Take a minute to look at your organization’s Web site. What makes it different from the Web site of any fly-by-night charity?
To me, nonprofit Web sites all look pretty much the same. Most prominently feature success stories with photos of happy people, information on how little money is spent on administration costs, and a “click here to donate” button. If charities do include any information on standards, lessons learned, or evaluation results, they are generally so well hidden that few potential donors ever stumble across them.
This lack of information has a real impact on how the average person views charities. According to a recent report by Hope Consulting titled “Money for Good,” the primary source of information for individual donors is nonprofit Web sites.
This lack of information makes it difficult for the average person to distinguish a charity that invests time and money on developing quality programs from those that don’t. In fact, most donors I speak with are completely unaware of any professional standards. Ask most people how to distinguish a good charity from a bad one, and they’ll say that it is the amount spent on administration.
Inadequate information on charity Web sites creates the impression that all that is needed to run a nonprofit program are good intentions, lots of donations, low administrative costs, and a few happy stories.
Because of the prominence of these misconceptions, it is no surprise that so many people are choosing to start their own nonprofits rather than donating to already established charities. In the United States, a new nonprofit organization is registered with the Internal Revenue Service every 15 minutes, and there is a growing trend of international do-it-yourself aid projects, in which people with no previous experience are showing up in villages and starting a charity.
This is the first of a series of posts that will examine the misconceptions created by charity Web sites. It will also provide examples and recommendations as to what your organization can do to help better educate potential donors.
5 Responses to Does Your Charity’s Web Site Keep Donors in the Dark?
kwells - January 4, 2011 at 1:25 pm
Does this mean that professional standards are the most important highlight on a charity website?
leapingstone - January 4, 2011 at 5:56 pm
I am very interested in what you have to say. LeapingStone http://www.leapingstone.org was started because there was a need seen, and no nonprofit available to help in the area in need. So I guess we could qualify as an “international do-it-yourself aid project. The difference is that we do have professional standards that we adhere to. However, I am not sure that is reflected adequately on our website. I look forward to hearing more. Any help to make us better is greatly appreciated.
patrickbrady - January 5, 2011 at 4:33 pm
Leapingstone–I would be happy to help you improve your website. It meets the de facto standard for nonprofits, which is to say it is not very helpful in understanding how your organization is managed, what, specifically, donations will be used for, your long term goals, etc. Your mission is laudable, your intentions are the best, just don’t expect any better fundraising success than most nonprofits experience. Exceeding the de facto website standard will display a seriousness of purpose and professionalism that will generate significantly more donations than most nonprofits can expect to receive.
The “Money for Good” report cited in Ms. Schimmelpfennig’s article is interesting. I draw different conclusions from their data than they do, however. Their data suggest the following: 1) more than anything else donors want information about the efficiency and effectiveness of the organizations they are considering (and they find most find nonprofits doing relatively poorly in this respect), 2) donors are very loyal once they have picked a nonprofit thus only about 14% of the dollar value of donations are open to being switched, 3) among donors open to or considering switching, many (probably most) do research, 4) the primary place they go to do this research is the website of the nonprofits they are considering, and 5) they want information, which addresses the information needs described in the first point, presented in a form that is easy to digest.
So what might you do? Provide information about the effectiveness of your organization. (The fact that you have built a school building is good, but is it furnished? Are there text books? Are there teachers? Are children being educated in the building? How has the new facility expanded education opportunities in Dedeke.) Post your corporate documents. Provide all of your 990s, annual reports, and financial statements. Provide more detailed long range plans and a 2011 budget. Be totally committed to providing accurate information. The 2009 Form 990 I found on the site contains obvious errors and raises questions in the mind of a careful reader about how donations are being used.
You can reach me at patrick.brady@twenty20insight.com.
isaac_outcomes - January 6, 2011 at 11:55 am
I’m the director of Learning and Evaluation at the Latin American Youth Center (LAYC) in Washington, DC.
Our own history of admitting our mistakes was actually highlighted in a Chronicle of Philanthropy article from November 13, 2008 called “Making a Measurable Difference”.
Since that article, several other news outlets have picked up on our work and outlook:
No human being is perfect. No program/curriculum is perfect. No organization is perfect. Mistakes will always be made. And some nonprofits and programs will CAUSE HARM despite the best intentions.
What nonprofits, funders, and the general public should demand is nonprofit systmes that can identify successes AND areas for improvement. Nonprofits that can’t point to what they do wrong, or where they struggle, scare me. That’s because they rarely have devoted the time and resources to find out what they do well. They just assume that they will get good outcomes because they have good intentions.
For more on LAYC’s outcomes work, you can view the Results portion of our website here:
http://www.layc-dc.org/index.php/results.html
peter_panepento - January 6, 2011 at 2:12 pm
Here’s a link to the story about the Latin American Youth Center that was mentioned in the previous comment: http://philanthropy.com/article/Making-a-Measurable-Difference/57560/