BACK IN JANUARY, we asked you, our readers, what you thought of this site. You told us - and we feel rather pleased with the response. Amongst the highlights, almost 90% of you said that you trusted what you read on these pages, and over a third of our respondents changed their choice of charity after reading our profiles. So it looks as if our work is on the right track - but if you disagree, or if you'd like to comment on any aspect of our work, please do just let us know.

Who you are
Not surprisingly, pretty much all of you have something to do with charities, with 55% donating to charities, 46% working for charities, and another 17% working in the voluntary sector.

Peeping toms
The large majority of our visitors (66%) visit in order ‘to check up on particular charities’, although, disappointingly, only 18% visit to ‘find a charity to support’.
A handful of visitors are purely voyeuristic, seeing our webcam as the major attraction. One visitor comes to the site for the sole purpose of ‘checking up on [their] son, Adam’.

Crowd pleasers
As we would hope, our charity profiles are by far the most popular part of the site with 42% of respondents singling them out as their favourite bit.  32% of you liked the blog articles the most, and our general guidance on how to give to charity is most appreciated by 11% of respondents.

Shaking things up a little, but doing no harm
You told us that we help shape your decisions on which charity to support.

37% of you have changed the charity/charities they support as a result of visiting Intelligent Giving, or plan to do so. 26% probably won’t change the charity/charities they support as a result of our site and 37% are sitting on the fence.

88% of our respondents said that had not changed the overall amount they give to charity as a result of visiting Intelligent Giving, or they have not used the site long enough to make any changes.  12% of respondents have increased their overall donations because of Intelligent Giving. On the other side of the spectrum, 0% (yes, not one person) had decreased their overall giving as a result of visiting our site.

All in all it seems we may have increased the charitable pie a little, and perhaps changed the relative size of everyone’s pieces.

A question of trust
89% of respondents said that they trust what they read at here a lot or a fair amount, and only 5% said that they trust what they read here a little, or very little.

You can’t please everyone
Interestingly, 73% skipped the question about what they dislike about the site - which you'll have to interpret as you please.  Of the people who said they disliked something about the site, 35% did not like the opinionated blog articles and 30% didn’t like the general tone of voice.

What our visitors want us to do

• Increase our critical reviews of charity products for donors (eg. Christmas cards, podcasts, gifts etc)
• Increase our investigative work on charities
• Increase the number of charities we profile (with some requests to include Scottish charities)
• Include awards won/expert recommendations on individual charity pages
• Increase our investigative work on corporate/government support for charities
• Improve our methodology to prioritise transparency about charities’ impact.

We can do all of this and more - but only if you support us.

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