Making the site

I got some interesting feedback on the Helpalot survey:

“I believe http://www.guidestar.org lists all charities 501(c)3 including a breakdown of legal information regarding board members, funds raised, and distributions.

For ratings, there are other websites which evaluate the way funds are spent whether on administration or actual assistance to the needy. I even think there is already another site (it’s been a few months, and I’ve been so overwhelmed with my own charity I’ve forgotten the names–sorry) where you can register your own ID, tell friends about it, and they can see who is supporting which charities and why. In other words, I’m not seeing how this is new. Sorry.”

The person who left this message, didn’t leave an email address, so I’d like to respond here on my blog.

Comparing Helpalot to a site like Guidestar, the main difference is in the scope and the system in place leading to the information.

The scope

Helpalot aims to make objective and (multi)subjective information available on every charity in the world. Guidestar has a separate page for the US as for the UK. On Helpalot you can search on country, but are able to find (local) charities from all over the world.

Another big difference is that Helpalot does not only list certified charities. If you like to make a positive change and have a good idea, you can get a page on Helpalot and start to win support minutes after you thought up this idea.

The system in place leading to the information

Helpalot is decentralized. Like Wikipedia, the information comes from the users themselves and this decentralized nature makes it extremely scalable and makes the intention of every charity in the world a possibility.

The content generation is stimulated by social networking, setting up a flow of trust that enables people to set a charity in a social context.

There are other sites that deal with the same goals, but differ on strategies or otherwise. To name some:

• http://www.care2.com
  This site is huge and with many features. It has social network aspects, but the concept of Helpalot is more focused. It has groups where people can gather, Helpalot has charity pages with evaluations that make it possible to quickly get a view on the charity and how it is judged by the community.
• http://www.intelligentgiving.org/
  This site under development. Helpalot and Intelligent Giving have some overlap, but I don’t know enough about it to really make a fair comparison. The main difference as far as I know is that it will be UK only and Helpalot not.
• http://www.charitynavigator.org/
  Charity navigator is one of the biggest evaluators in the US. They make use of user feedback, but mainly make us of centralized mechanisms. This leads to a limited type of charity they can enlist. From their site:“Which charities do you evaluate? Because we aim to help givers and to celebrate charities nationwide, we use five simple guidelines for choosing which charities to evaluate. Before evaluating a charity, we consider its:

  Tax Status: We only evaluate organizations granted tax-exempt status under section 501(c) (3) of the Internal Revenue Code and file a Form 990. 501(c) (3) organizations are considered public charities and all donations to them are tax-exempt.

  • We don’t evaluate 501(c) (4) organizations.501(c) (4) organizations, like the Disabled American Veterans or the National Rifle Association of America, are allowed to spend a substantial portion of their revenue on lobbying our government and not every donation to them is tax-deductible.
  • We don’t evaluate charities that are exempt from filing the Form 990.Many religious organizations, like the Salvation Army, are exempt under Internal Revenue Code from filing the Form 990. As a result, we lack sufficient data to evaluate their financial health.
  • We don’t evaluate private foundations.Private foundations, like the Avon Foundation, receive the majority of their money from only one individual, family or corporation. This differs from the public charities that Charity Navigator evaluates. Public charities have a broad-base of support from the general public as well as variety of other funding sources. The IRS requires that private foundations file a Form 990-PF which differs from the document public charities file. This makes it impossible for us to compare the financial performance of private foundations to public charities.

  Sources of Revenue: We require more than $500,000 in public support.

  Because our goal is to help individual givers, we evaluate only those charities that depend on support from individual givers.

  Length of Operations: We require 4 years of Forms 990 to complete an evaluation.

  Location: We only evaluate charities based in the U.S. and registered with the IRS. However, the scope of a charity’s work can be international.

  Type of Programs: At this time we are not adding any hospitals, hospital foundations, universities, colleges, land trusts, community foundations, or PBS stations.”

  Helpalot will have no limitation on tax status, sources of revenue, length of operations, location or type of programs.

• http://www.charitywatch.org
  Focus on money spending of US charities and works centralized.
• http://www.allegoededoelen.nl
  Dutch charity portal. No community feedback, only for Dutch charities.

Hopefully this has clarified the concept some more. If anyone knows a website that has the same goals and uses the same strategy as Helpalot, please put a link in the comment.

This entry was posted on Monday, October 9th, 2006 at 1:09 am and is filed under Project Focus. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.