Use the live research desk
Choose a documented case as a starting point or open a blank postmortem. Separate intentions, observations and explanations. Record the proposed mechanism, its evidence label, a corrective action and how you will check it. Study the system and published actions, without judging people.
Your workspace stays in this browser. Save records, edit them or fork frozen versions, export JSON, a research memo or CSV, and import a backup with an explicit replacement step. Deleting or clearing offers an undo while the page remains open. No notes are submitted to Charitology. The institutional goals below remain the program’s longer-term charter.
What it is
Every field learns from what went wrong, if it gets to see it. The Failure Lab studies programs that didn’t work and programs that did harm, and it publishes what they teach in the Failure Archive.
How it works
Each case in the archive should be documented from public sources: what was tried, what happened, how anyone found out and what changed afterward. The lab would then look across cases for mechanisms that repeat, such as aid that undercuts local markets, programs that keep running after the evidence turns against them and ideas that worked in one place and failed in another. Mapping those mechanisms is Open Problem 20, When Charity Harms.
Some lessons are stark. Programs that take young people on organized prison visits to deter them from crime, known as “Scared Straight,” were tested in nine randomized trials in the United States between 1967 and 1992. A Cochrane review of those trials concluded that the programs increase offending compared with doing nothing, and noted that such programs remained in use.
Why it matters for the system
The Silence About Failure costs the field its most valuable data. When a failure goes unpublished, the next group to try the same idea starts from zero. The lab treats that condition by turning failure into a shared resource instead of a private embarrassment, and by showing that a well-documented failure is a contribution. Some organizations have already shown the way: Engineers Without Borders Canada has published yearly reports of its own failures.
Risks and limits
Naming failures can punish the very honesty the lab wants to reward. So the archive draws on public sources or on cases organizations choose to share, and it describes mechanisms rather than blaming people. An organization that publishes its own failure is credited as a contributor. No case is published with personal details about the people a program served.
What success looks like
Within five years, the archive holds enough cases to show which harm mechanisms recur and under what conditions, and organizations consult it when they design new programs.
Learn from a documented case
The archive includes unsuccessful and mixed results. A case is evidence about a program and setting, not a verdict on people or the worth of a cause.
Postmortem and follow-up workspace
New recordSeparate intended outcomes, observations and explanations. Save a practical correction and a check of whether it helped. Nothing is published from this page.
Your work stays in this browser. Export a backup to move it elsewhere. Entries are your research notes, not verified findings or ratings.