Promoting Charity Accountability
The BBB Wise Giving Alliance works to encourage greater public confidence and trust in the charitable sector. By producing in-depth charity evaluation reports based on comprehensive Standards for Charity Accountability, promoting a seal that signals charity commitment to ethical practices, speaking out on accountability at meetings of charities and others in the sector, and advising donors on responding wisely to charity appeals, the Alliance helps advance high standards of conduct among charities and informed giving by contributors.
In 2006, with its online charity reporting and evaluation system fully operative, the Alliance expanded its production of reports dramatically. At the end of 2005, about 500 reports about national charities were available to potential donors; the current total is more than 1,000. Donor interest in the Alliance’s evaluations is evidenced in part by the two million hits received annually on the report section of the Alliance Web site, www.give.org,
Marked expansion of the BBB Wise Giving Alliance national charity seal program also occurred in the past year, when the number of national charities electing to participate increased by over 50 percent. A participating charity can display the seal on its Web site and in its appeals, providing donors with a quick and easy way to see that the charity meets the Alliance’s Standards. The seal has appeared in over a billion charity direct mail appeals and was featured in a full-page ad in The New York Times 2006 Giving section with the heading “Give with Confidence.”
The Alliance’s online system and the charity seal program, both available to local BBBs under agreement with the Alliance, have helped spur interest in strengthening the integration of national and local charity evaluation. In 2006, at an Alliance-sponsored “BBB Summit,” Better Business Bureau representatives met to explore ways of meeting a major goal, increased public access to both local and national charity reports produced by the BBB system.
The BBB Wise Giving Guide, the Alliance’s quarterly publication, summarizes the Alliance’s evaluations and includes articles on the why’s and how’s of charity practices that affect donors. In 2006, Guide articles on telemarketing, celebrities, premiums and the ways charities are evaluating their effectiveness reached tens of thousands of readers through Alliance mailings, charity conferences and distribution through local BBBs.
As the nation’s premier charity watchdog, the BBB Wise Giving Alliance is often contacted by regulators, lawmakers, nonprofit organizations, and the media. In 2006, Alliance spokespeople were quoted or featured in a wide variety of print and broadcast media, including The Wall Street Journal, National Public Radio, Fox News and CNN.
BBB Wise Giving Alliance - Roster of Board of Directors
2006 IRS Form 990 (Please note that this file is in a PDF format which requires your system to have Adobe Acrobat Reader. Because of its large size (32 pages) it may take a while to open. If you need to download the free Adobe Acrobat Reader program please click here.)