Monday, January 28, 2008

Accountability and Evaluation are Important

I have seen bloggers comment on my recent post "Do Donors Really Look at these Charity Regulation Sites," and I am feeling like I was misunderstood.

I do believe accountability and evaluation are very important! In addition, I believe nonprofits should constantly be evaluated and have accountability measures in place. However I am frustrated because there are so many different definitions of accountability and websites that are trying to hold charities accountable that it gets overwhelming and challenging for small to mid-sized charities to know what rules or which sites to follow.

Furthermore, there are so many online giving sites, which is great, however I think there should be an evaluation and comparison of all of these sites to tell the nonprofit which one we should register with, or which one we should direct our donors to. Because the reality is, as much as all these different online giving sites want to help nonprofit organizations, they (the online donation sites) still taking a percentage of the donation to cover their costs.

1 comment:

Emily Davis, MNM said...

There is an evaluation tool that I think addresses at least some of the time concerns and issues related to the burdens of evaluation: Empowerment Evaluation. This may be a great resource for small and mid-size nonprofits particularly because it uses methodology the includes everyone in the organization without the heaving lifting and cost of consultant, etc.