Charities: Flattering Results, Poor Data

Nonprofit advisor Caroline Fiennes has a lot to say about how we assess charities. She used to run one herself. In those days, Fiennes tried figuring out whether her organization was achieving its goals but admits she wasn't always forthcoming about the findings. "When the results were good, we would share them," she tells us. "And when they weren't, we didn't." Fiennes suspects many charities do the same. Fiennes has now made it her mission to improve the quality of data produced by and about nonprofits. "Charities vary markedly in how good they are, so wouldn't it be a good idea if we could figure out which are the good ones, and get people to fund the good ones and to not fund the bad ones? It's hard to make evidence-based decisions if loads of the evidence is either missing, or bad quality, or you can't find it."