Report: What makes a good charity?

29 Sep 2016 News

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?

 

More on