January 4, 2011 | Read Time: 2 minutes
Take a minute to look at your organization’s Web site. What makes it different from the Web site of any fly-by-night charity?
To me, nonprofit Web sites all look pretty much the same. Most prominently feature success stories with photos of happy people, information on how little money is spent on administration costs, and a “click here to donate” button. If charities do include any information on standards, lessons learned, or evaluation results, they are generally so well hidden that few potential donors ever stumble across them.
This lack of information has a real impact on how the average person views charities. According to a recent report by Hope Consulting titled “Money for Good,” the primary source of information for individual donors is nonprofit Web sites.
This lack of information makes it difficult for the average person to distinguish a charity that invests time and money on developing quality programs from those that don’t. In fact, most donors I speak with are completely unaware of any professional standards. Ask most people how to distinguish a good charity from a bad one, and they’ll say that it is the amount spent on administration.
Inadequate information on charity Web sites creates the impression that all that is needed to run a nonprofit program are good intentions, lots of donations, low administrative costs, and a few happy stories.
Because of the prominence of these misconceptions, it is no surprise that so many people are choosing to start their own nonprofits rather than donating to already established charities. In the United States, a new nonprofit organization is registered with the Internal Revenue Service every 15 minutes, and there is a growing trend of international do-it-yourself aid projects, in which people with no previous experience are showing up in villages and starting a charity.
This is the first of a series of posts that will examine the misconceptions created by charity Web sites. It will also provide examples and recommendations as to what your organization can do to help better educate potential donors.
