Intelligent Giving

If you were looking for Intelligent Giving, you’ve come to the right place. The website intelligentgiving.com isn’t operating at the moment, but that doesn’t mean we’ve disappeared.

Intelligent Giving (IG) started life as an independent organisation that set out to inform donors about UK charities by rating them on the quality of their reporting. Based on the guidance set by the Charity Commission, we reviewed their annual reports and accounts, and gave charities a score to show how well they did. This is what our charity ratings looked like:

Along with the ratings, we provided topical comment and analysis of big issues in the charity sector, from the donor’s point of view. We had some pretty interesting debates, with a wide range of views expressed on everything from fundraising methods to charities and transparency.

In the summer of 2009, we merged with New Philanthropy Capital (NPC), with whom we shared a focus on analysing charities. Although the Intelligent Giving website isn’t operating any more, NPC has now taken on a lot of what IG was about. What that means in practice is that NPC is launching a stream of work around how charities communicate their work in public, through their annual reports, accounts, impact reports, annual reviews and websites. If you’re interested in supporting NPC as we build on and develop this important area of work, please get in touch.

NPC has always focused on the question of impact within the charity sector, but before now has been better known for how to measure and analyse impact than how to communicate it. But all charities are required to report on their work, and we believe there’s great scope for charities to improve their communications by reflecting on what’s most important. You can read more about that in Talking about results, our paper on charities communicating impact, and see what we think charities should focus on in their reporting.

We’re still developing the IG methodology, so watch this space for more details. We’ll be publishing the new, improved approach (part of which was used to do the research in Talking about results) soon along with a paper on the links between transparency and effectiveness.

We’re also very active in the area of charity reporting, so get in touch if you’d like to know more about:

Consulting services to help charities review and improve their reporting

Events, seminars and training courses focused on improving your impact reporting

Working with partners to help the sector:

• ImpACT Coalition - join to show your commitment to transparency and accountability, sign up to the Transparency Manifesto, and review your organisation with the ImpACT Toolkit.
• Charity Commission - as the regulator of charities’ annual reporting, the Charity Commission has a keen interest in supporting and improving performance and impact reporting.
• Charity Navigator - the US charity rating agency is working on moving from a ratings approach focused mainly on financials, to one that incorporates accountability, transparency, and eventually effectiveness. As strategic partners of Charity Navigator’s, NPC is collaborating on developing their new approach, and committed to harmonising approaches as much as possible to maximise the impact of our work and what we can learn from each other.

If you’d like to find out more, please contact Tris Lumley or Sarah Hedley.