Somebody is deciding between two charities working in the same area. She intends to give a substantial amount and she wants to check both first.
One website lists its trustees with short biographies, links the annual accounts, explains how money is allocated and states the senior pay position plainly. The other has a page about impact and a donate button.
She gives to the first. The second charity may well be excellent, and she had no way of establishing that and no patience for finding out.
1. Publish the trustees with names
And a line about each, since trustees are public information and a board presented as an anonymous group looks evasive.
2. Publish the registered details
Number, registered name and address, which are the first things a careful donor checks and should not require a search elsewhere.
3. Link the annual accounts directly
Rather than requiring somebody to find them on a register, since making it easy signals confidence.
4. Explain where the money goes
In plain terms, with proportions, since this is the question underneath almost every governance enquiry.
5. Explain the administrative costs honestly
Including why they exist, since a charity that explains its overhead is trusted more than one that implies it has none.
6. Address the senior pay question directly
Which is asked constantly and answered defensively, and which a plain statement handles considerably better than silence.
7. Explain how decisions are made
How funding is allocated and who decides, which matters to donors giving toward a particular purpose.
8. Explain the fundraising cost position
What it costs to raise money, honestly, since donors increasingly understand that fundraising has a cost and distrust charities that pretend otherwise.
9. Explain the complaints and concerns route
Including the regulator, published rather than withheld, which signals accountability rather than risk.
10. Explain the safeguarding position
Which is a governance question donors and volunteers both ask, and which deserves a clear public statement.
11. Explain how somebody could become a trustee
Since governance questions frequently come from people considering involvement rather than from sceptics.
12. Keep it current
An accounts link two years out of date does more damage than no link, since it suggests nobody is looking after any of it.
13. Make it answerable rather than only published
Since a specific question deserves a specific answer rather than a link to a forty page document.
14. Publish what the charity does not do
The boundaries of the work, since a donor giving toward something the charity does not actually deliver is a complaint waiting to happen and a misunderstanding that is entirely preventable.
15. Publish the impact reporting honestly
What was achieved and what was not, since a charity reporting only successes is read sceptically by exactly the donors who check governance information in the first place.
16. Answer the who runs this question before somebody gives
An assistant that names the trustees, links the accounts, explains where the money goes and what the overheads are, addresses the pay question plainly and gives the complaints route reaches the careful donor who would otherwise give elsewhere. The wider donor questions sit in donor questions that go unanswered on charity websites, the multilingual case in answering supporters in many languages, and the internal equivalent in chatbot governance who owns the bot in your company. See features, start at try, and the sector view sits under nonprofits.