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Intelligent Giving becomes a charity

Fundraising | Gemma Ware | 28 May 2008

Intelligent Giving has become a charity after ten months of negotiations with the Charity Commission.

The donor-advisory website applied for charitable status in July last year, but only received its charity number this week after it was asked to provide the Commission with detailed information on how it would provide public benefit.

Intelligent Giving, which scores charities on the transparency of their annual reports, now has two new objects: to promote the voluntary sector and to promote the efficient and effective use of charities and charitable resources.

During the negotiations, the Commission asked Intelligent Giving to provide detailed explanations of how its activities would improve the efficiency and effectiveness of charities and how it would measure whether its work had increased public confidence in the sector.

Intelligent Giving said it planned to develop tools to help charities measure their effectiveness.

It also agreed to redesign its website to make clear which information was based on objective research and authors’ opinion and now plans to call charities when their profiles are updated to give them a chance to make any corrections.

Rothwell to replace Pitchford at helm

Intelligent Giving also announced today that its managing director, Dave Pitchford, is standing down and has been replaced by features editor Adam Rothwell. Pitchford is to become a trustee of the new charity, but has moved on to become a digital media consultant at design agency The Storm Creative.

Rothwell said charity status would allow Intelligent Giving to collect donations with gift aid and to “raise funds more effectively”. The organisation gets most of its money from two major benefactors – publisher Peter Heywood and musician Charles Hart. Both have now become trustees of the new charity.

‘Long hard slog’

Neill Ghosh, former lead researcher at Intelligent Giving, who has now become chairman of the board of trustees, said achieving charity status been a “long hard slog”, but thanked the Commission the work they had put into the registration.

However, Rothwell said the organisation had been left feeling frustrated at the level of detail required and that other small charities may have given up if faced with the same level of questions.

“We were able to get there in the end because we work with the Commission all the time and we have an above-average grasp of charity law and regulation for an organisation of our size. If other organisations had to go through the same process as we had to, it would be more challenging than it was for us.”

A spokeswoman from the Commission said the average time taken to register a charity was around 32 days, but said that Intelligent Giving’s registration took longer than normal because of its “unusual and unique nature”.

“During the application process we met with representatives of Intelligent Giving, and we also requested additional information from the organisation. At all times Charity Commission staff responded to Intelligent Giving’s correspondence within our target deadlines,” she said.

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