A free guide on how to assess whether a charity is operating effectively has been published by think tank New Philanthropy Capital.
The guide, called What Makes a Good Charity? is a reboot of the NPC’s Little Blue Book, its original guide to assessing charity effectiveness, which was first published in 2010 and has been downloaded 15,000 times since.
The guide includes a 17-point plan to assess whether or not a charity is well run:
Purpose
- Does the charity’s vision and mission answer a need?
- Does it have a good strategy for achieving its goals?
- Do the charity’s activities reflect the strategy?
- Does the charity achieve results?
Impact Practice
- Does the charity use information to learn and improve?
- Does the charity know what it is achieving?
- Does the charity have the right approach to evaluation?
- Is it open about its findings?
People
- Does the charity have good leadership?
- Does it recruit good people and manage them well?
- Does it have good governance?
- Do people using the charity help to shape its work?
- Does the charity have a healthy organisational culture?
Finance and Operations
- Is the charity financially secure?
- Does it have good financial management?
- Does it have good operational management?
- Does it make efficient use of all its resources?
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