The tsunami and Katrina dominated the charitable scene in 2005. As news of each one broke, American donors were, as always, eager to help but often uncertain about how to make their contributions count.
The Alliance immediately provided several kinds of assistance. It issued press releases and responded to media inquiries and, on its web site, offered tips for avoiding the scams and deceptive appeals that inevitably accompany disasters. To encourage and facilitate informed giving, it created on the site a continually updated list of organizations providing disaster relief or other aid, along with links to the Alliance's evaluation of each organization in relation to its Standards for Charity Accountability. The Alliance's charity reports on the site were accessed more than 2.2 million times in 2005, a strong sign of the public's interest in getting information about charities before donating.
Expanding the information available to contributors looking for accountable charities in all fields was the object of much Alliance effort in 2005. The National Charity Seal program, which brings public attention both to the existence of the standards and to the Alliance as a source of information about giving, is a core part of that work. The program grew rapidly in 2005, its second year, and now lists almost 100 national seal holders. In this program, national charities that meet the Standards for Charity Accountability may, if they wish, apply for a charity seal to display in their literature and online. Charities choosing to have the seal sign a license agreement and pay a fee based on the total contribution income in the last year. The Alliance urges donors to look for the seal when they give. To publicize the seal and the names of current national seal holder charities, the Alliance took out a full-page advertisement in the November 14 "Giving" section of the New York Times.
Another initiative, which grew out of a two-day strategic planning session of the Alliance board of directors, involves developing a more integrated nationwide system of national and local charity evaluation. While the BBB Wise Giving Alliance reports about national charities, a large number of local Better Business Bureaus have charity review programs that focus on local charities. In 2005 the Alliance accelerated its work with BBB representatives to produce recommendations for strengthening the application of charity standards throughout the BBB system and making evaluation reports on both national and local charities more widely accessible to donors. This cooperative effort continues strong in 2006.
The process of preparing the evaluations that donors can use to inform themselves about individual national charities was streamlined in 2005 through increased use of the Alliance's online charity reporting and evaluation system. This system, introduced in 2004, makes it easier for charities to provide information needed for evaluations. Rather than deal with a typed form that required multiple attached documents, charity staff now complete a series of interactive questions on an online form and can send required documents electronically. The system makes a preliminary evaluation, based on the Standards for Charity Accountability, which is then reviewed in depth by the Alliance's experienced staff. This online system is also being made available to local Better Business Bureaus.
An ongoing goal of the Alliance is to bring more national charities into the evaluation process so that donors can access an ever-growing number of reports that show whether charities meet or do not meet the Alliance's charity standards. The Alliance took various approaches in 2005 to increase charities' enrollment in the online system, including sponsoring exhibition booths at a number of major conferences, such as those held by Independent Sector, the Association of Fundraising Professionals, BoardSource and the Points of Light Foundation.
The message that the Alliance takes to the charitable community at these meetings and elsewhere is not only that participation in a review against standards has enormous benefit for individual charities, offering them increased opportunity for establishing their commitment to ethical practices. There is also benefit to the whole charitable sector, for as more and more charities step forward to demonstrate openness about their operations, they encourage greater confidence in giving.
BBB Wise Giving Alliance - Roster of Board of Directors
2005 IRS Form 990 (Please note that this file is in a PDF format which requires your system to have Adobe Acrobat Reader. Because of its large size (32 pages) it may take a while to open. If you need to download the free Adobe Acrobat Reader program please click here.)