Lessons Learned

For 75 years, The Pew Charitable Trusts has studied the problems that hold people back—and helped fix them. Whether it is making government more responsive, protecting the ocean and public lands, or improving people’s health and economic well-being, Pew’s work is always nonpartisan, based on facts, and guided by a commitment to use data to help individuals and communities thrive. We ask challenging questions, we strive to create common ground, and we run ambitious projects designed to make a difference.

As the world evolved—offering new problems and opportunities—Pew rose to the challenge in 2022, finding ways to help communities and people thrive.

Facts are critical to our work because they’re the foundation that effective policies are built on and measured by and provide a common language that leaders can use to explain their policy choices to a deeply divided public. As such, facts don’t prejudge. They don’t pick sides in a debate.

Enduring Earth seeks to help governments, Indigenous peoples, and local communities protect lands and waters essential to the future of the planet and humanity

How Pew’s public safety performance project has helped propel reforms in the corrections field.

From conducting research that helps state policymakers cope with the pandemic’s fiscal impacts to promoting legislation to restore our national parks, Pew’s work produced a range of accomplishments in 2020.

The Pew Charitable Trusts commissioned its first evaluation, hiring external experts to examine its work to highlight successes and failures, in 1985. Since then, evaluation has been an integral part of Pew’s approach to philanthropy.

Pew’s evaluation team commissions external experts to examine our past work, seeking not only to highlight successes and failures, but to provide lessons that can inform the institution’s ongoing and future projects.

With tightening revenues and the continuing effects of the coronavirus, state leaders are embracing new policies.

No matter where they live, Americans share many views in divided times

On March 12, President Donald Trump signed into law the largest land conservation legislation in a decade. But it almost didn’t happen.

Making Every Vote Count

In 1952, President Harry S. Truman asked Congress to improve the absentee voting program for Americans serving in the military. “When these young people are defending our country,” he said then, “the least we at home can do is make sure they are able to enjoy the rights they are being asked to fight to preserve.”

Expanding Pre-k Education

New research on child development fueled the movement for pre-kindergarten education in the 1990s by emphasizing the importance of early learning and the untapped capacity of young minds. In 2001, Pew developed a seven- to 10-year plan to seek approval of policies for universal, high-quality early education in four to six states as well as increased federal funding to support it.

Corrections Policy

Today, Pew works with interested states and a diverse set of partners to diagnose the factors driving prison growth and provide policy audits that identify options for reform based on solid research, promising approaches, and best practices.

Saving the Land

An independent evaluation found that Pew’s campaign to conserve wild lands in Canada and Australia was successful in sustaining global biological diversity.