Social-enterprise practitioners and advisers discuss how impact investors can best deploy their dollars and measure their effectiveness in a New York Times financial column.

Wealth Matters columnist Paul Sullivan quizzed leaders with the Omidyar Network, Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors and its Global Impact Investing Network, and GiveWell, which uses mostly gifts from smaller donors to support charities it deems likely to have a big impact.

The piece examines issues such as whether impact investors should focus on causes rather than individual organizations and if achieving measurable effects is easier in the developing world than in the United States.