The team

WE ARE A SMALL company with three full-time staff, a couple of contractors and a lot of brilliant volunteer interns. Our work is directed and overseen by the Board of Directors. The Directors are unpaid, and include charity workers, businesspeople and major donors.

> Staff
> Interns
> Contractors
> The Board

Staff

Dave Pitchford,
Managing editor

Dave founded the Keswick Friends of the Earth group before getting his first job in outdoors journalism, and was editor of the highly successful Camping Magazine for some time. You'll find WH Smith is often sold out. When he'd had enough of tents, boots and caravans - especially caravans - he sold his sub-editing skills to an unlikely range of publications including the Middle Eastern Economics Digest, Probe (for dental professionals) and the News of the World.

Defeated by endless caption-writing about Princess Diana, he ran off to PricewaterhouseCoopers to help run its European websites for a few years, then became a Content Strategist for an ebusiness consultancy.

He was touring Bangladesh with Oxfam in 1999 when he heard criticism of some charities from the people those charities were allegedly helping. A lightbulb went on in his head and he decided to try to build a website that would help people choose between charities. Four years later he ditched his consultancy job and started this project.

In 2007, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.

Interests: Dave is a long-time supporter of Oxfam, a current supporter of Sustrans and Book Aid International. He is also a reader at the British Library.

Adam Rothwell,
Features editor

Adam joined Intelligent Giving in September 2006. He spends most of his time overseeing and writing the website's editorial content, and leads our efforts promoting accountability in the voluntary sector. With Dave, he also helps to develop the company's strategy.

In his life before Intelligent Giving, Adam was a student. He has a double-first-class BA in History and an MPhil in Historical Studies from the University of Cambridge.

Interests: Adam is a member of the National Theatre, the Art Fund and the National Trust. (No sniggering please.) He is also a reader at the British Library and particularly likes seat 2216 in Humanities Level One.

Marijke Vermaak,
Lead researcher

Marijke jointed Intelligent Giving in June 2007. She is responsible for our charity profiles, the day-to-day running of much of the website, and manages our volunteer interns. She also helps to develop the company's strategy.

Marijke grew up in a small town in South Africa and left Rhodes University in 2005 with a BSc in Economics. She then worked as a Business Analyst for Accenture in Johannesburg for a year. She left Accenture to learn how to save the world at the London School of Economics, where she studied for an MSc in Development Studies. She graduated in 2007.

Interests: Marijke volunteered as a maths tutor for Imfundo, an out of school learning programme in Johannesburg. She also supports, sells Christmas cards for and helps at the odd fundraising event for FOGADD (Friends of Grahamstown and District Development) and does her bit for the planet by supporting Friends of the Earth. She is also a reader at the British Library.

Interns

We depend on volunteer interns to keep the company going. They are responsible for writing the first draft of our charity profiles, and help out in all manner of vital ways - from doing research to writing blog entries. They are all very clever and deserve real, probably highly paid, jobs. Below is a Hall of Fame of some of our most recent interns.

Sarah Hedley	Johnny Chatterton	Manuela Solera-Deuchar

Lizzi Milligan	Nat Ogborn	Jo Lee Morrison

Contractors

And here are our contractors, who are geniuses (really):

Our visual designer: Matt Rowe at The Storm

Our website developer:Peter "nothing is impossible" Brownell at The Organization

The Board

Neill Ghosh (Chair)
Neill works in the Innovation and Operations Practice department at the Corporate Executive Board in London. Prior to that, he was Intelligent Giving's lead researcher. He has a masters degree in Middle East Politics from SOAS, and an MA in International Relations from St Andrew's University.

If you have a complaint about Intelligent Giving which you have brought to the attention of the staff, yet still in your opinion has not been properly dealt with, you should contact Neill.

Gavin Sturge FCCA (Treasurer)
Gavin spends half of his week as the finance director at Illumina Digital. The other half of the week, he acts as a financial consultant or finance director for a number of charities and small organisations. His clients include First Light and Mental Health Media. He is a non-executive director of Charity Technology Trust and is a trustee of Webplay. Previously, he worked at Culture Online where he was Finance Director for four years with responsibility for the financial management of a range of government projects. He started his career in audit before moving into the commodity trading world. This was followed by project management work for organisations such as the London Stock Exchange and Ernst & Young. He has been a school governor for 15 years.

Peter Heywood (major benefactor)
Peter worked as a civil engineer for 10 years before discovering his true calling as a journalist while editing an underground newspaper for expatriates in Algeria. In a wild moment, he jettisoned his career and entered the world of trade publishing, eventually covering the technologies underpinning the Internet. In a wild moment 20+ years later (1999), he abandoned his steady job and together with a colleague founded a website, http://www.lightreading.com. It proved highly successful (albeit utterly incomprehensible to most people) and the duo ended up selling it for a considerable sum in August 2005.

Peter hit on the idea of evaluating charities when writing his will in 2001. He wanted to give a proportion of his estate to good causes and discovered there was no easy way of identifying which charities most deserved his cash. He resolved to set up a website to undertake this task when he retired, in the hope that it would encourage everybody to give more.

After the sale of Light Reading, Peter started researching this project and found David Pitchford already working on an identical idea. Peter had the cash but no time (he was still working flat out on Light Reading). David had the time and skills to develop Intelligent Giving, but needed cash. Both had journalist backgrounds and a desire to bring analysis to bear in the charity sector. It was an incredible fit. In a wild moment, Peter committed to funding the project.

Peter is now enjoying his retirement.

Have a look at Peter's welcome to the site.

Charles Hart
Charles is a musician and lyricist. He wrote the lyrics for The Phantom of the Opera and co-wrote those for Aspects of Love. He has received two Ivor Novello Awards, has been nominated twice for a Tony Award, and was nominated for an Oscar in 2004 for best original song. He also has extensive experience of being asked for money by charities.

Louise Alexander ACMA (Company Secretary and accountant)
Louise is in charge of the finance function for a number of small voluntary sector organisations and was formerly the Head of Finance and Administration for Charter88.

Members of the company are the Directors, Kathryn Becher, Graham Leigh, Holly North and David Pitchford.

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