New and updated charity profiles.

Sarah Hedley - Thursday, August 21, 2008

Recently we've been adding a whole host of new charities to our books, including a spate of arts organisations.

By far the best of the bunch is the National Portrait Gallery (see profile) who have gained Top Ranked status with a reputable 78 per cent for Quality of Reporting. Generally, however, the financial reporting from arts charities was poor. The worst offenders were the Royal Exchange Theatre Company (see profile) and the Philharmonia Orchestra (see profile) who only gave scant details of where they get their money from.

But it was encouraging to see that most arts outfits attempted to talk about how putting on plays, exhibitions, operas or ballets benefits the public - something they often find hard to measure. Bristol Old Vic (see profile) and the Young Vic (see profile) were especially good at this, giving lots of info about their education work.

Another charity that failed to talk about its beneficiaries is the Army Benevolent Fund (see profile), an outfit which gives grants both to soldiers and their families, and to other charities that support the forces. Their efforts at transparency pales in comparison to the Royal British Legion (see profile) whose clear reporting mean that it’s Top Ranked for the third year running.

About a year ago the Jewish Chronicle ran a story based on our research about the poor transparency of some Jewish charities. A year later, and it’s disappointing that some of those named have not improved. This is the case with British WIZO (see profile) who once again produced a pitiful report, gaining only 38 per cent for Quality of reporting.

But it’s great to see other organisations such as UJIA (see profile) who, along with Manchester Federation (see profile), have improved by over 30 per cent in that last year. This is fantastic and unprecedented progress which, if it continues, should see them Top Ranked next year!

Your Review - as relates to Charity Voucher Agencies

Submitted by yitzk on Wed, 27/08/2008 - 10:47am.

Sarah

Thanks for comments and pointer to your "43 criteria".

I have read them and, as suspected, many of them are irrelevant to Voucher Agencies, since the trustees have very limited scope to determine the strategy or beneficiaries of their charity giving. I agree, of course, that they must post helpful information on their web-site, but I know that many also produce (private) reports for their donors/clients - which you would not have seen.

I would be pleased to carry this discussion offline - via direct email

Link corrected

Submitted by Sarah Hedley on Tue, 26/08/2008 - 2:53pm.

Thanks for pointing that out SimonK, and apologies for wrong link. I've corrected it now, so it should direct you to the right profile!

Sarah, Intelligent Giving

One of your links is wrong

Submitted by SimonK on Tue, 26/08/2008 - 2:47pm.

The link above for the Royal British Legion profile actually goes to the Philharmonia Orchestra.

Hi Yitzk, The 43 criteria we

Submitted by Sarah Hedley on Tue, 26/08/2008 - 11:31am.

Hi Yitzk,

The 43 criteria we used to evaluate the charities are on the site: how we calculate transparency.

As for the Jewish charities that ran voucher services, we found in some cases that the description of activities was so poor that they gave no clues about what they did. It was especially hard to tell if they did not have a website.

The criteria do take account of different types of charities, including ones that run voucher schemes. If they had told us more in the report, these charities’ Quality of Reporting scores would have been higher.

Sarah, Intelligent Giving

Review of Jewish Charities

Submitted by yitzk on Sun, 24/08/2008 - 9:36am.

Interested to see the high profile report of IG on Jewish Charities in this week’s Jewish Chronicle.

Obviously dismayed that Jewish charities seemed to have a low score and we need to know what the “43 criteria” are It is not clear that readers (or authors!) understand the role of Charity *VOUCHER* services – eg CAF, since many of those highlighted are, in fact, such agencies. Their donations are determined almost exclusively by the wishes of their clients. As such, they cannot publicises the charities they support, nor the criteria for their selection. De facto they will not score highly according to your rules Virtually all operate at a very low level of admin charges – unlike the mainstream charities...

Reviewed Reports

Submitted by Sarah Hedley on Fri, 22/08/2008 - 1:12pm.

Hi Anon2,

Most of the profiles in the blog will be based on the 2006-07 report. And you can see which report any of our profiles are based on at the bottom right hand side of the page, along with the date we reviewed the report.

Sarah, Intelligent Giving

Just for clarity

Submitted by Anon2 (not verified) on Fri, 22/08/2008 - 9:11am.

Plese can you indicate which year's report you are reviewing, either here or on the profile page?

Thanks

Good work IG - keep it up!

Submitted by Adamiswrong (not verified) on Thu, 21/08/2008 - 2:46pm.

Good work IG - keep it up!