Which? charities

A bit away from digital, but I’ll follow this up with a digital focused post in a while.

An article in professional fundraising says that intelligent giving has ambitions to turn itself into a Which? for charities. It wants to measure effectiveness – the impact that a charity has – so that it can say which organisation an individual is best investing in.

One of the main ways it proposes to do this is by talking to beneficiaries, as well as experts in the field.

Despite the obvious methodological difficulties of any study, this may be achievable for the UK. But such a system is completely unrealistic for international development.

Is Adam Rothwell really advocating that he will fly around the world, speaking to thousands of beneficaries in hundreds of countries about how charity x or charity y has improved their lives? The time needed to assess an organisation like Oxfam is mind boggling.

Even putting aside the resources required, there are good reasons to suggest a survey wouldn’t be valid, because poverty covers not just material wealth but also social capital. It’s not just a case of counting schools and talking to happy community members – issues are complicated and involve rights and social development with intangible things, like confidence.

In my job I was lucky enough to visit work in Malawi and speak to a community where the charity was phasing out its work after 10 long years. Big changes had been made, a new school, a well, a co-operative for food production. But when I spoke to the community members they were scared. They didn’t want the organisation to leave because they felt they weren’t ready – they had never had to run a community co-operative on their own before, and be truly in charge of their own development. The organisation’s staff were confident that the community could go it alone – like a bird learning to fly they just needed to take the plunge. But to an independent observer, who do you trust in this situation? The community members who are scared, or the organisation’s staff?

Intelligent giving’s aspirations are admirable – trying to see which organisations are effective is really important. But this idea seems pretty half baked to me.

the future of charities

It’s struck me recently how many of the recent “rising stars” of charity brands aren’t charities in the sense of what people automatically think – namely, that the organisation you donate to does the work. The “charities” that are gaining prominence at the moment are little more than charitable foundations which fund the work they’re focused around.

Charity:water, for example, much praised recently for being the beneficiary of twestival, Hugh Jackman’s donation, and Youtube’s trial of overlays. But it doesn’t go to the actual trouble of getting to Africa and installing wells itself. Instead, it gives the money it raises to other charities to deliver on its promises in its marketing materials, leaving it to focus on raising money and its profile.

Similarly, Help for Heroes, which has been partnered by the Sun newspaper to reach its target of £20 million has had a big boost for the coverage around major Phil Packer. But again, Help for Heroes delivers its work through giving grants, rather than carrying out the work itself.

I think we’ll see more of this. Brands are so important in charity marketing. The diversification that charity:water and Help for Heroes are taking advantage of helps them focus on their brands and their fundraising. By leaving the difficult job of delivering the work to specialists they can avoid having to reinvent the wheel and can make sure they’re able to make a difference straight away.

And a diversification of brands and service delivery can help open up new markets and new audiences. Many charities find it difficult to connect to younger audiences. That’s why charities like Christian Aid have started youth brands like Ctrl Alt Shift. By playing down the charity and focusing on the audience, the ctrl alt shift is able to connect with its audience. With the democratisation of communication tools through social media, I think that we’ll start to see charities focusing on targeted and niche audiences starting up which are simply fundraising brands, giving the money they raise to the organisations that are most able to carry out the work.

Anyone know of any other fundraising brands that don’t do the work themselves?

See the difference – gimmick or revolution

I’ve been reading a bit recently about See The Difference, a new web venture nicely summed up on Bryan Miller’s blog. Essentially, it is a new charity aggregator which promises to revolutionise the charity market through it’s use of video to recruit and feedback to donors.

I think it will fail for 2 reasons:

Some are making comparisons with Kiva. But there is a fundamental difference between this venture and other already existing charity aggregator sites, such as Global Giving. Kiva facilitates the interaction between individuals. The old addage is as true today as ever. People give to people. People do not give to projects. They don’t give to “funds”. They give to make a difference to people. Kiva knows this and does this very well. Charity aggregators haven’t done this very well so far, because they focus on aggregating projects – not on aggregating individual need.

Secondly, video online isn’t new. Other charities are out there already using it to excellent effect telling their stories in real time. Charity:water, child’s i foundation and learnasone are all using video to tell stories direct from the field. They’re broadcasting their message across multiple platforms of twitter, facebook, blogs and other social media. They don’t need See The Difference. All it could ever be to them is an expensive shop window, but looking at the success of charity:water, charities can do perfectly well without this extra layer getting in the way.