Peter Singer co-founded Grand Challenges Canada and served as its CEO before joining its board, where he still sits today.

Over 15 years, the organisation has backed roughly 1,700 innovations across more than 100 countries, deployed over a billion dollars in funding — more than half from the Government of Canada — and reached 85 million people, improved 28 million lives, and saved an estimated 120,000 lives.

Peter shares vivid examples: a small grant that helped seed Mylab, now a billion-dollar Indian diagnostics unicorn; an early investment that led to Ubiologics' cholera vaccine now entering the global stockpile; and Tanzania's M-Mama, an Uber-style maternal transport service now operating at national scale within government.

Peter traces his path through four distinct careers: as a physician and professor of medicine focused on end-of-life care, sparked by a formative experience with a dying patient in 1984; as co-founder of a bioethics centre; as co-founder and CEO of Grand Challenges Canada; and later at the World Health Organization under Tedros, where he worked to embed a results-driven culture through the "triple billion" targets.

He reflects candidly on what worked and what didn't — the tools for measuring outcomes and outputs were built, but institutionalising accountability within a large multilateral bureaucracy proved far harder.

The conversation covers the state of philanthropy in Canada, contrasting its concentrated, strategic style with the greater density of giving in the US. Peter also discusses integrated innovation — blending technological, social, financial, and now digital and AI-driven approaches — and makes the case for social and service-delivery innovation being undervalued relative to flashier technological bets, using a comparison between a Gates Foundation toilet technology challenge and Grand Challenges Canada's portfolio of water and sanitation social enterprises.

On the Sustainable Development Goals, Peter is blunt: progress is weak, and he argues real success would come first from intellectual honesty about where things stand, and the accountability and data work needed to understand why.

He closes with advice for young people: find a problem that genuinely bothers you and solve it, seek out the right mentors, recognise a "rocket ship" opportunity when it appears, and let character and integrity anchor everything else.

Visit our Knowledge Hub at Lidji.org for information on 350+ case studies and interviews with remarkable leaders in philanthropy, sustainability and social entrepreneurship.

It's a pleasure to welcome Michael Thatcher back onto the Do One Better Podcast. Michael is President and Chief Executive Officer of Charity Navigator, the largest independent evaluator of nonprofits in the United States, now marking its 25th year and covering roughly 245,000 charities as a free public service to donors.

Michael last joined the show in 2022, and returns with a comprehensive update on how Charity Navigator has evolved since then — including a major overhaul to its rating methodology, a new partnership bringing cost-per-outcome impact data into the platform, and candid reflections on some of the biggest structural challenges facing the charitable sector today.

In this conversation, Michael and Alberto discuss:

• A 25-year milestone. How Charity Navigator evaluates nearly 245,000 charities with a team of just 35 people, largely by processing publicly available IRS tax filings.
• The April 2026 ratings overhaul. A new methodology spanning 49 metrics across 10 evaluation areas — financial health, governance, leadership and impact measurement among them — plus a new partnership with True Impact to bring cost-per-outcome scoring to the platform.
• How curated lists get built. Why a complete, high-quality data set and demonstrated effectiveness are required for an organisation to appear on one of Charity Navigator's roughly 50 curated lists — and how "whimsical" lists (most popular charities, celebrity-favoured causes) sit alongside more rigorously vetted ones.
• Giving funds, explained. How Charity Navigator's roughly dozen thematic funds work as pooled, pass-through vehicles (not donor-advised funds), how allocations across organisations are rebalanced, and why full transparency into fund composition matters to donors.
• Two unexpected donor demographics. Why younger donors are drawn to cause-based giving over brand loyalty, and why older donors are increasingly using Charity Navigator's funds as a dependable vehicle within estate and legacy planning.
• The AI disintermediation challenge. How Charity Navigator's open, free data is increasingly being surfaced directly by large language models — reducing website traffic and, with it, the donation asks that fund the organisation's own operations.
• A troubling giving trend. New research showing a steady, multi-year decline in the number of individual donors in the US even as total dollars given continues to rise — and why Charity Navigator's own research points to a "connection" problem rather than a trust problem.
• Staying above the fray. How Charity Navigator has maintained credibility with donors across a polarised political landscape by consistently avoiding partisan positioning.

Visit our Knowledge Hub at Lidji.org for information on 350+ case studies and interviews with remarkable leaders in philanthropy, sustainability and social entrepreneurship.

Martin Burt, Founder and CEO of Fundación Paraguaya (Paraguay Development Foundation) and former Mayor of Asunción, joins Alberto Lidji to discuss a fundamentally different approach to eliminating poverty. Rather than focusing solely on income or government interventions, Burt argues that lasting change begins with families, dignity, and the entrepreneurial spirit.

The conversation explores the Poverty Stoplight, a framework now used in 62 countries that enables families to assess their own multidimensional poverty across objective measures such as housing and income, alongside subjective factors including motivation, self-esteem, and aspirations. By identifying their own priorities and connecting with practical solutions, families become active agents in their journey out of poverty.

Martin explains why empowerment matters as much as economics, why families should define what it means to be "not poor," and how this locally developed methodology from Paraguay is reshaping poverty alleviation across the Global South and the Global North. He also reflects on lessons from four decades in economic development, public service, and social innovation, offering a compelling vision for putting human flourishing at the heart of development.

Visit our Knowledge Hub at Lidji.org for information on 350+ case studies and interviews with remarkable leaders in philanthropy, sustainability and social entrepreneurship.