Guidestar UK appoints new chief to free-info arm

Finance | Gareth Jones | 18 Mar 2008

Lewis Temple has been appointed director of Guidestar UK, the division of GuideStar responsible for its free online information resource.

Temple has spent the past ten years working for international charities in developing countries, most recently as regional representative for Eastern Europe and Central Asia for HelpAge International.

He takes over from David Brocklebank, who will focus on his role as CEO of another GuideStar International subsidiary, the wholly-owned community interest company GuideStar Data Services (GDS), which sells charity data to organisations such as local government, legal and financial companies.

Temple’s role will see him working closely with NCVO’s Stuart Etherington, who was last year appointed chairman of the GuideStar UK Advisory Council in order to ensure the organisation is responsive to the needs of its stakeholders.

Temple told Charity News Alert he hoped to strengthen civil society in the UK by making information about charities available to all.

“I’ve still got a lot to learn; I’ve been working mainly in international development so the charity sector in the UK is in some respects new to me, but I’m really excited that after supporting the voluntary sector in poorer countries I am now able to do so over here.”

He added that he feels the Guidestar website could be more accessible.

“At the moment it is well used by people with a professional interest in charities, but the main challenge now is to make it more appealing to the broader public.

“It’s a tremendous resource, but for the public it’s not very visually appealing, it doesn’t really jump out at you.

“A lot of the information comes from the annual reports, so perhaps we could make use of other sources, for example we have the Update My Charity facility, so perhaps we could make more of that, or add different types of media to bring it alive for people.”

Temple added that the organisation now expects to become self-funding by the first quarter of 2009, slightly later than Brocklebank’s previously-stated aim of this summer.

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