WE WANT TO make the world a better place. Yet we've been accused of damaging charities, undermining trust and using crude methods that do more harm than good. We've mounted the occasional defence of our methods - but now we want to know: what good have we actually done?

It's a pretty fundamental question - and we ask all the charities we profile to provide an answer in their annual report.

When it came to working out the impact of our own activities, the task appeared more difficult than we had at first thought. But after much cogitation we came up with the following.
 

• We have helped thousands of people give to charity. Our charity profiles have been read over 130,000 times by 80,000 people. Some of those people will have been helped by our advice. On top of that, our experts' choices and their articles have been read almost 30,000 times - which means we've put an awful lot of people in touch with the cutting-edge thinking of research outfits like New Philanthropy Capital, and giving circles like the Funding Network.
• We have encouraged charities to take their donors seriously. Before we started launching the occasional salvo into the world of charity fundraising, many professional fundraisers took their donors' wishes with a pinch of salt. During one memorable conversation, I even remember being told that donors' wishes were 'irrelevant' once a charity had got its hands on the cash. Hmm. We don't think charities will be able to get away with this sort of thing in the future - and they're already changing their behaviour to take account of our criticisms. We even spotted our name in a recent fundraising textbook - with the warning that being transparent and accountable was no longer optional.
• We have helped charities become more effective. Lots of charities have asked for advice, and we've usually given it. From explaining why it's important to include the amount of cash in the bank in their annual reports, to spelling out why good communications don't need to be expensive, we've dished out a lot of free support - and for most of those charities who've asked, their Quality of Reporting scores have rocketed.
• We have got people talking about the big charity issues. Over 2,000 comments have been posted to our message-boards since our launch last year. Most of the conversations have been about broad questions that affect lots of charities - and there's nowhere else on the web where this sort of chat takes place.
• We have spread our ideas far and wide. We've spoken to and assisted enterprising people from Canada, France, Israel, the United States and South Korea, all of whom wanted to start a website like this, or who were seriously interested in our ideas. We hope they're successful.
• We have secured positive media coverage for charities. As in The Telegraph, The londonpaper, the Evening Standard, local newspapers and even the tabloids. We've also put journalists off writing stories which would have seriously damaged the charity world if written.
• We have had an idea which might just revolutionize the fundraising universe when it's launched. But we're not going to tell you what it is yet. Transparency does have its limits, you know.

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