Most effective charities?

A question about : Most effective charities?

I was listening to the BBC world service early yesterday morning drowsing, and someone they were interviewing was talking about charity shortcomings, and they mentioned one of the more effective ones. I can't seem to remember which one. The search engine for the world service doesn't work well, can anyone find it or suggest who it was?

Anyway, after searching around the web I found this site which examines how well programs actually work - i.e., their effects on the people they serve and rates them (it generally ignores cost ratios and such financial babble). It is a US site but lists many international charities:

https://www.givewell.org/charities/top-charities

Perhaps if anyone else thinks they can identify effective charities or similar sites they could post it here.

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Best answers:

• There have been efforts to do this sort of thing in the UK. Intelligent Giving, GuideStar UK and Development Ratings. But none of these are currently working.
  The charity I work for, Tools for Self Reliance, was profiled by Development Rating but their website is down when I looked today.
  The Charity Commission gives access to the annual reports of charities and some basic charts on their spending.
  What I do when I want to evaluate a charity:
  Google: read news items
  Website: what does the charity's website say? Do they explain who they are, where they came from, why they do it, how they do it and what the results are.
  Charity Commission: review the annual report.
  Call or write to the charity asking relevant questions.
  Then go by your MSE instincts -- if it sounds too good to be true, then it probably is.
• I am looking for a really efficient charity that pays maximum % to the cause it represents. Does anyone have any idea how I can easily find this information - perhaps a good website exists similar to those mentioned above?
• Well, speaking as someone who volunteers for a small, yet very effective charity (and I've done so for the last 10 years since the charity started up), what I can say is as a general rule (and there will of course be exceptions) avoid the big charities. focus your energy on looking at small-medium sized charities and ask them pertinent questions about how they utilise the money they receive. The charity I volunteer with, for example, is based abroad, and pays a few local staff in the country in which it operates, but all UK staff are unpaid volunteers, which keeps costs to a minimum. All the money we receive goes directly where it's needed and we work a lot through word of mouth in terms of advertising. people who've volunteered/worked with our charity know it's legit and that the money goes where it's needed, so they then tell their friends who get involved, etc. So speaking to your friends could be one way of getting involved.
  Me personally, I have started doing a lot of work with Somaliland (the country) recently on top of my other voluntary work (which has nothing to do with Somaliland). Obviously I am UK based, but have recently discovered a Somaliland based charity called Candlelight who help local communities with education, etc, and who are legit (the head of the charity has won at least one major award for his humanitarian efforts). I'll be spending the next few weeks doing some more digging and finding out if there's any way I can help them (my current efforts with regards to Somaliland are related to trying to get the UK government to respect it's own laws and recognise Somaliland as a sovereign country instead of pretending it's a breakaway region of Somalia. The UK has documentation stating that it recognises Somaliland as a sovereign state, but it's currently choosing to ignore this for political reasons).
  But yeah...if you want details of the initial charity I mentioned which I volunteer for, just message me. As for the Somaliland one, Candlelight - I've only recently found them myself, but am happy they're genuine and legit. If you want any info on Somaliland, again, just ask.
• Hi
  I tink that you will find that the Salavation Army are extremely efficient and use whatever money they get very effectively.
  I like the fact that I can go along and see how my donations are used.
  Jo
• That sounds like a good checklist.
• Of the larger charities, the only one worth a damn anymore is the RNLI.
  Their administrative tail is very small and their frontline staff (most of whom are volunteers), put their lives on the line for total strangers.
  It doesn't get any better than that.
• Big or small, you've really got to see their work for yourself to understand truly how effectively they are. I know of a scientist whom does work for a large cancer charity - he's department has to apply for grants from the charity. Do you know how they get new grants? In layman's terms, "We're coming very close to a solution for X, but we've run out of time/money on this grant".
  This really got me thinking - a lot of these big charities (I'm sure small too) are literally turning the wheels for keeping people employed.
  Really hard to put KPIs to charities, as some supply services such as Salvation Army where number of people being fed or housed is important, while cancer reasearch, important research may take years to accomplish something, if anything.
• Charities which fund overseas aid will easily beat national ones simply because their needs are often basic, such as a simple cataract operation or malarial net. It's not just about saving lives but improving the quality of life. We still need to make sure the aid gets through to the right people though.
• Some more relevant information here
  Quote:
• Maybe its the age creeping in but i have become so cynical of charities.
  In my mind, They need volunteers to do the work so the people that run it can earn a large salary with plenty of nice lease cars parked outside all paid for by the donations.
  I received a leaflet through the door for basicall what amounted to a loan shark. Except it was a charity. I forget the interest rate but it was 600% + it may have even been into 4 figures.
  What made it worse they received Ј250,000 from the government.
  How does that work? Oh yes and a quick google streetview showed the office with posh signs and a row of Merc's.
  Wonder who paid for them.
• I have been looking into charity giving for an article for our church mag and here are a few things I found:
  Harris Polak, a 54-year-old from Liverpool, has been jailed for three years and nine months for a massive charity collection scam. He recruited a group of charity collectors, who thought they were collecting for Clatterbridge Cancer Research Trust, Cerebral Palsy Care for Children and Cancer Relief UK. Instead he took thousands of pounds from the collections to fund a lavish lifestyle.
  He organised teams of chuggers in Speke, Ramsbottom and Failsworth. He paid them a percentage of the money raised, and was authorised to take another chunk of the money. However, he did not report properly what he was making, and instead took thousands of pounds directly from the collecting buckets.
  The prosecution noted that because he did not keep proper accounts, it's impossible to tell the full sum of money that was taken from the charities, but that from what they could ascertain it was at least Ј213,906.83 over the course of five years. He spent the money on holidays a new car and mortgage payments.
  ......................
  Oxfam has assets of 80+ million, 45million in the bank, an annual T/O of 250million and the CEO has a pay and pensions package worth 175K. So when they ask for your 3 quid a month, the first 4 861 people to contract are paying for the Chief Executive's salary.!
  ........................
  The scam involves a fraudster informing a charity that they will be donating a large sum of money on the condition that the charity sends half of the donation onto another specified charity that is, in fact the personal bank account of the fraudster.
  ..........................
  Age UK!was formed on 1 April 2009 when!Age Concern!and!Help the Agedmerged. In the last financial year,!Age UK!raised an impressive Ј167.7m, supposedly for charity.
  However, it cost!Age UK!about a!whopping Ј85m to raise and manage this money, leaving just Ј80.4m for charitable use (after retaining a little money for future use). So, just 48% of the money raised for charity could actually be used for charity – rather pathetic really.
  Of this Ј80.4m supposedly used for charity, around Ј25m was donated to other charities. As these charities would all have chief executives and financial directors and fundraising managers and staff and offices and computers and whatever, they would!almost certainly have costs of say 30% (Ј7.5m) of all money donated. That just left Ј72.9m (43%) of!Age UK’s!cash!that could possibly be used for charity. Then you’d have to subtract!Age UK’s!administrative and management costs – but I can’t find out how much these were.
  However, I do know that!two!Age UK!executives were paid (I deliberately did not write “earned”) between Ј170,000 and Ј180,000 a year. Nice work if you can get it.
  ...........................
  Please note that I have copied and pasted all this and I am not the I in the last paragraph.