Charity Navigator Responds to Critics; Plus More: Friday’s Roundup
By Jennifer Moore
Contributor
April 2, 2010 | Read Time: 2 minutes
- Charity Navigator, a watchdog group, responds to a spate of recent criticism about the organization’s effort to measure the effectiveness of nonprofit programs. On a blog of Harvard University’s Hauser Center for Nonprofit Organizations, Ken Berger, the group’s chief executive, and Robert M. Penna, a consultant helping Charity Navigator develop its new ratings system, counter arguments that charities operate in environments in which their impact is too complex to measure and that they already do a lot on their own to evaluate themselves.
- While the community organizing group Acorn was hampered by internal problems and political opponents, it was lack of support by its allies, including big foundations, that ultimately led to its demise, says Pablo Eisenberg, a senior fellow at Georgetown University and a Chronicle contributor. In the Huffington Post, Mr. Eisenberg names several foundations he says “abandoned their once favored grantee.” Also: Read his opinion piece in The Chronicle on this topic.
- Health Affairs, a journal on health policy, has started a new blog to cover health philanthropy. Its GrantWatch blog includes information about foundation reports, health-care grant making, job openings, and other announcements.
- What happens when trustees, executive directors, and founders feel “ownership” of nonprofit groups, asks Holly Delany Cole, of the Community Resource Exchange, in New York, on the group’s blog. She says that tensions over those feelings should not be swept under the rug, and that sometimes they are indicative of flaws in staff and board practices.
- What can nonprofit groups learn from JPMorgan Chase? Martin Brookes, of New Philanthropy Capital, a British charity-evaluation group, discusses.
- GuideStar has partnered with several charity-evaluation groups — Philanthropedia, GiveWell, Root Cause, and Great Nonprofits — to start TakeAction@GuideStar, a site for donors that offers recommendations and analysis from charity experts. On its blog, Philanthropedia says that the goal is to provide donors with useful information that can guide giving decisions.
