Charity websites working to educate donors
Posted on August 25, 2010 at 10:26 am
I’ve long pushed for more honesty and transparency on charity websites. There is a critical need for more real information and fewer “happy stories“. Recently I’ve seen what I’m hoping is a new trend of charities working to educate their donors.
- Pepy Tours does a nice job with their blog Lessons I Learned. I appreciate the fact that Daniela delves into the issues surrounding voluntourism. I also respect that she is willing to admit her own organization’s mistakes and what they have learned from them.
- Alive and Kicking recently wrote a good blog post discussing the pros and cons of BOGO (Buy One Give One) and how they’ve moved on to BOGO 2.0. I appreciate that they did not gloss over the issues or just tell pretty stories. I also liked their list of five recommendations for evaluating BOGO products at the end of the post.
- I’ve been contacted several times by an intern at a nonprofit that shall remain nameless. This intern is working to convince his organization to be more transparent with donors. His goal is to have his organization post their financials as well as explain to donors their system for monitoring and evaluating their work. I wish him the best of luck.
- Just yesterday I was contacted by the Nurse-Family Partnership to share their evidence-based programs. Easily accessible on their website is a page with links to the results of randomized trials and other research on their model of assistance.
- Jennifer provided another great example from Engineers Without Borders Canada. They do an annual “Failure Report” in order to “publicly celebrate these failures, which allows us to share the lessons more broadly and create a culture that encourages creativity and calculated risk taking”
I’m very happy to see organizations working to educate and inform donors. I truly believe that this is key to more effective donors and more effective aid programs.
Related Posts:
Does your website inform or misinform donors?
It’s time to stop telling pretty stories and start really evaluating the impact of aid
« A few results from the reader survey • Whites in Shining Armor »
Comments
I really like that you consistently point out best practices/solutions and don’t simply criticize. That’s rare and to be emulated.
Thanks Carla!
Engineers Without Borders publishes an annual “failure” report.
http://www.ewb.ca/en/whoweare/accountable/failure.html
But they’re not failures if the organization is actually learning from them and encouraging others to do the same.
This is so timely– my last two post were on telling more authentic and transparent stories as well as utilizing evaluating and monitoring as more than a donor requiremnt but really as a management tool. I am on my soap box as I write this comment.
Another effort to note is MobileActive’s Failfaire, featured in the NYT earlier this month. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/17/technology/17fail.html?_r=4&hp=&adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1282924880-z+70UzdK9J0u3reihi0iOQ
In my opinion this kind of evaluation should be something inside the organitation, not published. There are always people who will use against you, and why make doubts in donors? The organitation has a lot of information to publish to make use resources in publish its mistakes. Anyway monitoring should be done and learn from it.