CHILD SPONSOR LEADS THE WAY
This UK arm of the international PLAN movement claims to be the UK's leading child sponsorship agency. But, rather than spending sponsors' cash on individual children, the charity funds an array of child-centred community-development projects. It also tries to influence government policy on children's rights and, in 2006-07, launched a report into the status of girls in poor communities. The latest annual report describes the charity's activities in admirable detail.
Read the charity's reply
QUALITY OF REPORTING
What is this? |
 78 % |
How much info does the charity want to share? This score, taken from our search for 43 key points in the annual report, gives the answer. Top mark is 100%. Anything over 70% is a good effort. |
SIZE OF CHARITY...
What is this? |
 Large |
We only profile the largest charities in England & Wales, and our sizes are relative to the largest and smallest among them. So where we describe a charity as 'Small', it is still much larger than the national average. |
HIGHEST SALARY
What is this? |
 £80k to £99k |
Taken from the vague bandings given in annual reports; note that 'Under £60k' could be £9k or £59k. Nonetheless the number of bars should roughly correlate with the 'Size of charity' bars. |
ETHICAL INVESTMENT POLICY
What is this? |
 No investments |
We asked the charity if it has an ethical investment policy. If yes, it gets an angel. Those with no policy but which don't invest in tobacco/arms get a halo. Those without investments, or who didn't respond, appear neutral. Those with stakes in arms/tobacco get a fallen angel. |
But don't just take our word for it...
Plan UK's policy, reviewed annually by the Trustees, is to maintain working capital sufficient to cover its anticipated needs - currently we consider two months prudent. As a Child Sponsorship agency we are able to predict a large proportion of total monthly income with a high degree of confidence and greater reserves are considered unnecessary. We rely on our sponsors and do not want to hold on to their money any longer than we have to - it is important to get their contributions to the field, where they are needed, as soon as possible.
Reviewed: 2009-02-02 Accounts ending: 2007-06-30
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I've been a donor to Plan International for more than a decade - and the fact that I still give money to them demonstrates that I think they do a good job.
To start off with, I really liked the idea of being assigned a child to support, even if I knew this was just a way of pulling at my heart strings. There's something about getting a photo of your child, and hearing how he/she is getting on every now and again that takes things to a personal level.
Over time, though, it started to grate on me. I knew it was somewhat of a deception, and I couldn't help thinking of how much money Plan International was devoting to keeping it going. Not much if you believe the "less than one percent" figure cited in the Intelligent Giving profile, but as the note next to this figure states, admin cost statistics are practically meaningless.
I guess the way to look at this is that it's probably a very effective way of getting people to give, and I should have just played along with it. I did for the seven year period that you commit to sponsor a child. After that, I bumped up my monthly contribution to Plan International but told them that I didn't want to have a child assigned to me. I feel a lot better about it now.
Peter Heywood, Intelligent Giving