The updated criteria - basically a commonsense revision of the originals - were ready several months ago. However the technical development to implement them is extensive and we need to secure our (very busy) developer for several days in a row; we hope to have them in place in the not-too-distant future and we will let you know as soon as it happens.

Neill, Intelligent Giving Lead Researcher

Hey. Re: the 'Beware people who rate charities' thread.

Have the revised criteria that Editor Adam mentioned would appear in the spring been introduced yet?

Measuring charity effectiveness is in one sense what you guys are all about - at least, if your mission "to help you give happily and with confidence" is to be taken literally... It's a daunting task that will prove challenging to perform objectively let alone obtain universal approval of! But that shouldn’t stop you trying, with all of your usual clear caveats, of course!

I was disappointed to see that amongst your criteria for rating charities 'Targets and indicators against which success is measured' comes in at no 26. Surely this should be in the top five.

Peter, I agree that surveys of a charity’s staff are useful. Of course people do lie in surveys! I conducted extensive face-to-face surveys of aid workers in Sudan which were conducted in complete anonymity, and remained so, and a significant percent lied - or at best they were deluding themselves. That’s assuming I am telling the truth, of course…

Personally, I think a good starting point would be to randomly telephone a selection of a charity's staff, and ask them to state their organisation’s vision/mission/core values - and then explain how well these translate into the work that they do. For international NGOs this should absolutely involve asking overseas staff including those locally employed. It would be fascinating to see how many unhesitant and clear answers were obtained, and the exercise could be repeated randomly over time. I'd love to see the results of that exercise added in to the profiles.

I'd love to see a message board of they type you suggest as well. And moderation of it would be a fabulous job!

Your site is wonderful; please to continue to be controversial and challenging and to encourage others to be. Anything to get people talking and thinking, yes?

This is a great thread. It touches on an issue that concerns me the most, as the person that's funded Intelligent Giving to date. I hope it also demonstrates IG's wish to be totally open about everything it does.

I'd be very interested to hear people's ideas for measuring charity effectiveness. The three I've been plugging are:

Surveys. In many cases, it's not feasible to survey the beneficiaries but it may be possible to survey people that work with charities and thus know how effective they are. EG: social workers or medical professionals.

Moderated Message Boards. Get experts in specific areas to work their network of contacts, and elevate good posts on the general IG message board, to produce an inside view of the effectiveness of charities.

Online "Album" of Smaller Charities.
LMC's suggestion of getting people to send in recommendations chimes with this idea.

Stepping back a minute, I think IG has done the right thing by starting out rating charities on the basis of how clearly they explain what they do with donors' money. As I've said in previous posts, IG has limited resources (ie, I have limited resources) so it's important that we know our limitations and don't overstep them.

Doing these other things will take time and more money. Which should we tackle first?

It's worth pointing out that IG is doing what it can to address this issue already:

- by pointing to charities that have won awards:
http://www.intelligentgiving.com/charity_chooser/award_winners

-- and by pointing to ones recommended by experts:
http://www.intelligentgiving.com/charity_chooser/experts_choices

Peter Heywood, Benefactor, Intelligent Giving

and have been trying for a long time to think of how this sort of information can be captured in a meaningful way.

Demonstration of accountability to beneficiaries is a tricky one. The obvious "off the top of my head" answer is to look out for long-term impact - it's all very well providing a 'project', but has it made a real difference to the life of a disadvantaged person? (teaching to fish vs giving fish). However, the problem with this is that many agencies are often involved with e.g. getting a homeless person of the streets. Unless that beneficiary is very self-aware, it will be extremely difficult to pinpoint what it was that made the difference and "who" was the most effective in helping them move on with their life.

I would argue that significant donors to a charity are beneficiaries too - if they have invested something of themselves in a charity - time (trustees), money, interest - there is an impact on them - improved self-image? (they are a good nice person). (I'm excluding the "OK, £2 a month direct debit to get the street fundraiser off my back and let me not feel guilty" or the "might as well chuck the clothes in this charity bag rather than the bin" donors - these donors are still good people, but may not have the same awareness of what the charity does or 'emotional' investment in the welfare of its beneficiaries.)

Eerily enough, I was going to post a new thread today, which is vaguely relevant to this one, although going off at a slight tangent.

I was wondering whether IG would be prepared to allow a section for people to post about "My pet charity". With "rules" that the charity has to be registered (any size, but must have *some* checkable stuff!) and that the poster must must declare their "interest" and NOT be a member of paid staff, or supplier (e.g. of consultancy or other services) - however, could be a trustee, a beneficiary, a donor or simply someone interested in the charity's work who has found out more and is willing to share their research.

I would then suggest that IG follow up postings with their own research and fill in any obvious 'gaps'. I don't believe that the take-up would be immediately so huge as to make this too onerous and it might highlight some interesting - and different - organisations. If it's in a separate section, then IG can 'enforce' the point that they are being nice and hosting individual's opinions and that these are not necessarily shared by IG!

The reason I think this is vaguely relevant is because it 'adds in' the connection to real people/real lives - not reported by evaluation experts but straight from the horse's mouth. How this could be built into some sort of rating system might be identifiable from any common threads in these stories?
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... nearly Vlad the Impaler

We welcome new ways of thinking about our criteria and we will be rising to David's challenge when we develop next year's set. Results to start appearing in the spring.