President & CEO's Report for June
June 1, 2009
A major milestone for intelligent giving occurred last month in London, England. An important conference called Valuing Impact was held with almost two hundred attendees, from 20 countries, dedicated to analyzing nonprofits. The discussions only reinforced our belief that we are now at a turning point in the field of evaluating nonprofits. The demand for this information is now a worldwide phenomenon as people are increasingly seeing themselves as social investors and not just passive donors. Charity rating organizations are already in place in England, Sweden, Israel and Canada. More are anticipated to join soon. The conference organizers are hoping to form a global association of nonprofit analysts to share ideas and tools. We intend to be an active participant in this important endeavor and will keep you posted.
Another milestone occurred for Charity Navigator. By now, all of you should have received our first ever solicitation to all of our registered users and newsletter subscribers asking to donate to our organization (which is a public charity too!). In addition, you may have noticed that we have a “Page Up” solicitation on the web site for those who go beyond a couple of clicks on the site. I hope these efforts do not bother you too much! One of our core objectives in the coming years is to increase and diversify our funding, so that we can improve our services to you. We hope to do this while at the same time keeping our web site totally “free.” Of course the cost of operating our web site is not free and your donations are critical to our ability to provide you with as much information as possible as you make your social investment decisions (i.e. donating with your eyes wide open). We are very encouraged by the response we have received so far. We now have over 7,000 supporters - a 40% increase in just one year!
Although that is an impressive number of supporters, it is a small percentage of our total users. We have millions of visitors to our web site each year and over a hundred thousand registered users (who typically visit a number of times a year). So, we hope that more of you will join in supporting us as we continue to evaluate more and more nonprofits. In addition, as I have noted in earlier reports, we are planning to expand our evaluation system to include measures of accountability and transparency as well as outcomes of the work of the nonprofits we review. Your help is needed more than ever to achieve this goal. So if you haven’t done so yet, please take a moment right now to donate to Charity Navigator.
Finally, as you know, we are often called upon to speak on TV. However, the normal 10 to 15 minute interview on camera is usually boiled down to around 20 seconds in the final story that airs. This month, we were fortunate enough to get a copy of the raw footage of one of those interviews. The topic is CEO pay, transparency and what makes a good nonprofit. It is in two parts – here and here. I hope you find it helpful.
All the best,
Ken Berger
