Powerful income benchmarking tool launched 2

Finance | Gareth Jones | 4 May 2011

Civil Society Media has launched a new online application allowing charities to compare their long-term income data with the financial performance of other charities.

The tool is based on data taken from the Charity 100 Index and the Charity 250 Index, and covers income results from as far back as 1996 through to the latest available figures.

It enables users to view the results of individual charities, groups of charities and/or the entire data set, create custom graphs and then export them as images or as a pdf file.

Data can be divided into five main streams - voluntary, legacy, grants and fees, investment and trading - and also into groups based on the charities’ aims, such as children’s, international aid or medical research charities.

Both Indexes are long-standing features of Charity Finance magazine; the Charity 100 Index tracks the income of the UK’s largest 100 charities while the Charity 250 Index covers the next-largest 250 charities.

Simply click the 'benchmark' tab at the top of this website to access the tool, or visit http://www.civilsociety.co.uk/benchmark/graph.

Directory: Civil Society Media Ltd | Charity Finance

Place a comment

Marian Nicholson
Herpes Viruses Association and Shingles Support Society
9 May 2011

If you can usefully compare your charity with others, this means that you are doing the same thing with the same 'stakeholders'. To my mind, this means that you could perhaps useful merge!
Surely if a charity is doing its own thing, there is no point in comparing with other chariites.
Or am I missing the point somewhere along the line?

[Reply]

Gareth Jones
Senior reporter
Civil Society Media
9 May 2011
Response to [Marian Nicholson]

Hi Marian, thanks for your comments. It's certainly not for us to tell you how to use it but here are some thoughts:

Although the charity sector is not adversarial in the same way as the private sector, would you not be interested in the performance of charities working on diseases other than Herpes? For example, if they were increasing their income and you were not then perhaps you could investigate what they are doing to make more money. I can't imagine your funding sources would be that different from theirs even if you are working to tackle a different ailment. Or as another example, if you have put in place a new 5-year fundraising strategy, you could see if it is enabling you to grow at a faster rate than other charities over that period.

As for mergers, I don't think you are alone in thinking that more charities with similar objects should merge, but I'm not sure they are doing so in reality. Indeed, perhaps they should be using the tool to identify healthy merger partners!

[Reply]

Comments

[Cancel] | Reply to:

Name *

Email *

Organisation

Job Title

Comments *

Verification *

* Please read our Community Standards

Close »

Community Standards

The civilsociety.co.uk community and comments board is intended as a platform for informed and civilised debate.

We hope to encourage a broad range of views, however, there are standards that we expect commentators to uphold. We reserve the right to delete or amend any comments that do not adhere to these standards.

We welcome:

Robust but respectful debate
Strongly held opinions
Intelligent relevant discussion
The sharing of relevant experiences
New participants

We will not publish:

Rude, threatening, offensive, obscene or abusive language, or links to such material
Links to commercial organisations or spam postings. The comments board is not an advertising platform
The posting of contact details for yourself or others
Comments intended for malicious purpose or mindless abuse
Comments purporting to be from another person or organisation under false pretences
Gratuitous criticism, commentary or self-promotion
Any material which breaches copyright or privacy laws, or could be considered libellous
The use of the comments board for the pursuit or extension of personal disputes

Be aware:

Views expressed on the comments board are left at users’ discretion and are in no way views held or supported by Civil Society Media
Comments left by others may not be accurate, do not rely on them as fact
You may be misunderstood - sarcasm and humour can easily be taken out of context, try to be clear

Please:

Enjoy the opportunity to express your opinion and respect the right of others to express theirs
Confine your remarks to issues rather than personalities

Together we can keep our community a polite, respectful and intelligent platform for discussion.