The (Old) Intelligent Giving Blog

We have moved

2007-03-07T09:34:00.000Z

Our blog has moved.

Find new posts here.

Two more things wrong with Pudsey

2007-03-05T09:04:00.000Z

CHILDREN IN NEED WAS in trouble yesterday after the Mail on Sunday revealed that Sir Terry Wogan pockets over £1,000 an hour for hosting its appeal-night show.

The last time we criticized Pudsey, Sir Terry blasted that he knew the charity was 'scrupulous in all its dealings.' But that's not entirely true. Not only does Wogan's 'nominal' payment undermine the spirit of the appeal, but it also calls into question (again) CIN's commitment to transparency, in two ways.

Firstly, it clashes with the spirit of the law. Charity trustees - like Sir Terry - aren't allowed to receive payment for their services, but Wogan in effect is being handsomely compensated for hosting CIN's biggest fundraising bash. Technically, he's paid by the BBC - making it technically legal - but it leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

Most importantly, though, there appears to be a discrepancy between what's in CIN's annual report and the secret documents obtained by the Mail. In his report, Pudsey states that

The BBC also provides other support to the Appeal that cannot be quantified (e.g. the preparation and broadcast of the annual Televised Appeal show) which has therefore been excluded from the Financial Statements.

But the new documents put a £1.2m price tag on the telly extravaganza - a figure Pudsey seems to deny exists.

What's going on? We don't know - but we'll be asking Pudsey's boss, David Ramsden, and his auditors, KPMG.

Moaning about moaning

2007-02-21T11:07:00.000Z

CHARITIES SPEND A LOT of time complaining. Many of their gripes are justified. But some of the moans beggar belief.

A prime example is a lengthy report in today's Guardian. In it, many charity people are quoted bemoaning the way their work is reported in the media. More constructive types, including Alan Gosschalk of the ImpACT Coalition, argue that if only charities communicated their work more effectively, then these examples of negative reporting would diminish.

But it's not that simple. Sometimes charities behave badly and sometimes should be taken to task for it. But few charities will acknowledge this. There's an unspoken assumption that the ends justify the means - that charities can behave almost as they want, because the work they do is good.

I don't agree, and I think that the sooner charities acknowledge that they sometimes get things wrong, the better.

Dominant philanthropic genes

2007-02-12T11:22:00.000Z

VISITORS TO TATE BRITAIN's Hogarth exhibition please note the beguiling similarity between the founder of the country's oldest children's charity, Coram Family, Captain Coram, and the founder of the successful modern children's charity, WhizzKidz, Mike Dickson:

Coram............Dickson

Or is it just me?

Private detectives required

2007-02-12T00:00:00.000Z

YOU'LL SPOT IN THE PAPERS TODAY the launch of the Fundraising Standard Board's "Fundraising Promise". Represented on charity adverts by the FSB tick (below), the Promise says it guarantees that charities won't treat you badly when you choose to give - and if they do, there's an official complaints procedure.

Fine, but we're finding it hard to get excited. The Promise is a voluntary scheme (in fact a reaction to government pressure), so far only about 200 charities - out of the 5000+ that count - have signed up. And you, the public, will have to police it.

What's more, the standards it guarantees have been watered down over the last few months to make them palatable to more charities, and the end result doesn't strike us as especially high. The 193 pages of detail are unhelpfully tucked away on the Institute of Fundraising website, and in language written for lawyers. And the sanctions they threaten are piffling; if a charity believed it could make an extra £20,000 out of a fundraising scheme that breaks a rule or two, it would probably risk the ultimate sanction of losing its membership.

Add to this the fact that adjudications over complaints are currently made by a board of charity and marketing types rather than people like you and me and it's clear that the Promise falls somewhat short of its, er, promise.

The most positive aspect of the Promise is that it shows that some charities do have professional fundraising standards - which most of the public don't know - and that it's deemed important enough to spend serious cash advertising the fact.

It's just a shame that the not-inconsiderable job of policing the Promise (meaning digesting and applying those codes of fundraising practise) now falls to us, the public. No-one else is going to do it for us. So if we don't complain, it won't mean a thing.

"Oxfam didn't want my money"

2007-02-07T15:50:00.000Z

OXFAM HAS BEEN TURNING down donations, according to an article in yesterday's Independent. In an indignant but naive opinion piece, a potential donor complains that his money wasn't deemed good enough.

What's going on? Unsurprisingly, it turns out that Oxfam is behaving entirely reasonably and the author has his knickers in a twist.

The donation offered would have included some money from big supermarkets. Oxfam is currently waging a campaign against Tesco. This was why the money was declined. In order to avoid accusations of hypocrisy, Oxfam had to say thanks, but no thanks.

Its boss, Barbara Stocking, explains, "It's never easy to turn money down, but when we do so it is because we believe we can do more good without it." I think that's a brave line to take, but one which most supporters will understand.

Moral of the story for donors with similarly grand plans? Do your research first.

The selfishness of chuggers

2007-02-02T12:17:00.000Z

A CHARITY MUGGER WAS JUSTIFYING his line of work in Friday's Guardian. It raised my hackles.

The author argued that chuggers (aka 'face-to-face fundraisers') are a force for good. And insofar as they raise money for particular charities, they are.

But chuggers make people cross. Haranguing passers-by in the street or interrupting them at home is rude and inconsiderate. It just is, however worthy the motive.

This clearly doesn't bother the charities that employ them, and I'm told the monetary returns are good. But chuggers undeniably run the risk of alienating the public from the entire charitable sector.

Through chuggers, charities become associated with anti-social behaviour. That creates bad feeling and cynicism. And if anyone had the energy to research it, it wouldn't surprise me at all to find that (in a weird, Freakonomics kind of way), chuggers do the sector more harm than good. For every donation they receieve, many more people might be put off giving for good.

"Great... but don't tell the staff!"

2007-02-01T06:04:00.000Z

A LARGE COMPANY which did poorly in our Ethical Bonuses survey contacted us yesterday to say they did have incentives to encourage staff donations and volunteering but our survey didn't show them.

We pointed out that neither their HR nor CSR departments - our points of contact - knew anything about them. The (deliberately amusing) response was along the lines of, "Ah yes, HR, the last people to know about anything!"

But if they didn't know about these policies, who did? Not the staff. It occured to us that next year we'll have to ask an extra question: "Do you have a policy of broadcasting these policies to staff at least once a year?"

PS Barclays told us they were going to advertise their high ranking in our index to all staff and remind them of the bank's donation-matching policy at the same time. Hurrah!

A better form of bonus

2007-01-30T23:59:00.000Z

WE'VE JUST MADE a discovery. It's called the 'ethical bonus,' and we think it's quite exciting.

For some time, companies have been showing their philanthropic side in a bid to attract the best staff. But with nearly all the big corporate players now committed to so-called Corporate Social Responsibility, those wanting to distinguish themselves from the pack are having to try something different.
And that's where ethical bonuses come in. We think they're going to be the next big(ish) thing.

They work in two ways. Either a company encourages its employees to give to charity by doubling (or sometimes tripling) their donations; or they give them lots of time off to volunteer.

This all looks remarkably simple - but even so, these schemes contain an enormous potential for good. If all of RBS's employees, for example, gave £10 a month, then the company would top up those donations to the tune of £25m.

Wow. And as our Ethical Bonuses Index shows, the generosity is catching.

Cross toads

2007-01-26T14:39:00.000Z

READING THROUGH THE annual report of the Derbyshire Wildlife Trust, I came across what must qualify as the most bizarre 'organizational risk' we've seen: 'toad crossing patrols'. The mind boggles. If anyone can shed any light on this, let us know...

Yes SIR, can we boogie?

2007-01-24T12:00:00.000Z

WITHIN THE NEXT few months an advisory panel will help us decide our updated set of criteria for judging charities' accountability. In preparation for the meeting, we've been looking for good new sources of charity information.

Our great hope at the moment is the Charity Commission's Summary Information Return or SIR*. This document gives a digestible breakdown of a charity's aims, achievements, management, finances and plans. Since last year all charities with an expenditure of £1+ million have had to submit one to the Commission.

The SIR was created specifically for “the interested public”. As a result it is more readable and interesting than the annual report it accompanies - when it's filled out properly. For a good example, see Health Unlimited. For a poor one, see BBC Children in Need.

Properly completed, SIRs cover several facts that we can't usually find in annual reports. Future plans for example, the amount of money received from government (as opposed to the public), the success of the main fundraising projects. And so on.

The only problem is that they only cover larger charities. If, as we would like, they become a key part of our transparency criteria, it means we would have to stop creating our detailed profiles of charities with an expenditure of less than £1million. At the moment our minimum expenditure is £250,000. Is this a sacrifice worth making for the sake of more informative profiles, we wonder?

* I sent a letter to the Charity Commission Chair two years ago pleading with her not to use this title (‘SIR’) because it is meaningless and unmemorable, but that's another story.

Are dogs more important than people?

2007-01-18T15:06:00.000Z

ENABLE Scotland, a disability charity, has just launched an advertising campaign which looks like it might stir up a bit of controversy.

You'd be forgiven for thinking that this is hardly news, but in the world of charity advertising, it's nothing short of a seismic event.

The posters point out that animal charities get more support from the public than do those dealing with disabled people - and questions whether this is something we should be satisfied with.

This strikes us as a good point to make, primarily because it stirs up debate. But donors shouldn't jump to conclusions and cancel their direct debits for the RSPCA just yet. As the animal charities are quick to point out, they don't receive the massive government contracts and grants from the lottery that disability charities get, and this makes them more reliant on donations from the public.

ENABLE in turn disputes this, and says that three-quarters of people with learning difficulties in Scotland still don't receive any formal help from charities or the government - which is why their campaign is justified.

This is clearly a complex issue, and we don't want to judge which causes are more deserving than others. But ENABLE's posters are bound to make a lot of people think. And that's definitely a good thing.

Chugger mischief

2007-01-16T12:46:00.000Z

EVEN THOUGH face-to-face fundraisers (aka "chuggers") do raise charities' profiles and sometimes bring in healthy donations, most punters don't like them. They also give the whole charity sector a bad name.

Funnily enough, all fundraising organisations and umbrella bodies beg to differ, but shoppers and office workers know different.

Even, it seems, the do-gooding Community Channel knows, and to acknowledge the fact has just produced an online game called "Chugger Chase" whereby you win points by fleeing a chugger. If he catches up, instead of eating you Pacman-style, he asks if you have a second to spare (in one of several voices including a hilariously camp one).

Two interesting points about this: no-one in the voluntary sector is supposed to say anything bad about chuggers, but the high-profile Media Trust-operated Community Channel just has.

And I wonder how the Community Channel will benefit from paying for this professionally-produced game. Unless it's a bit of viral marketing and it expects other sites to talk about it and.... ah...

The Big Olympics Fund

2007-01-11T14:23:00.000Z

YOU MAY HAVE HEARD the recent fuss over the likelihood of Lottery cash being used to finance the spiralling cost of the 2012 Olympics. The Chief Executive of the Big Lottery Fund is very cross about this. He fears that the cash he doles out to small charities and community groups will be spent on athletes' villages and high-speed trains. This, he suggests, is nothing short of a scandal.

We agree. The Big Lottery Fund is probably the country's most important funder of small charities, and without it many would go under. Its size (£500 million a year) means it can bankroll new, grassroots projects that aren't big enough to mount sophisticated fundraising drives.

Small charities are invaluable, and they're already suffering under the weight of multi-million pound charity brands (see previous post). Squeezing this vital source of funding will only hurt them more.

Should the loud voices get louder?

2007-01-10T10:43:00.000Z

AN ARTICLE IN TODAY'S Guardian reveals the country's most valued charity brands. Frankly, there's little that will surprise: Cancer Research UK tops the table, the National Trust comes next, and the list is bulked out by the Usual Suspects: big, national charities that work for 'cuddly' causes.

More interesting, though, is the criticism these charities get from the people who compiled the list. They're brand consultants, and rail against trustees who they think fail to see how much charities could make by selling their logos. They commend organizations like the British Heart Foundation, which endorses Shredded Wheat (amongst other things).

This is a difficult area for us. On the one hand, charities should do all they can to attract donations. But on the other, donors should be able to choose the best charity to suit them, and shouldn't be blinded by snazzy marketing.

The obvious solution is for everyone to visit intelligentgiving.com and make up their own mind. But what about those people who don't?

Thank you Luke

2007-01-09T14:04:00.000Z

ONE OF THE MOST ORIGINAL, inspiring and good-hearted men I have had the honour to meet was killed in a car crash on Sunday. He was called Luke FitzHerbert and he was an author, investigator, thinker, changemaker and the backbone of the voluntary sector publications house, the Directory of Social Change.

I only met him half a dozen times but I can't overstate the value of his enthusiasm for Intelligent Giving, not to mention the practical help and contacts he gave me.

In the days when IG was no more than a few jottings in a Word file, he gave me a depth of confidence in what I was doing that I hadn't received anywhere else. His support - and criticism, because I received gentle helpings of that too - was invaluable. Simply to be given time by such a fearless and knowledgeable man was an enormous boost to morale.

If Luke hadn't laid the groundwork with his brave and relentless quizzing of the voluntary sector, his championing of small charities, and his critical book, The Major Charities, life for Intelligent Giving - and other organisations which are daring to treat charities as accountable organisations - would have been a lot harder.

It's such a shame to have lost him in such tragic circumstances. He had many, many undoubtedly productive years to go.

Thank you, Luke. You will be sorely missed.

Dave Pitchford

When an emergency isn't an emergency

2007-01-04T08:54:00.000Z

CALL US NAIVE, but we thought that giving to people caught up in particular emergencies would be a pretty easy thing to do. We thought you'd just call up a relevant charity, say you wanted to give some money for that particular cause, and then they'd send it there. But it's not that simple.

Just before Christmas, we wanted to find out how to help people affected by the typhoon in the Philippines.

Well, it turns out that you can't - unless you're prepared to organize an international bank-transfer to the International Federation of the Red Cross in Geneva, and pay the whopping accompanying fees.

The other approach that had a slight chance of helping would be to give to the British Red Cross's disaster fund - some of which had already been given to help their international colleagues in the Philippines. But there's no guarantee that this is where your money would be spent.

Why isn't it simpler? We rang round the usual charity suspects, and they all said the same: they didn't think people would be interested enough in the disaster, and so never launched an appeal. There's probably no arguing with that; we can only hope their suspicions were correct.

More power to our interns

2006-12-29T18:00:00.000Z

OUR INTERNS have made delightful and invaluable contributions to the office and of course to the site.

One of our favourites has to be Lizzie Brown, who made our first, solid, stab at categorising charities.

We were sad to see her go at the end of the summer but happy for her that she was headed to Cameroon to work with a human rights charity. She has just returned.

During her stay she set up her own fundraising project to buy particular books - without which study is almost impossible - for the struggling university where she was working. She raised over £900 through her contacts and the books are now en route (first one being delivered, left).

She saw a need at first hand, did something about it, and she knows that the results were positive. How rare and lucky is that? Now if all our interns did that... I see a charitable business model emerging..!

A very Happy New Year to all of our subscribers.

Admin costs R.I.P.

2006-12-29T12:14:00.000Z

ADMIN COSTS ARE DEAD. With the new accounting system enforced by the Charity Commission ("SORP 2005"), which nearly all charities are now observing, it is now impossible to work them out - and we will have to drop them from our site in the New Year.

The change represents an over-reaction (presumably an uncontested one) by the voluntary sector's lobbyists. Clearly the public wasn't consulted about the new SORP; but the public wants at least *some* clue of how much is spent on support costs. Now it won't have anything to go on at all.

It's a pyrrhic victory and a big shame: it won't increase the public's confidence in charities; it will just make people more suspicious.

Good stories from the Tories

2006-12-13T15:04:00.000Z

Dave, the site's editor, told me today that I was becoming a 'charity nerd.' Having written the following blog entry, I'm afraid he was right. I will now buy thick spectacles and an anorak. [It was just a matter of time. And incidentally, that is David Cameron, right, not Adam - Ed.]

Yesterday, I went to a discussion hosted by the Conservative party's Social Justice Policy Group. It was about the role charities play in fighting poverty, and was designed to explore some of the issues arising from volume six (yes, six) of their report, Breakdown Britain.

Top of the Policy Group's list of complaints is the contention that government agencies micromanage the contracts they have with charities. This, so the report's authors say, means that charities can't function properly, and are treated as just another branch of the public services - something which ignores the sector's unique strengths.

On top of this, problems with "full-cost recovery" [getting payment for the full costs, not just core costs, of a project] mean that voluntary income is often used to make up for the shortfalls of contract payments. This undermines donors' trust in charities per se [except most donor's aren't aware of this - Ed].

Finally, the report argues that government needs to give more money to charities, but to do so more intelligently. Indeed. There needs to be less micromanagement, it argues, and there needs to be a new approach that places less emphasis on targets, and more on sustainable, long-term contracts.

The report looks impressive and reads well. Certainly, the authors have put a lot of time and effort into preparing it. Whether its conclusions are the correct ones is something I'll have to leave to others to judge, for now.

But the important thing - and something that filled me (and fellow attendees) with confidence - was the seriousness with which the Conservatives were taking the sector, and their realization that it plays a vital part in public life.

All we have to wait for now is for the Group's next report - in which they'll face the challenge of turning the report into hard policy.

A self-appointed charity watchdog

2006-12-10T10:34:00.000Z

THE PAPERS KEEP TELLING US that we are the above, though we've never used the phrase ourselves. The only watchdog on our site is this harmless hound who has fun with charity rumours in the Truth & Lies section.

But the title deserves closer scrutiny, viz:

"Self-appointed". Hmm - who appointed Which? magazine, Standard & Poors, Dr Fosters, Transparency International or Amnesty? Should we all have waited for someone to appoint them? And if so, whom?

"Watchdog". We're not a watchdog. We're a website designed to give the public more confidence in their giving. If that means pointing out some truths about charities, so be it, but it's not why we started this thing.

Writing charity profiles

2006-12-09T08:47:00.000Z

SOMETIMES IT MAY SEEM that the Intelligent Giving team spends its days spinning malicious stories about the voluntary sector. The truth is that we spend most of our time profiling charities.

As I type I'm half way through a batch of profiles on cancer hospices. You have to work in batches to gain a sense of what sub-sectors do and how the charities measure up. You also have to take breaks to maintain perspective and sanity, my fiancée tells me.

Some tidbits which may interest, if you've read this far:

We think our comparative profiling is the only way to settle the old debate: "Are there too many charities doing the same thing?" (The answer is no).

It would be helpful to the public if the Charity Commission disallowed national-sounding names for local charities. We keep coming across the likes of "The Dormouse Society" which only helps dormice in and around, say, Dudley.

We do wonder how many regular punters understand words like, Advocacy, Life-limiting, Outreach and Service Users. We know it's not many and we must do a poll to prove it.

We are creating a glossary of plain English terms for the "In short" boxes (non-standard example above). It will make descriptions accurate and comparisons easier. It's a long, hard job which has to be done sector by sector but the pedants among us are rising to the challenge.

A reminder of what we're about

2006-12-02T19:30:00.000Z

JUST THIS MORNING I had a chat with yet another journalist who says he once tried to do what we were doing but couldn't stand the heat and gave up. I have met four such people over the last two years. He added that he thought that we were being "very brave". It's not the first time we've heard that either.

All this heat emanating from the cuddly voluntary sector? He was, in his own words, "bullied" out of his investigations.

Now, before anyone starts accusing us of casting the sector as a snarling Rottweiler, I will explain why I think those journalists backed off, and why we won't.

WARNING: Egregious self-righteousness to follow...

It all boils down to the fact that we come to this work as donors, and that we're not out to make a quick buck.

If you're criticising charities purely to make money or further your career, it will quickly be made clear to you that, frankly, you're a bastard. Charities will justifiably pour down hot indignant oil from their moral high ground. Any hack on the make would quickly feel the heat.

If however you're doing it with the long-term aim of sending more help to beneficiaries/causes by encouraging the public to give more, then your investigations will be structured as such. And you'll be speaking a language that most charity workers will understand, if not necessarily agree with.

So there is rhyme and reason to our last three projects (the third appearing Monday coming). To explain:

1. A critical examination of Children in Need: to stimulate donors to look objectively at their kneejerk giving and to reflect on the role of grant-givers and to jolt a major charity (and perhaps others) out of its complacent public reporting.

2. The best Christmas cards: to encourage donors to buy useful charity goods and to praise the outlets that gave the largest percentages to charity and to shame those that gave the smallest.

3. The best charity gifts: to inform donors of the variety available and give confidence in the schemes where you get what you are paying for and to jolt some charities out of dubious marketing techniques which reduce their credibility and that of the sector (as acknowledged by the Institute of Fundraising).

An overall objective which all three projects support is to get people more interested in giving.

Of course we also need to get our name out there so people will learn about, and from, our web site. But this is not a priority. We know that in time everyone who is interested in what we are doing will find us.

Some say we're doing too much, too soon, for a sector that's not ready for such criticism. Others (including several influential people who, annoyingly, say they can't support us publicly) say we should go further, faster.

Either way, we'll go at the rate that resources allow, hopefully improving our efforts all the time. Expect more of the same.

All publicity...

2006-12-01T10:58:00.000Z

Following a fortnight of national newspaper coverage, not only are we getting 10,000 hits a day but the two organisations which received the most negative publicity also did handsomely: Harrods posted a 16.7% increase in profits and Children in Need announced record income. Someone tell Stephen Levitt...

Trent's big idea

2006-11-29T19:33:00.000Z

Trent Stamp, supremo of US charity-rating website Charity Navigator, has come up with an interesting idea. Don't bother giving gifts to your pets this Christmas, he asks - and give the money you save to an animal charity instead. Smart.

Pudsey's worst nightmare. Apparently

2006-11-29T11:15:00.000Z

Our benefactor, Peter Heywood, has penned the following in response to today's article in the Guardian.

Annie Kelly's article "Pudsey's worst nightmare" (Nov 29) professed to examine the basis upon which Intelligent Giving criticised the Children in Need Appeal, but it didn't actually address our key criticisms.

Just to recap, our article says supporting Children in Need is "a lazy and inefficient way of giving", largely because the charity is a grant-giver. In other words, it passes on donors' money to other charities which means donors lose control of where their money goes and pay a double set admin costs.

Our article also criticises Children in Need for the errors in its submission of its "Summary Information Return" to the Charity Commission, a serious document that has to be signed off by the charity's trustees.

None of these criticisms were examined by Annie Kelly's article.

The goal of Intelligent Giving is to encourage donors to give more to charities in the confidence that they're spending their money wisely. Our article about Children in Need didn't tell people not to give; it suggested there were better ways of spending their money and named some alternatives.

Visitors to our website (www.intelligentgiving.com) will find our agenda to be clear: we want to help people give more, not less.

Peter Heywood
Principal benefactor, Intelligent Giving

Today's Guardian

2006-11-29T09:04:00.000Z

There's an interesting article about us in today's Guardian. And I use the word 'interesting' advisedly. We're still mulling over what to make of this one - but rest assured we'll have something to say about it soon...

A charitable Christmas?

2006-11-27T13:02:00.000Z

We're all getting into the spirit of Christmas here at Intelligent Giving's International HQ. Encouraged by today's Telegraph (which kindly reproduces one of our favourite charity Christmas cards on page three today), we're quite in the mood for mince pies and cake. And port. (Or maybe that's just me.)

Anyway, thinking about giving, receiving and wasting cash on stuff nobody wants (musical socks, anyone?) made us ponder the ethics of the burgeoning charity-gift industry. We generally think these 'give-a-goat' schemes are a good thing, but we've also got reservations about how some of these schemes operate.

And it's not just us. The Charities Advisory Trust has just commissioned ICM to do a big piece of opinion polling on this very issue. And what was the survey's conclusion? That the vast majority of people get very cross when they find out that charities which seem to be in the business of goat-giving much of the time spend your cash on something else.

I still haven't decided whether charities which do this are really committing a terrible offence - which is what Charities Advisory Trust boss Hillary Blume seems to think. But it's certainly an issue we'll be looking at in more depth in the future.

Is bigger better?

2006-11-21T15:18:00.000Z

There's an article on SocietyGuardian.co.uk today talking about the relationship between a charity's size and its transparency. Though this is undoubtedly an issue much pondered by charity geeks, it's not one that most people think about much.

This is a shame. A lot (maybe most) people presume that big = good when it comes to charities. But it's not that simple. On our travels, we've found some egregious examples of poor reporting in some of the country's biggest charities (Sue Ryder Care take note), and evidence that some small charities take their duty to be accountable very seriously indeed (something we particularly liked about Welsh children's hospice, Ty Hafan).

As the article points out, some causes seem to encourage transparency where in others it's not much valued. International aid organizations are almost uniformly good at this, but charities attached to religious groups are (with some noble exceptions) almost equally slapdash when it comes to reporting their work.

Why the discrepancy? I don't know - but we hope that by dragging this issue into the spotlight, we'll be able to encourage all charities to be a bit more open.

Contemptible

2006-11-20T12:31:00.000Z

In yesterday's Sunday Telegraph, Sir Terry Wogan called us 'contemptible'. He said we were 'undermining trust' in Children in Need, and asserted that CIN is 'scrupulous in all its dealings'.

He's got a point (about CIN at least). CIN almost certainly operates with integrity, and we've definitely not found anything to suggest otherwise. All we'd like to see is more accountability and transparency in its public reporting - and we hope that, after all this attention, they'll improve their act when they next come to submit their reports to the Charity Commission.

But are we undermining people's trust in a much-loved charity? We hope not. People should know as much as possible about the charities to which they give - and that's the motivation behind everything we've said.

We were also in yesterday's Sunday Mirror. This article was so far off the mark it made me laugh.

Anti-Bullying Week

2006-11-17T20:41:00.000Z

It's Anti-Bullying Week next week. There are usually about half a dozen charity 'weeks' running at any one time in Britain - but this is one of the big ones, and it's already got a fair bit of media coverage. So from Monday we're going to be looking into the charities sponsoring Anti-Bullying Week, but we'll also have a nosey around organizations that don't sign up to the mainstream bullying agenda.

On our travels round the net while researching this, we've found some pretty interesting stuff. I mean, we'd certainly never thought that homophobic bullying might warrant calling in the local police hate-crimes unit - but, well, sometimes maybe it might. This one's definitely got us thinking.

What a week...

2006-11-17T17:12:00.000Z

The second week of Intelligent Giving's online life has been an exciting and interesting one. We have finally received some press, much of it not to our liking, but press all the same. And we've been getting more visitors too - including the first person to say that they've set up a direct debit as a result of the work we've done. We got very excited about that one.

Now we've got to maintain this momentum by coming up with more interesting research and articles. Charity Christmas cards are next on the agenda, and we've got some pretty interesting stuff to say about them. Hopefully we'll reveal all about this next Monday.

But first, a well-earned rest...

More about Children in Need

2006-11-16T11:49:00.000Z

Last night, Children in Need issued a statement ridiculing our charges against them (see article).

We'd been looking forward to their response. We've categorically said that Children in Need is a good thing, so we hoped that the charity would be able to defend itself in the face of some of the misreporting there's been in the press.

We hoped that Pudsey would point out that he does a good job raising money from people who wouldn't otherwise give. But we also hoped he'd admit that our reservations about admin costs, sloppy reporting and a lack of transparency held some water.

Sadly, he didn't do this. The press release he issued contained the same misleading information that got the charity into hot water in the first place.

So we're going to have to say it again: just because CIN's admin costs are met from interest on bank reserves, this doesn't mean that they're a particularly well-run charity.

All big charities have investments, but CIN is the only one to claim that the interest they earn on them somehow cancels out their running costs.

We think this claim is misleading. It makes people think that CIN doesn't cost anything to run - and by implication that their money won't be spent funding an extra set of admin expenses.

We've pointed out that this isn't true: give to CIN and your money will finance the running costs of two - or maybe even three - organizations. And this isn't efficient.

And Pudsey has yet to disagree.

We are famous

2006-11-16T09:58:00.000Z

In America, there's this guy called Trent Stamp who writes a blog a bit like this.

He runs the American equivalent of Intelligent Giving (though we don't have any formal links), and every now and again he writes entries where he tells his readers how many times he's been in the news that day.

It is with great pleasure that I can now do the same for Intelligent Giving.

So, check us out in today's Sun and Daily Mail (yes, I know that's not the Mail's own site). And I should add that we also popped up in the Western Mail a few days ago too. As you might have guessed, it's our criticisms of Children in Need that continue to attract the attention.

A major change in the law? Really?

2006-11-15T16:36:00.000Z

You might not have noticed this, but there's been a major change in the law recently. Or so we're told.

The Charities Act 2006 has just come into force.

The Charity Commission say they're 'celebrating', and those nice people at the charity umbrella group NCVO seem to think it's very important, but for the life of us we can't work out why.

As far as we can tell, the major provisions of the Act are:

1. Charity Commission commandos get the power to break into naughty charities and confiscate their documents. Which all sounds very James Bond;

2. There are some new definitions of what a charity can do - which don't seem to differ all that much from the status quo;

3. There's the introduction of the much-trumpeted 'public-benefit test', to ensure that charities actually provide a useful service to the public - but which again doesn't seem actually to change very much;

4. And there's a new requirement that chuggers tell you how much they're being paid

Apart from that, we're at a loss to understand what this change in the law actually means: the rest of the Act seems taken up with administrative tidying-up, something that probably needed doing, but which doesn't really excite us much.

Our main problem with all this hoopla is the fact that the most interesting section of the Act - that dealing with the public-benefit test - doesn't actually say very much. In fact, it's the Charity Commission which decides what 'public benefit' actually is - which they haven't done yet.

And this leaves us thinking: if the most important part of this new legislation is to be decided by the civil servants at the Charity Commission, what was the point about all the debate in the first place?

Adam

Does anybody love us?

2006-11-15T13:16:00.000Z

A couple of weeks ago, we launched the Intelligent Giving website. In case you haven't seen it, it's designed to guide people through the murky world of charities and to help everyone give with confidence.

We were sure that this brilliant new idea for a site would make a splash. We thought that thought that we'd be getting millions of vistors a day, and all this within hours of launch.

But our expectations were soon dashed. We spent ages ringing round journalists, sending out press releases and generally trying to attract attention. Sadly, however, nobody was interested.

But this morning all that changed. We've been rushed off our feet fielding calls from all the major papers, a few telly networks and even the odd radio station. We're even in today's Times and Daily Mail.

Why the sudden interest? It's because of our article about Children in Need. This much-cherished charity isn't used to criticism, and our gentle questioning of its grant-making procedure and general administration obviously got more than a few journalists interested.

It's just a shame, then, that the article in the Times was so terribly, terribly wrong. Our editor, Dave, explains why here - but the extent of their misreporting really did shock us.

So, just to make it clear: we're a nice bunch, we're not out to destroy charities, and we want people actually to give more - but to do so more effectively. Who knows - one day it might actually happen...

Adam