Intelligent Giving

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The Intelligent Giving logo
The Intelligent Giving logo

Intelligent Giving is a website for charity donors run by a small, not-for-profit company based in Bethnal Green, London. It was founded in 2005 by two former journalists, David Pitchford and Peter Heywood, and launched on 1 November 2006.[1]

Contents

[edit] Overview

Intelligent Giving aims to raise public interest in charitable giving and advises donors how to make the most satisfactory use of their money. It is one of several organisations, including New Philanthropy Capital (UK) and Charity Navigator (US), that have formed for this purpose, and it operates in a relatively new sector in the not-for-profit arena. It seeks to bring its findings to as wide a readership as possible, employing chatty and casual English on its website and issuing timely press releases of charity-related material.[2] The authors align themselves with donors, not with the charity fundraising community.

[edit] Services and work

An Intelligent Giving charity profile
An Intelligent Giving charity profile

The central feature of Intelligent Giving’s website is a charity ratings service. In 2005-2006 it researched and rated over 500 UK charities and listed a further 1000. Although it clearly acknowledges that quality of work is the most important way to judge a charity, it holds transparency as an important indicator of a charity’s diligence, and says that this is the most important aspect - and a cross-sector comparable one - of a charity's annual report.[3]

Intelligent Giving claims to assess transparency using 43 criteria[4] derived largely from research carried out by the Charity Commission in 2004.[5] Intelligent Giving gives a percentage score for the transparency, or "Quality of reporting" of each charity.[4]

The website also contains overviews of charity sectors, an explanation of the full range of ways to give, interviews with givers and short articles by experts. It also provides a discussion forum for the donor community.

[edit] Media coverage

In November 2006, Intelligent Giving published an article about Children in Need, a big charity, which attracted wide attention – some of which Intelligent Giving regarded as misleading - across the British media.[6] The article, titled “Four things wrong with Pudsey” described donations to Children in Need as a ‘lazy and inefficient way of giving’ and pointed out that, as a grant-giving charity, Children in Need would use donations to pay two sets of administration costs. It also described the quality of some of its public reporting as 'shambolic'.[7]

In March 2007, Intelligent Giving claimed that English Premiership football clubs were not giving enough to charity.[8] Chelsea FC was particularly criticized in this work, and an alleged member of the Club's media team threatened an Intelligent Giving employee with violence in response to media reports.[9][10]

In June 2007 the organisation analysed the Jewish charities it had profiled and concluded, “They are pretty appalling in terms of transparency.” Details from the report were published in the Jewish Chronicle. [11]

In July 2007 Intelligent Giving won the New Statesman New Media Award for Information & Openness. [12] -

October 2007 saw Intelligent Giving name and shame in The Guardian the rugby union charity, Wooden Spoon Society, for providing a very low return on its fundraising activities.[13] Intelligent Giving's argument was refuted by John Inverdale, a BBC broadcaster, in an opinion piece in the Daily Telegraph as "misguided reporting that fails to understand how fund-raising operates." It was also condemned by Wooden Spoon in its statement "Putting the Record Straight".[13]

In December 2007 an opinion piece in the UK Motor Industry Magazine viewed IG as "a self-serving organisation...incapable of understanding the difference between overheads and cost of sales"[citation needed]

[edit] Charity Commission

Intelligent Giving has been criticised by the Charity Commission following the complaint it raised regarding Wooden Spoon. In a letter dated 13th November 2007 a Charity Commission representative disagreed with IG's financial analysis and stated, "The Commission does not concur with your view that the charity's costs were excessive, taking into account the method of fundraising which is employed by the Charity" [13]. This judgement subsequently attracted attention in the Sunday Telegraph, where it was given as an example of the Charity Commission's poor decision-making process.[14]

[edit] Voluntary sector response

Intelligent Giving says that it has received good and bad responses from charities in equal measure.-[citation needed] Negative responses include: Steve Taylor of Sue Ryder Care, who decried the organisation as a ‘self appointed guardian’ with ‘little demonstrable understanding of the operating framework’ of charities; the Institute of Fundraising, which called its research methods ‘rudimentary’; and Sir Terry Wogan (a trustee of Children in Need) who condemned its work as 'contemptible'. [15] [16]

Intelligent Giving's analytical approach - which results in the production of league-tables that rank charities by their degrees of transparency - has also caused concern. Detractors argue that charities do complex work that cannot be summed up in tabular form.[citation needed] Intelligent Giving, however, says that its approach is significantly more nuanced than that of other charity-profiling services, such as Charity Navigator in the US.[17]

[edit] See also

[edit] References

  1. ^ The History. Intelligent Giving. Retrieved on 2007-01-18.
  2. ^ Press office. Intelligent Giving. Retrieved on 2007-01-19.
  3. ^ Pitchford, Dave. Why the Obsession with annual reports?. Intelligent Giving. Retrieved on 2007-01-18.
  4. ^ a b How We Review. Intelligent Giving. Retrieved on 2007-01-18.
  5. ^ For Charities: How we calculate transparency. Intelligent Giving. Retrieved on 2007-01-18.
  6. ^ Pitchford, Dave. The Times, Children in Need, and us. Intelligent Giving. Retrieved on 2007-01-25.
  7. ^ Rothwell, Adam. Four Things Wrong With Pudsey. Intelligent Giving. Retrieved on 2007-01-18.
  8. ^ Ghosh, Neill. Football's Big Guns Caught Offside. Intelligent Giving. Retrieved on 2007-04-11.
  9. ^ Marre, Oliver. Pendennis: Chelsea play hard - off the pitch as well as on. The Observer. Retrieved on 2007-04-11.
  10. ^ Malley, Paul. "League of Scrooges", Daily Star. Retrieved on 2007-03-26. 
  11. ^ Rocker, Simon. ‘Secret’ charities under attack. The Jewish Chronicle. Retrieved on 2007-06-29.
  12. ^ New Media Awards 2007 Winners. The New Statesman. Retrieved on 2007-07-19.
  13. ^ a b c Watchdog blows whistle on rugby charity's £2m bill for high living. The Guardian. Retrieved on 2007-10-29.
  14. ^ Palmer, Alasdair. To be charitable, this commission is warped. The Sunday Telegraph. Retrieved on 2008-01-21.
  15. ^ Kelly, Annie. "Pudsey's worst nightmare", Guardian Unlimited, 2006-11-29. Retrieved on 2007-01-18. 
  16. ^ Wogan, Terry. "Wogan's World", Daily Telegraph, 2006-11-19. Retrieved on 2007-01-19. 
  17. ^ Pitchford, David. "Are charities really afraid of committing to transparency?", Third Sector, 2007-01-10. Retrieved on 2007-01-19. 

[edit] External links

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