New benchmarking service launches for charity sector
Melanie May | 11 January 2018 | News
A new benchmarking service for charities has launched to provide fundraisers with configurable comparisons of quantitative and qualitative data.
Giving Clarity is a joint venture between Freestyle Marketing and Open Creates and has been launched in partnership with the Institute of Fundraising. The service will collate data on revenue, expenditure, donor volumes, staffing levels, product performance, staffing and other key metrics in a format that allows charities to make an accurate appraisal of their performance relative to the market.
It will also collect qualitative data on strategic direction, attitudes to risk, sector challenges and the impact of current events such as Brexit and GDPR, with its first report due to be delivered at a conference for participants in May this year. The Institute of Fundraising will also showcase findings at its summer Convention, and is offering its members a 10% discount on its cost of £4,950 a year.
The launch follows consultation with a number of large UK charities including BHF, CRUK, and Oxfam and aims to help fundraisers improve day-to-day operations and make long-term strategic decisions. It also aims to help Chief Executives and Trustee boards understand how their programmes sit within the market. Giving Clarity is looking for as many charities as possible to sign up, and as well as being invited to a presentation of results participants will receive a comprehensive written report and will also be able manipulate and visualise the data themselves using Tableau Reader.
Lucy Edwards, COO at Open Creates, said:
“At a difficult time for fundraising, this is a great opportunity for the sector to learn and collaborate. We’re particularly excited about giving participants simple, flexible data visualisation tools that will allow them to compare their performance to both the market in general and to organisations in the same cause area and/or of a similar size.”
Daniel Fluskey of the Institute of Fundraising said:
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“Benchmarking in the UK sector has been something that we’ve been keen to see up and running for some time. We’re very happy to be partners in Giving Clarity and are confident that it will help our members deliver higher levels of excellent fundraising.”
Those interested in participating should contact he***@ch***************.org.
Editor’s note 1 August 2018
Since this was published the product has been renamed ‘Charity Benchmarks’.
About Melanie May
Melanie May is a journalist and copywriter specialising in writing both for and about the charity and marketing services sectors since 2001. She can be reached via thepurplepim.com.