A partnership of GuideStar USA, Independent Sector and BBB Wise Giving Alliance has created a free online tool, Charting Impact, which non-profits and foundations can use to assess themselves and help in “telling the story of your progress in an accessible, concise way. People want to help you make a difference – through donations, volunteering, and more – but often struggle to find a succinct, consistent resource that clarifies what nonprofits want to achieve and what they have already accomplished.”
The process has participants answer five questions about their organization to help gauge where they stand. Completing the report is meant to complement rather than replace program reviews and strategic planning. The final assessments appear on the site which is intended to be a central resource for those wishing to support a non-profit to obtain more information and assure themselves that the organization has a self-evaluative process in place.
One thing I found very interesting upon viewing some of the sample reports is that the process involves a CEO review, a Board review and a Stakeholder review and informs the reader if those groups have read and signed off on the report. Though the organization can manipulate the results by providing the contact information for stakeholders they know will never be critical of them, the anonymity afforded the reviewers provides an opportunity for the organization to receive some valuable feedback about themselves.
Charting Impact is still pretty new so there aren’t a lot of people who have completed the process. It will be interesting to see how prevalent its use as a resource will be. It already integrates some of the information on organizations GuideStar collects and fulfills a part of BBB Wise Giving Alliance’s charity certification process. If the process is viewed as credible, there is a potential that foundations and funders may require organizations to engage in it to receive a certain level of funding.
It would be unfortunate if Charting Impact became too much a gold standard that individuals wouldn’t make even small donations to organizations that hadn’t engaged in this introspection. I don’t necessarily see that happening any time soon. It would be nice amid all the stories we read about excessive salaries for non-profit executives and mismanagement and corruption to have a measure that provided the general public with confidence about organizational effectiveness.