Posted by Author on Sep 14, 2011 Views: 2262

GreatNonprofits Shares Surprising Findings in Advancing Philanthropy

GreatNonprofits is featured in the current issue of Advancing Philanthropy, the publication produced by the Association of Fundraising Professionals. We were thrilled to share some of our most interesting and surprising findings from our experience with reviews over the last few years. Here’s a sneak peak at the article, “Up For Review,” written by Andrew Wyatt, FInstF, and the full article is linked below.

“If you conducted a survey of your organization’s leaders, volunteers and donors, what words do you think they would use to describe the positive qualities of your organization? Perhaps, you may hope, terms such as “accountable, “effective and “ethical would be among those used most frequently. At the same time, what would the people involved with your organization change to make it better?

Since 2007, GreatNonprofits (www.greatnonprofits.org) has provided a forum where volunteers, donors and people served by charitable organizations can tell their stories and describe their experiences with various nonprofits (see sidebar). GreatNonprofits helps inform prospective donors and volunteers, and assists them in differentiating among nonprofits, finding ones they trust and being more confident in
giving or signing up to volunteer. At the same time, the site promotes greater nonprofit excellence through feedback and transparency. (There are now more than 80,000 reviews of nearly 10,000 nonprofits.)

GreatNonprofits decided to analyze reviews on its website in order to identify the words used most frequently in comments about charitable organizations and to better understand the attributes of nonprofits that are most important to the people who work with and benefit from them. The result ”surprising, to say the least ”have interesting implications for fundraisers.”