended change, and the conditions on which that change depends.
For private philanthropy
Give with a clearer view of what is changing.
For individual donors, families, and philanthropic advisers, Prova helps clarify what your giving supports, what is known about the results, and what would be useful to learn before your next commitment.
Serious inquiry can strengthen a relationship when its purpose and boundaries are clear.
Recognizable situations
You care about the work. You also want to understand it.
- 01
You are considering renewing or increasing support and want a clearer account of what the evidence shows.
- 02
You value a relationship with an organization and want to ask a serious question without making it a test of loyalty.
- 03
Your family or advisers need a shared basis for a consequential giving decision.
- 04
You want to fund useful learning without adding another reporting obligation for the people doing the work.
Proportionate inquiry
Begin with one decision, and use what already exists.
A renewal or a new commitment rarely needs every possible question answered. Prova starts with the material available for the agreed purpose and recommends the smallest useful piece of work. Additional collection is justified by the decision it would improve.
Illustrative question — not client work
What would justify deepening our support?
Bring together what is known, what you value, and what you still need to understand before making the next commitment.
02 · Examine
What supports the account?
The sources, context, observed changes, missing perspectives, and limits of claims about the program’s contribution.
03 · Choose
What would improve the next commitment?
A clearer scope, support for a grantee’s own learning, a further inquiry, or an explicit uncertainty you are prepared to accept.
Explore an illustrative Decision & Options Brief
See how a constructed example connects a claim to its sources
Questions Prova can help answer
Bring the question behind the giving.
You do not need an evaluation department or a fully formed brief to begin. The work can concern one program, a proposed commitment, or a wider question across your giving.
What can this work credibly claim?
- Examine reporting, research, and other material available for the agreed purpose
- Distinguish what is being delivered from what is known about change
Evidence synthesis and claim checking
What would make the next grant more useful?
- Clarify the decision to continue, adapt, or deepen support
- Identify the assumptions or gaps that actually matter to that choice
Giving and program decisions
Where would support for learning help?
- Offer a grantee help with program logic, measurement, or an important decision
- Let the organization direct the question and control what is shared
Grantee-directed support
Would an independent review help?
- Commission review of a defined analysis, evaluation, or claim
- Receive a judgment from outside the work being reviewed
Independent review
Two different purposes
Funding the work does not always mean owning the question.
Agree who directs the inquiry and how the answer may be used before asking an organization to contribute material.
You commission an inquiry to inform your own judgment.
The engagement names the funding decision, the material permitted for that purpose, who receives the findings, and the intended use. Organizations contributing nonpublic information understand those terms.
You fund support the organization chooses and directs.
The grantee chooses whether to participate, sets the question and materials, and controls what may be shared. The support serves its work and its capacity to learn.
Care and candor
A limited claim can still support a thoughtful commitment.
Relationships, experience, and values matter in philanthropy. Careful inquiry helps you see where the evidence supports your judgment and where you are choosing under uncertainty. An incomplete record is not, by itself, a verdict on an organization or the people it serves. If you already intend to continue giving, the useful question may be how to improve the support, help the organization learn, or explain the results more accurately.
Discretion and responsibility
Agree what may be used, who sees it, and who owns the judgment.
Confidentiality, recipients, permitted uses, and any legal or safeguarding limits are established in the engagement agreement. AI assists with reading and synthesis; accountable people review consequential conclusions.
When the work needs an independent reviewer, that role must be clear. Prova does not present a review of work it helped create or substantially revise as independent.
A practical first step
Start with one program or one giving decision.
Describe the question in general terms. We can clarify a useful scope and the people who should be involved before any confidential material is shared.
Discuss your giving question