Category: uncategorized

Donor report:  http://www.unhcr.org/news/latest/2016/4/571dc9f86/year-nepal-quake-villagers-rebuild-ruins.html A year after Nepal quake, villagers rebuild from the ruins
Raised: No information found. Received $64 million from
Key Activities: UNHCR distributed 41,574 plastic tarps, 8,032 solar lamps, 5,000 blankets, 450 shelter kits and 175 temporary schools distributed to 210,000 displaced people.
That is all the information found. UNHCR is mostly funded by governments and likely provides these funders with better disclosure. We did not find its disaster response report.  
Charity Intelligence picked UNHCR given Nepal’s severe needs, UNHCR’s large size, and its expertise in shelter. UNHCR has operated in Nepal since the early 1960s. We had hoped Nepal would be the first disaster deployment on IKEA shelter huts. Instead, UNHCR handed out thousands of plastic tarps. Tarps have proven again and again to be ineffective in countries that have monsoons and are inappropriate for cold weather. Nepal has both.
Disaster response differs from development work. Disaster response needs to be fast and flexible. Subsequent surveys of people affected by disasters report low satisfaction with UN-agencies response. Perhaps the UN’s institutional framework inhibits fast and adaptive disaster response relative to international charities.

index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=238&Itemid=161 Summary assessment of Nepal disaster response by 10 charities Canadians supported

 share it with your friends and join us on Facebook and Twitter @CharityIntel
Please consider  https://www.canadahelps.org/en/charities/charity-intelligence-canada/ donating to support our research.
Charity Intelligence researches Canadian charities for donors to be informed and give intelligently. Charity Intelligence’s website posts free reports on more than 700 Canadian charities, as well as in-depth primers on philanthropic sectors like Canada’s environment, cancer, and homelessness. Today over 325,000 Canadians use Charity Intelligence’s website as a go-to source for information on Canadian charities reading over 1.3 million charity reports. Through rigorous and independent research, Charity Intelligence aims to assist Canada’s dynamic charitable sector in being more transparent, accountable and focused on results.
Be Informed. Give Intelligently. Have Impact.
Charitable Registration Number: 80340 7956 RR0001

 
Donors are always asking us “is this a good charity?” There is typically no simple answer to this question. However, Charity Intelligence believes that the best information to help donors with this question is an assessment of the social impact produced by charities for each dollar donated.
Charity Intelligence (Ci) produces consistent, comparable impact ratings for many charities across Canada. These ratings are conservative, evidence-based estimates of the social value that charities create for their clients and the wider community. They are based on two metrics:
1. Demonstrated Impact score based on estimates of the charities’ demonstrated social return on investment (SROI)
2. Data Quality score based on the quality and quantity of impact data
A discussion of each metric can be found below.
Using the Demonstrated Impact score and the Data Quality score, Ci generates an Impact Rating for each charity analyzed. To date we have assessed charities primarily in the social services and education sectors as well as in the international aid sector. Ratings appear only for those charities that we have assessed and we continue to add charities to this list, thus more Impact Ratings will appear on charity profiles over time. The Impact Rating appears as a red dot overlaid on a grid:


 
Components of the Impact Rating
1) Demonstrated Impact Score (Proven Impact)
We estimate and compare the amount of social good that charities generate per dollar donated. How much good, measured in dollars, do donations accomplish? Social return on investment (SROI) is the best metric we know of for this task because it attempts to measure these amounts directly.
 

We use standard program evaluation techniques to provide SROI estimates for every major activity by every charity we analyze. We track benefits to both clients and taxpayers/society by estimating the number of outcomes that each charity produces beyond what would have happened absent service. We then multiply these numbers by estimates of the dollar value of each outcome for clients and for society. Benefits to clients include improvements in income, quality of life, and health, while benefits to society consist of increases in tax revenues and public cost savings in areas such as health care, public assistance, and law enforcement.  The long-term, discounted values of these benefits are added together and divided by total expenditures to generate a social return on investment/donation (SROI) estimate.  

For each charity, we calculate a lower bound, a best estimate, and an upper bound SROI:

• The lower bound SROI is almost entirely based on evidence from the charity, with very few exceptions. It is highly unlikely that the “true” SROI is below this number.
• The best estimate SROI is based primarily on charity data and, where applicable, conservative evidence from external research and/or other charities.
• The upper bound SROI incorporates additional value that the charity could reasonably be producing but that is not yet appropriately backed by evidence.

The Demonstrated Impact score is a combination of the lower bound, best estimate, and upper bound SROI, with the lower bound and best estimate weighted more heavily than the upper bound. We emphasize benchmark SROI estimates that can be solidly supported by evidence and aim to produce estimates which measure proven impact. This decision to focus on conservative, evidence-supported estimates of results means that better information about a specific charity’s results will typically lead to higher estimates of its demonstrated social impact. This provides an incentive for charities to collect and share better data and diminishes subjectivity in our evaluation process.
To make our SROI estimates comparable across charities, and even across sectors, we regularly examine all causal factor estimates for consistency. As well, each of the inputs used in our model (including outcome values, attribution shares, drop-off rates, and baseline success rates) is based on extensive research. This includes a combination of randomized controlled studies, meta-analyses, and economic cost studies. As we receive more and better evidence, our estimates are regularly updated.
 
2) Data Quality Score
The second component of the Ci impact ratings is the Data Quality score (DQS). The Data Quality score measures the quality of a charity’s impact-related evidence. It is calculated as a percentage, using a grading that assesses each charitable program on the data it provides regarding eight main components of SROI: number of unique clients, pre-program client characteristics, program outcomes, counterfactuals, duration of program effects, duration of client engagement, external validation, and spending breakdown. The Data Quality score for each individual charity program is then weighted by the charity’s spending breakdown to determine the overall Data Quality score for the entire charity.
Ci has been measuring the quality of social results reporting for several years through our Results Reporting grade. A full explanation of the Results Reporting grading is available https://www.charityintelligence.ca/results-reporting here.
The Data Quality score and the Results Reporting grade both measure the quality of information provided by charities. Both ask charities to report a breakdown of their spending by program area, as well as quantified outputs and outcomes that are relevant and timely.
There are, however, two key differences between the Data Quality score and the Results Reporting grade: 

• Scope: The Results Reporting grade has a wider scope than the Data Quality score. It assesses the reporting of a charity’s strategy, activities, outputs, outcomes, learning, and the quality of that reporting. The Data Quality score focuses Read More

text-align: left; Charity Intelligence believes that the key question donors should ask of a charity is how much impact it is having per dollar of donation. Rather than asking “For every dollar I give, what percent is going to the cause?” we should ask, “for every dollar I give, how many dollars’ worth of social value are being created?”, or simply, “how much good is my donation doing?”
This impact can be measured directly using what is known as Social Return on Investment (SROI), which is a ratio that measures the amount of value created per dollar donated. Some charities create high impact per dollar and others do not.
text-align: left; Charity Intelligence has chosen the following Top 10 Impact Charities of 2017 based on impact per dollar donated: 

text-align: right; Greg Thomson
November 29, 2017  
I have had enough of the “double your impact with a matching gift” mumbo-jumbo!  Yesterday, Giving Tuesday, I received three emails within half an hour all claiming that if I donate today, my impact will be doubled.  This is nonsense.
The claim is that the charity has found one donor who is willing to give them up to $10,000 (or $25,000, or whatever) on the stipulation that other donors will also donate, matching their gift.  Wait, no, I’ve got that backwards. Or do I? The claim they told ME was that if I donate today, another donor will donate the same amount (up to $10,000…or whatever), thus doubling the impact of MY donation.
This is the first problem with this mumbo-jumbo. Who is getting the doubling effect?  Are we both magically getting the doubling and it’s turning into four times the donation?  No, that wouldn’t work, but maybe it’s worth a try for some charity!
One of the emails actually mentioned the name of a business that had promised the matching gift – so I guess the offer to them was not only that others would donate too, but the business would get advertising for their donation…but I digress.
Another issue with these claims is understanding the counterfactual – what would have happened otherwise. Whenever charities report on the outcomes they achieve, it is important to know what would have happened without the charity’s involvement so that donors can understand the difference made by the charitable program.
In each of the emails sent to me, it is clear that the matching donor has set a threshold that they are willing to donate up to. It’s certainly possible that these are stretch goals – the charity may not reach the matching level; however, the initial donor is willing to donate (likely has in their giving budget) the matching level. Even if nobody donated to the matching program, it is highly likely that the original donor would donate most, if not all, of their designated funds to either the charity involved or to another charity.
So, while any individual donor’s donation appears to be “doubled”, the counterfactual is that the matching donor’s funds would, in most cases, have gone to that, or another charity.  There is very little additional funding coming in due to the claimed matching.
While each of these previous arguments are, to me at least, good reasons to not put much stock in “matching” gifts as a reason to give, the final argument is really the only one that matters. There is no increase in the impact of YOUR donation because someone else also donated to a charity.
This is like saying that you can get twice the taste sensation out of your ice cream cone because someone else also bought one. Somehow their taste sensation gets transferred to you so you get twice as much and they get…what?  If you are getting twice the impact on your dollar, what is the original donor getting?  Apparently nothing – not one sweet taste of butter pecan. Your donation dollar helps provide some change and the original donor’s donation provides the same amount. You can’t be greedy and claim their portion too.
The latest gift catalogue put out by Plan Canada is falling all over itself to double, triple, or even multiply your impact by 8 times. They’re not fooling me with this gobbledy-gook! I hope others will also see the horrible flaws in this attempt to show “impact” and we can get on with discussing the actual (no multiplier needed) impact of our donations.

December 5, 2018:
disaster responses bring out the best in Canadian generosity, and also an opportunity for other charities to raise money. The line-up of charities fundraising to https://www.canadahelps.org/en/crisis-relief-centre/2017-british-columbia-wildfires/#donate help BC Wildfire evacuees is nicely limited. Some charities may have the best of intentions but are less effective or experienced. With limited information, donors need to parse the “



Read More