Don’t judge a charity by it’s annual report
How much a charity spends on administration influences peoples’ donation decisions. In the ETH Zukunftsblog, Shruti Patel argues that this is a poor indicator of how ‘good’ an NGO is, and proposes three questions for donors to ask charities instead.
First results of NADEL’s recent survey on Swiss attitudes to global cooperation found that many people use the amount an organisation spends on administration in their decision to donate. This is problematic because even charities with low administration costs can be highly ineffective (and vice-versa). In addition, a benchmark of low administration costs penalises charities working on marginalised issues because those working on popular causes can raise more donations with the same amount of spending.
Ask better questions
Using a ‘one-size fits all’ metric when making donation decisions saves donors time but isn’t very informative. Selecting good charities requires donors to invest time in asking about a charity’s specific goals, what it is learning, and how it puts that knowledge into practice. If you don’t find this in an annual report, write an email or ask for a phonecall. You’re not wasting their time, you’re helping charities become more successful.
Learn more in the ETH Zukunftsblog post “Don’t Judge a Charity by its Annual Report”