Revisiting our Guidance on Developing Assumptions

To celebrate CEI's 15th anniversary, we're spending 2024 reflecting on 15 of our most favorite pieces.

What it is: In November 2021, Julia Coffman and Tanya Beer published our Guidance on Developing Assumptions after noticing a need for our field to better identify and articulate the unspoken assumptions driving philanthropic strategy, learning, and evaluation so that we might monitor and test their accuracy in our work.

This accessible, 4-page guide defines what assumptions are, offers three categories of questions to surface those assumptions, and provides guidance for what to do once you’ve named them. For philanthropy, this is a key resource to make our thinking visible so that we can hold ourselves accountable for our strategies and impact.

Why it's a favorite: Surfacing our assumptions is a critical step in building a more equitable and just world. Making our thinking visible highlights how our personal and organizational assumptions have shaped our understanding of how the world works—or how we think it should work.

As our world becomes more complex and our systems more entrenched, our work requires a diversity of thought and action. Naming our assumptions allows us to see the lens we’re bringing to our work, highlight other diverse and robust ways of thinking that can be included, and holds ourselves accountable for how our assumptions shape our strategy, learning, and impact.

Plus, this guide doesn’t waste any time. In just a few pages, users come away with a deep understanding of how to name their assumptions, how their assumptions impact their work, and what to do about it.

What we would change: The importance of this guide has only grown since publication. More and more, foundations are recognizing how assumptions have underpinned and shaped their work, while working to name these so that they might deepen their impact and strengthen their strategies.

With this increase in surfacing and questioning assumptions has come a wave of critical thinking about what is possible and how we might rethink the obstacles we’ve created for ourselves. The idea of breaking fake rules has gained popularity, and is directly tied to surfacing assumptions.

While our guide on developing assumptions continues to prove necessary, we do urge our colleagues and collaborators to consider what assumptions they’re making about what they can and can’t do in their work, and reimagine what might be possible.