We are writing a sad update concerning an HLI-recommended charity, Network for Empowerment & Progressive Initiative (NEPI), which ran a project called STYL that targeted young men with criminal backgrounds with CBT therapy and cash transfers to reduce crime. The Happier Lives Institute started recommending NEPI as a ‘Promising Charity’ in November 2024. As of September 2025, we are no longer recommending NEPI. In this post, we’ll explain why and outline actions we have taken and will be taking.
From the NEPI board
In September 2025, NEPI’s board announced the following to their stakeholders:
‘The NEPI Board discovered financial irregularities in the operations of NEPI. Combined with a challenging funding environment, this meant that NEPI, unfortunately, had to end its programs and operations…NEPI, the non-profit corporation in the U.S. is insolvent, no longer operational and moving towards dissolution. While the U.S. NEPI Board does not control the Liberian entity, we know that this is the same for the Liberian entity and the Liberian staff has been let go.’
HLI’s response
In light of this, HL is no longer recommending NEPI, nor raising funds for it. We also discourage donors from donating directly to the Liberian entity, whose website is still active as of the time of writing, and makes no reference to the fact the US entity is shutting down.
The donations we helped raise for NEPI had not yet been transferred to the charity. This is because we batch the donations made to our recommended charities through HLI and transfer them once a threshold has been reached, common practice to save administrative burden. This means the funds raised have not been affected by the alleged fraud.
How it affects our donors
We have contacted donors who contributed to NEPI via HLI and given them two options:
- Redirect their donation to another HLI-recommended charity of their choice.
- Request a full refund.
We are pleased that all the affected donors opted to redirect their donation to another HLI recommended charity.
HLI’s actions following this news
We have taken a set of actions in response to the closure of NEPI:
- Emailed and had a call with the NEPI Board President, who issued the statement we have quoted from above, to find out more.
- Disabled online donations to stop any new donations coming in for NEPI.
- Communicated to donors who donated to NEPI through HLI and gave them options for what to do with their donations.
- Informed our board.
- Updated our brand video to remove the section on NEPI as a recommended charity.
- Removed NEPI as a recommended charity on our website.
- Added a line at the start of our NEPI report to explain we no longer recommend the organisation.
- Made an edit to some blog posts that mention NEPI to clarify we no longer recommend it.
Further actions we are taking:
- Developing an enhanced due diligence process, which we will report on in late October.
- Using the enhanced due diligence process for our existing and prospective charity recommendations, and potentially adjusting our recommendations as a result.
- Reviewing ACTRA as a potential recommendation replacement for NEPI (ACTRA’s programme is based on NEPI’s), as we still believe the intervention type is promising. This will be in 2026.
Closing statement from HLI
We’re extremely grateful to our donors for their generous support to improve lives. We’re committed to ensuring donations have the greatest impact, and that’s why we conduct detailed research into the cost-effectiveness of charities. HLI has operated on, and ultimately has to operate on, a ‘trust and evaluate’ model of charity analysis: while we will do, for instance, review charities’ internal data, speak to other stakeholders and conduct some site views, we do substantially trust them to do what they say they are doing. Our main focus is on evaluating how much impact the charities are having – that’s our distinct expertise, the power of the WELLBY methodology; and it is not something we trust charities to know or be able to tell us. We note that due diligence is not the same as cost-effectiveness: a charity could be operating diligently but having limited impact – or it could be ‘rough around the edges’ but still making a massive difference and worth supporting.
As a small team, with limited resources, we are not able to conduct forensic due diligence assessments in the way that large, institutional donors can. We took reassurance from the fact a number of larger donors had backed NEPI and were caught similarly unaware. This said, and in light of this, we do plan to increase our due diligence process to mitigate the chance of such risks. HLI’s COO, Alex Shearn, who previously worked in counter-fraud at the UK Department for International Development (DFID), will lead an internal process to discuss what additional due diligence would be most appropriate for HLI. As noted, we will report on the outcomes of those discussions in late October.
While HLI is no longer recommending NEPI, we are still excited by the potential of the type of intervention NEPI ran, which was demonstrated in a high quality, 10-year academic study (Blattman et al. 2017). While we do not think the revelations about NEPI will impact the conclusions of the study, we have reached out to the study’s authors to see if they share this view. Given this, our current view is that ACTRA – an HLI ‘honourable mention’ charity that runs a similar programme – is not impacted by the problems found with NEPI’s operations.