Watchdog launches campaign to measure equitable funding
Candid, the nonprofit evaluation organization that resulted when GuideStar and Foundation Center merged, has announced a new data-driven campaign to encourage equitable funding practices. “Demographics via Candid” is designed to provide a standardized benchmark measurement, reduce inefficiencies and cut down on duplicate information requests from funders.
Funders increasingly seek nonprofits’ demographic information and nonprofits may receive multiple requests with different questions and formats. Through “Demographics via Candid,” nonprofits are encouraged to enter their demographic information once in their Candid profile. From there, organizations that have earned a Candid Seal of Transparency will receive a unique link that they can use to share their profile with supporters.
Candid’s partners commit to retrieving and using the demographic data from those profiles rather than requesting it separately. The goal is to empower nonprofits to spend more time on their missions and less on responding to requests.
Helping donors make informed decisions with misconduct alerts
Charity Navigator is now offering a feature that provides donors with information detailing alleged and confirmed charity misconduct. Alerts appear on the website’s search results and organizations’ profile pages and are designed to help the more than 11 million donors who visit the site annually to make more informed philanthropic decisions. Charity Navigator says the feature also can help trustworthy charities improve and maintain confidence and credibility with supporters.
The organization has issued reports of alleged and confirmed charity misconduct through its advisory system for 12 years. The new alerts build on and replace advisories, providing donors additional information and direction through four levels of concern: Review Before Proceeding, Proceed With Caution, Proceed With Increased Caution and Giving Not Recommended. When the resource first became available in March 2023, it already had more than 400 alerts.
McKinsey offers free assessment tool for organizational health
The international consulting behemoth McKinsey is giving nonprofits free access to its Organizational Health Index (OHI), a digital survey tool that quantitatively diagnoses an organization’s ability to align around and achieve strategic goals. With the information it provides, nonprofits can create targeted action plans to improve their overall organizational health and success. The firm says the tool has delivered “major returns” for its for-profit clients over the past 20 years.
The OHI assesses factors including a nonprofit’s direction, leadership, employee motivation and capabilities, work environment, and accountability measures. Participating nonprofits receive access to an organization-wide survey that evaluates their current ways of working as well as identifying strengths and weaknesses in how their teams work together to advance their mission. That’s followed by a custom organizational health report, with a comparison to McKinsey’s nonprofit benchmarks, and best practice resources to improve organizational health, such as webinars.