Charities demonstrate their commitment to greater Transparency and Accountability
3rd Feb 2009
More than 30 leading charities of all sizes and types have taken the ground-breaking step of completing the ImpACT Toolkit. The coalition has now published the results of the first 30 members to complete its online toolkit. The sample includes membership charities, organisations in international development, health and the arts sectors, trade bodies together with faith-based groups. Targeted to help charities improve their transparency and accountability and preserve public confidence in the sector, the toolkit offers organisations a straightforward mechanism to look at themselves through the prism of accountability and transparency, and make plans for future development.The generic results of the toolkit, a moderated online survey, covering 8 subject categories, shows that while some charities performed very well across the board relatively few charities have performed either consistently well or badly.
The findings indicate that care for donors was the highest scoring area over all, with an overall category average of 92.42%. Accountability and transparency policy scored an overall category average of 56.1%, suggesting that this is one of the areas requiring much more thinking and action. For example, charities need to anchor the transparency agenda firmly within their structures and make resources available to make change happen.
Consistent with the pledges made by participants on signing up to ImpACT, the toolkit is free of charge to Coalition members and complements membership of regulatory bodies such as the FRSB. It is also compatible with the Institute’s Codes of Fundraising Practice. The online survey reflects current transparency and accountability performance in areas such as mission and vision, stakeholder relationships, governance and reporting.
Alan Gosschalk, Chair of the ImpACT Coalition says:
“The level of response we’ve seen to our toolkit highlights organisations’ commitment to, and investment in, accountability and transparency, which is encouraging. We have also seen some very high scores, for instance amongst international development sector charities and organisations with strong and/ or visible membership bases.”
Richard Marsh, Director of the ImpACT Coalition adds:
“It’s also interesting to note that bigger is not necessarily better when it comes to charities’ toolkit performances. Whilst it is positive that a significant number of charities have scored highly, even these organisations are aware that there is more that they can do to further improve their accountability and transparency performance.”
Joe Saxton, Driver of Ideas at nfpSynergy, comments:
“The ImpACT toolkit is proving to be a really good way that charities can get to grips with the practicalities of transparency and accountability.
“We know lots of organisations are keen to be more transparent, the toolkit shows them how in practical and achievable steps.”
Adam Rothwell, Director of Intelligent Giving, says:
"The interim results from the toolkit confirm our view that charities must do more to put transparency at the heart of their organisations.
“The high standards of governance and donor care revealed by the toolkit are to be applauded but, when it comes to making information widely available and making the most of annual reports, there's clearly a lot of room for improvement. The toolkit is helping shed light on the state of transparency and accountability in the sector, and we look forward to the results of future reports."
