Intelligent giving: website which "ranks" charities

[firemaiden]

One of the papers today mentioned a website called Intelligent Giving. Apparently, this site ranks/compares various charities with the aim of letting you see where your money goes and which charities use donations best. The hook in the article was a suggestion by the website that it is better to give to small charities than Children in Need which may use much of their donations for running costs (to oversimplify the article).

At the end/start of the year, I tend to pick new charities to support over the next 12 months so I thought this looked like a really useful site but I would be interested to know what people with more knowledge of the sector think of it? I suppose it could be just as skewed as something like school league tables and I'd rather know this before I used information from the site to make any decisions. What do others think/know of this?

The only charity I support (apart from buying my Christmas Cards from Oxfam) is the Child Growth Foundation but this is a charity that is very close to my heart as it supports my daughter's condition.

If I was to support a charity which was not so close to my heart, I would be quite interested to see where my money goes.

Have worked for a few charities over the years, won't say the ones which were regarded in the trade as best avoided as unfair, but the ones I worked for that were fantastic and I would recommend hugely are: Macmillan Cancer Relief (so much more than just nurses); Home Start schemes (local to areas as run of franchises, and wquite a few- including the one I worked for- go bankrup as they get forgotten) and one close to my heart, BIBIC (British institute for brain injured children)

Don't assume ALL running costs are bad, chairty workers are entitled to a living wage much as anyone else and I've never yet met a charity that wastes money.

Also should have said- some of the bigger ones ahve additional costs for things like solicitors etc in house, but usually theya re there because of needs caused by the charity comission (understandably of course) so shouldn't necessarily be judged by that either. Smaller ones tend to be excellent at pinpointing needs and delivering, whilst bigger ones have more 'mass' power soca n deliver things- eg, fund nurses or buy clinics- that others cannot, iyswim.

The charity comission is quite good atr emoving those charities that step outside the acceptability boundaries.

PC - can you recommend any other small ones? I haven't looked in detail at this website but I'm hoping it may give me a few ideas. Definitely take your point about running costs, but I'd rather support a small charity that doesn't have the spotlight on it, than some of the big ones.

Can I recommend HomeStart then as a small charity? They're franchised, so although national they exist in small schemes. What they do is train volunteers who go into famillies who are struggling for whatever reason- eg, PND, disability, illness- and the volunteer offers support and the chance to feel included, and possible support witha ccessing community facillities. It's a great cahrity for parents, imo.

If not, what sort of field are you interested in? Know loads, but what's you interests?

I suppose an obvious interest is kids but perhaps ones in homes/orphanages rather than those who have their families. Otherwise looking for worthy causes that don't get much support eg old people (!) because I bet their charities aren't sexy enough or maybe mental illness for the same reason.

Barnardo's and Childline are excelelnt (as are the NSPCC but they are huge). Age Concern are very important indeed and like you say, very unglam.

One thing you can often do, is contact a charity such as NCH and then request that the money be used in yourarea- because of ring fencing laws, if they accept the donation then they will have to do that. You can also specify usage- for example children leaving care is an exceptionally important and overlooked cause.