For an organization that spends about 80 per cent of its time writing profiles of charities, we thought we’d kept rather too quiet about them – especially considering how many good, bad and downright secretive organizations we’ve come across recently. So this is my pick of the most interesting charities we’ve found over the past few weeks.

Top of the pile - charities which have achieved our prestigious Top-Ranked status – are Ormiston Children and Families Trust (see profile), which provides support to children with imprisoned parents, and to Traidcraft Exchange (see profile), the development agency behind the Fairtrade brand. Both scored an impressive 75 per cent Quality of Reporting score, making them two of the most transparent charities on the Charity Commission’s register.

Unfortunately, the same can’t be said of the Samantha Dickson Research Trust (see profile) whose latest report didn't tell us even the basics about its work, which apparently helps people with brain tumors. This earned it a meagre 40 per cent on our Quality of Reporting scale, and surely undermines the good intentions with which the charity was clearly set up. Similarly disappointing was the National Marine Aquarium (see profile) in Plymouth which, despite its massive £4,000,000 budget, proved reticent in telling donors how it spent all that cash.

For some reason, recent weeks have seen us focus on children’s hospices (you can imagine the mood in the office), which have proved to be a bit of a mixed bag when it comes to their transparency. At the bottom end, neither the Rainbows Children’s Hospice (see profile) nor the Shooting Star Trust (see profile) have managed to get a score above 50 per cent, putting them well into the bottom half of all the charities we profile.

Thankfully, this is not the story across the board, and it’s good to see outfits like CHASE Hospice Care for Children (see profile) seeing their score rise by over 10 per cent over two years, giving it a reputable 71 per cent  for 2006/7. However, even this very decent showing is overshadowed by the indefatigable Ty Hafan hospice in Wales (see profile) who this year scored a superb 80 per cent, proving that, when it comes to quality of reporting, there's just no excuse for the stragglers.
 

 

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