The opportunities of transparency.
Posted by Adrian on 09 Jan 2007 at 11:01 am | Tagged as: Brand, Charities, Process Efficiency
Through the Donor Power Blog I found a great article in, the American publication, Fundraising Success. It reports on comments from Jeffrey Solomon, president of The Andrea and Charles Bronfman Philanthropies, about the opportunities presented by the demands for transparency in the Third Sector.
“While public companies have long had to deal with myriad SEC reportings, the voluntary sector had little in the way of oversight. Today, the combination of changing views and the power of accessible information dramatically change the landscape — a change that effective organizations can use to better tell their stories, demonstrate their impact and create new loyal supporters,” he says, adding that “..nonprofits can use this period of greater scrutiny to demonstrate their return on donor investment.
This will provide donors with information that will enable them to balance their desire to give with rational analysis, and make more informed choices about where to direct donations.”
This ties in nicely with what I have been saying (and saying) about brand. Make transparency a major part of your identity and it can help to create those long term relationships with loyal and engaged supporters.
[…] Well, the most important element is obviously how to communicate with (and I mean with not at or to) your donors and potential donors. I firmly agree with Steve Bridger at nfp 2.0 that one of the best ways to do this is through blogs and social media (of course I do!). The more a donor knows about who you are, what you do and how you do it the more confident they can feel in their relationship with you. To discuss suggestions on how to go about this would take up too much time but great pointers can be found here, here, as above here and, if I may be so presumptuous, even here(?). Moving on to Simplicity: Once a cash rich, time poor individual has decided to where their hard earned cash should be directed it is essential that we make it easy for them to donate in a quick and (tax) efficient manner. This is where sites such as Justgiving and bmycharity come into play, which enable donors to give to charities in a tax efficient and time efficient way. […]