TODAY IS MY LAST DAY at Intelligent Giving. In fact as I write this it is the final hour and so a good time to look back at my 15 months here to reflect on the highs and lows: my own “annual report”.

When I started in February 2006, Intelligent Giving was still just an idea. Dave had been working on it for a year on his own time, but the real graft began when Peter Heywood stepped in with the cash allowing Dave to recruit full-time staff.

The highs and lows
The next eight months were spent furiously getting ready for the launch. All the content had to be created from scratch, and the designers and developers had to build the site. Dave was a man possessed. I have never seen anyone work so hard.

The site was launched on time and within budget on November 1 2006. Since then it has been an interesting ride. Some people love what we do and some don’t. Highlights include contributing to 80 articles across all the major national newspapers, giving a speech on charity governance in Italy, and the news this week that IG won the New Statesman New Media Award for Information and Openness.

Low points mainly centre on the dullness of creating basic profiles, and often having to spend my days reading painfully bad annual reports. Being threatened with physical violence by alleged members of the Chelsea Football Club media team was an interesting experience too.

“Charity accounts are still a complete mess”
During my time here I must have read close to 1,000 charity annual reports, which must make me some kind of expert. The good news to come out of my experiences with charity reporting is that it is improving. In just one year, the standard of annual reports has gone up significantly. The bad news is that too many of them are still rubbish.

While lots of the big charities seem to have grasped the fact that it is in their interests to communicate openly with donors, too many still shy away from disclosing information about how they operate – their successes and failures, their plans and targets. This lack of transparency will only damage charities in the long run.

Charity accounts are still a complete mess. New accounting rules (SORP 2005) have made a difference, but it has not made them any clearer. It is still often impossible to find out what money came from where and how it was spent. Working out how much government income a charity receives or what the true costs of administering the charity are can be a painful task.

And it’s goodbye from him…
Surely it does not have to be this difficult, and in the future I would hope to see a more straightforward approach to charity accounting - one that is aimed at the donor. People often argue that the research we do lacks meaning because no one reads annual reports and accounts. If they were presented better and contained more candour and less marketing-speak, discerning donors would take the time to read them.

I have thoroughly enjoyed my time at Intelligent Giving. I could not have asked for better colleagues or a more interesting and meaningful project. To Dave and Adam and all the incredibly talented interns we have had, I give my warmest thanks. I will miss the bickering over who makes the tea, the cheesy crisps in the pub, Dave’s prawn salads and all the things that have made working here such a unique experience. I wish the team all the success they deserve.

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