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Welcome to tony martignetti non-profit radio i’m your aptly named host tony martignetti we’re always talking about big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent on this show. Welcome to the show. I hope you remember last week i had gail perry and fired-up fund-raising gail is the author of fired-up fund-raising turned board passion into action. She shared proven techniques to motivate your board to step up to their fund-raising responsibilities. This week, a conversation with ken berger he’s, the president and ceo of charity navigator. He has an announcement about charity navigator three point oh, we’re also going to talk about lessons learned as charity navigator has evolved from private foundation to public charity, striving to exemplify what it looks for in the fifty, five hundred charities it evaluates in what directions is charity navigator nudging charities and what gives them the authority to move the charitable sector in those directions? We’re going to talk about all of that with ken berger on tony’s take two at roughly thirty two minutes after the hour, the irs tells us what good governance means terms like transparency, accountability and governance since we talking with ken about some of those are often heard and i think rarely defined. So how does i rs to find them? I’ll talk about that at tony’s, take to roughly thirty two minutes after the hour. Right now, we take a break, and when we return, i’ll be joined by ken berger. Stay with me. You’re listening to the talking alternative network. Are you suffering from aches and pains? Has traditional medicine let you down? Are you tired of taking toxic medications, then come to the double diamond wellness center and learn how our natural methods can help you to hell? Call us now at to one to seven to one eight, one eight three that’s to one to seven to one eight one eight three or find us on the web at www dot double diamond wellness dot com way. Look forward to serving you. Is your marriage in trouble? Are you considering divorce? Hello, i’m lawrence bloom, a family law attorney in new york and new jersey. No one is happier than the day their divorce is final. My firm can help you. We take the nasty out of the divorce process and make people happy. Police call a set to one, two, nine six four three five zero two for a free consultation. That’s lawrence h bloom two, one two, nine, six, four, three five zero two. We make people happy. Hey, all you crazy listeners looking to boost your business? Why not advertise on talking alternative with very reasonable rates? Interested simply email at info at talking alternative dot com welcome back to tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. My guest today is ken berger for the hour, ken is president and chief executive officer of charity navigator. He has held leadership positions at a variety of human service and health care agencies large and small, and has operated programs serving the homeless, developmentally disabled, mentally ill substance abusers, the medically underserved and persons with hiv aids. His senior leadership positions have been in agencies such as johnny o professional service centers for the handicapped, the floating hospital volunteers of america, greater new york and the morris shelter. After nearly thirty years working in the charitable sector, ken berger joined charity navigator in two thousand eight. I’m very pleased that charity navigator’s work brings came to the studio. Welcome, kapin. Thank you, it’s. A pleasure to have you it’s great to be here. Charity navigator is ah, now a five oh one c three charity. Just like the charities that it evaluates. But it didn’t start that way. Why was it founded? And under what form? Basically, a family that was wealthy had become wealthy, wanted to give back and was looking for a place to go for objective information to make their charitable giving decisions, and they couldn’t find such a place. They were entrepreneurs, and so they decided to found this organization with the purpose of helping all donors make charitable giving decisions, and so that they incorporated in the year two thousand, and we were up and running in two thousand two, and you were originally incorporated not as a as a public charity, though well, it was a five, twenty three, but a private foundation, yes. And so for the first six years before i got there, basically the dugan family funded the organization, and then when i got there, one of my tasks was to help the organization transition to become a public charity and to have diversified funding sources and to try to walk the walk along with the organizations that we evaluate so that’s interesting, because you are now what you’re, as you said, you’re what you’re evaluating the same form of organisation, that five or one c three are there some lessons there since two thousand seven that you want to share? I won’t given my background, i brought the experience of of running public. Charities to the organization and so right away. Actually, i have been tasked with some other goals, and i said one of our goals needs to be that we need to be a role model. And so we put in place things such as terms for officers, term limits for board members, you know, they give her get policies for for board members and then just also trying to conform to every single standard that we had been holding, the charities that we evaluated, too, as well as the ones that we were in the process of developing so that we would meet all those standards. We took the thie independent sector guide, the principles of good governance and ethical practices, and we have been working over the years to meet every single one of those standards. So that’s, just a example of how we’re trying to walk the walk and to be clear, you’re in a waiting period now, right between the foundation status and the public charity status would just explain how that works, what we filed to become a public charity and two thousand seven, and at that time, the policy was there has to be a five year advanced ruling period where your transition and the purpose is that by the end of that five years, you need to show that you conform to the requirements to be a public charity, one of most significant being that at least a third of your funding comes from sources other than your primary funder. We’ve already achieved that goal, but it affects the official transition happens in november two thousand and twelve. But during this five year period, we can still receive donations and function like a public charity. Okay? And we’re talking about the charities that you evaluate, how many of those are there? And how do you select those? Those charities that charity navigator is looking closely at? We evaluate five thousand five hundred, and we select them from data we received from the irs. We get data on every charity that files with the irs, and we picked those that base. Basically, we follow the money because we’re our purpose is to be a guide to donors. And so therefore we go. We look at the places where donors give the most substantial amounts of money. And so of course, we only look at those that file a full nine ninety form, not the easy or anything else. And then we pick those that also are in each of the nine cause areas. So we also look for health. We look for education, we look for environmental, we look for religious affiliated all the different cause areas as well so that donors have a diverse choice and we have just a minute before the break. And so when we come back from the break, we’ll talk more in detail about the the how widely used charity navigator is these. But just before the break, these fifty five hundred charities that you’re evaluating represent roughly what percentage of all the all the revenue to the non-profit sector, the public charity non-profit sector, roughly fifty percent of all of the private contributions that come into the sector are within those five thousand five hundred and that’s actually very interesting, just so under six thousand charities, representing fifty percent of the fund-raising revenue of all the five twenty three out of one point two million five twenty three’s five thousand five hundred half, and there are other interesting numbers are going to talk about some of those the way the way it all shakes out after this break. This is tony martignetti non-profit radio, and after the break, can burger stays with us. So i hope you do, too e-giving attempting to bring good ending. Cubine you’re listening to the talking, alternate network, getting anything. Get in. Cubine are you stuck in your business or career trying to take your business to the next level, and it keeps hitting a wall? This is sam liebowitz, the conscious consultant. I will help you get to the root cause of your abundance issues and help move you forward in your life. Call me now and let’s, create the future you dream of. Two, one, two, seven, two, one, eight, one, eight. Three backs to one to seven to one eight one eight three. The conscious consultant helping conscious people be better business people. Buy-in are you feeling overwhelmed in the current chaos of our changing times? A deeper understanding of authentic astrology can uncover solutions in every area of life. After all, metaphysics is just quantum physics, politically expressed hi and montgomery taylor and i offer lectures, seminars and private consultations. For more information, contact me at monte m o nt y at r l j media. Dot com looking to meet mr and mrs wright, but still haven’t found the one. Want to make your car relationship as fulfilling as possible? Then please join us, starting monday, may second at ten am for love in the morning with morning alison as a professional matchmaker, i’ve seen it all. Please tune in and call as we discuss dating relationship and more. Start your week off with love in the morning with marnie alison on talking alternative dot com. Talking alternative radio. Twenty four hours. Dahna welcome back to tony martignetti non-profit radio my guest is ken berger, ceo and president of charity navigator can right before the break, we were talking about the fifty, five hundred charities that you evaluate, and you said they represent fifty percent of the fund-raising revenue. I had a survey for listeners before the show. Most people thought that the fifty, five hundred represented between sixty one and eighty percent. So people listening overestimated the the value of those fifty, five hundred charities? Is that typical? Do what? What, what? What do people typically think of the of that bundle of fifty five hundred? Well, actually, your listeners are correct in the sense that if you just look at the sector without factoring in charity navigator thereabout three thousand charities in this country that garner about sixty percent of all the revenues that come in each year, so we we are working to rejigger than the ones that we evaluate to conform to those that get the most. So we’re a little bit part of the reason that we don’t get them all is because we’re trying to get all nine cause areas if we just did it that way. We would do all health and do all education. We might not do some of the smaller ones. I see. All right, so i mean, falsely imputing listeners the show. We’re actually right. Where? Where did the question maybe weasel mislead? Okay, so so three thousand. So you’re saying the three thousand largest public charities get sixty percent of the revenue of yes, of the roughly fund-raising revenue off the overall revenue of roughly one point five to two trillion dollars a year goes to three thousand charities out of the one, point, two million. Five o n c three. Okay. And charity navigator is not necessarily capturing those three thousand because you’re looking cross all the all the sectors. Exactly fair toe arts groups that would probably be grossly underrepresented if you just took the top three thousand or fifty five hundred. Yes. Okay. Um, you’re trying to be ah, role model for the charities that you are evaluating on. You said you using the independent sector guidelines could use a little more about what it is that charity navigator started looking at when it started its evaluation of charities. Well, that was before my time and, you know when sharon and navigators started, the goal was to try to find universal standards that every charity would could be held to. And it was difficult to say the least on the one place that they found was available for such information was the irs information that every charity of a certain size has to file. Go to the numbers first. Go to the numbers are should be universal, universally defined across all across all charities. Indeed. So as a consequence, the the initial system that was developed looked at seven variables. Having to do with the finances of the organization’s their financial health into areas one which has been defined as the financial efficiency and the other as the financial capacity of the organizations. And are those definitions that charity navigator devised or those air from somewhere else? Those phrases those are devised by charity navigator. Okay, so fair to say that that was charity navigator one point. Oh, that’s. Exactly what we’re now calling it. Okay, well done. Okay. I have a second career. No. And then you went to you announced two point. Oh, on dh today you’re here to announce three point. Oh, yes. Oh, what? Was what was what was new with charity navigator two point oh, i should clarify right away that we’re changing our terminology slightly right originally to point i was going to be the final zsystems but basically what we what we have learned from the through our research and deciding to go through a change process, we’ve kopperman that there are three dimensions, three critical dimensions we need to look at, so the second dimension brings us to see and to point out that second dimension we call it measures of accountability and transparency, and we have been working on this for a couple of years now, and this summer, within a couple of months from now, it will go live wear. We’ve been putting the information upon our site tabs of information up, but it hasn’t impacted the score the rating score of charities because we wanted to gather it on all charities before we did that. And so this summer, we’re going toe flicked the switch, if you will, and for the first time in our history, our rating system will be two dimensional. It will look at finance as well as accountability and transparency now for the donors that don’t look closely, it’s still going to look the same as it did before. If you type in the name of a chair, you’re going to see stars because the two dimensions air waded into the rating of the charity and that’s interesting waiting i want i want to get a chance to talk about that, too, because you’re measuring variables, then you have to have to wait them. They’re not all equal, okay, there’s a lot behind a couple of stars or several stars. Where do you get the data for cne? Two point. Oh, this the accountability, transparency. Where does that information come from? Well, part of it comes from the nine. Ninety, because for the first time in thirty years, you know the irs has revised the forms partly from the advocacy of the independent sector and other groups like it to have some of those thirty three standards i mentioned on the form, and so today the nine ninety form has much more information on things other than finance things having to do with what are considered best practices, good governance, the ethics of the organization, if you will. And so we are taking advantage of that? So part of the information for accountability and transparency comes from the nine, ninety four, but the other part, which is nufer us and is thie direction we’re going to continue to go in is to look to the websites of the charities because that’s, where the transparency also comes in, how open is the charity to its key stakeholders and how much information isn’t providing openly and the place we want to go is to the website of paris because we’re seeing increasingly that that’s where donors air going toe look, we have the luxury of spending an hour together, so i’d like to get into the sort of the details of some of the work that maybe you don’t get a chance to share very often. And i think, well, i don’t know if people wonder about it, i wonder about it. I mean, you see stars, but and you see a list of people in the, you know, in the about us section on the charity navigator website, what are those people doing? I mean, you’re getting incredible amounts of data from irs sources and now from fifty, five hundred websites that you have to go. Look at how does this all work in your office with zeal? You know, that’s that’s because you’re saying that because they’re all listening, right? Your offices listening. Okay, that aside now well, you know, that was something that was a real mind blower for me coming from running direct service organizations, we have a staff of nine small and so the work is done by our analysts on dh. They gather the information, you know, we have a customized software that they use, and they gather all the data on each of the variables we look at. And, ah, you know, the good news for us up till now is that because the information is fairly straightforward. You need to look at that number in this number over here and pull it in. And then the software does the calculations um, up till now up cn one point. Oh, it took about three or four hours to put up a new charity. And each year it takes about a half an hour latto update. So that’s, how we with the staff of nine, we can do it because it was a very straightforward and very relatively quick calculation to dio going forward it’s not going to be possible to do it that way. Okay? And we’re gonna be talking about the next generation shortly. So an analyst goes to a website. They’re looking for good governance, accountability, transparency what in detail are they looking for? Well, there are only five. There are eighteen variables that we’re looking at in this accountability and transparency section, and i may not be able to rattle off every single one of them. You know that one third of the way, but for the what can you tell us? But for the website, there are five out of the eighteen where we look at the website and so it includes some stuff that wouldn’t be a surprise. Do you post your nine ninety on the website? Do you post your audited financial statement on the website? Do you have your board listed on the website? Do you have your staff leadership listed on the website? Do you have a donor privacy policy stated on your website? Those air, the things that we look at those are the five variables we look at on the website and then the other and then the others are from the ninety okay, do they have to be easily found? Some some sites are a little clunky when things were there, but not so easy to navigate. Is that a factor? We have a five minute rule, okay? Lorts zoho so the notion is if if it’s if we have to go on an archaeological dig, the whole purpose of this is not for charity navigator it’s, because we think that donorsearch should be able to easily access this information as the stakeholders of the organization and if we can’t find it and where the experts said and we’ve gone to all these websites that we can’t find in five minutes, whether it’s there or not, they get a get a no, not there. Now we do have a fallback, which is where developing the capacity for the charities to provide us with links to the information if we can’t find it. So if they say, hey that’s, not fair it’s there, then they can email us the link and will give him credit even though it’s it’s a very, very right. My guest is ken berger he’s president and chief executive officer of charity navigator geever let’s see the, uh three point oh, now you wanted teo announce the next generation and we have some time now before a break. So why don’t you tell us about what’s coming next? Yeah, cn three point oh is when we have a three dimensional rating system and the third dimension is what we consider to be the most important, the most critical that we’ve been striving to develop for years. And that is the results of the work. How is the organization showing evidence that it’s meeting its mission? What? And we define results as it was developed? This term was developed by the gates foundation because the definition of it that is because, you know, people who use words like out comes an impact and effectiveness and so forth that we want to be clear. This is a very open term that includes your activities, you’re outputs as well as your outcomes, all of those things seeing evidence of that and it’s, really we’re looking at results reporting how well and clearly does the organization report its results to its stakeholders on its website? That’s what we’re looking for results versus outcomes on your website i see a little i see references to both and you mentioned both what what’s the difference and what have you settled on? One or the other term? The term we’re settled on is results. Okay? And how does that distinguish from outcomes then? Well, outcomes mean that you have you provide data that shows that you have provided meaningful and sustainable change in the community or in people’s lives. Unfortunately, the reality is in the vast majority of the nonprofit sector, we’re not there. We don’t have that kind of data available. And so we don’t want to create a rating system where we turn around and there’s nobody more there’s, just a small handful. So we want to be realistic about where the sector is today, so we need to also look at they’re outputs and their activities. And there may be some cause is like, if you’re a ballet company, that may be about as far as you’re going to get let’s say so we do aspire further down the road through data from others to tryto get outcome measurement information to actually make a judgement beyond the reporting of the charity. Beyond results reporting and saying ok, is this truly showing evidence that is meaningful and sustainable, we want to give the most credit to those that have that, but we will also want to be pragmatic about the different cause areas and what’s what’s available and that’s very just fair. How does charity navigator intend in three point oto seth results, but that’s again a very vague area, but in the end, you’re coming down to a couple of stars or several stars. How do you how do you do that kind of work? Well, mind you, everything i say now is in the testing phase, so it’s subject to change it’s not been finalized. We’ve set a goal for ourselves to try to have the first prototype of this completed by the end of this year, but again first prototype, and even when we announce it and show it to people, we will continue to tweak it, modify it as we learn and as we tested further, so basically so within that context, i don’t you know, we had we had an original seven questions that we sort of posted on our website while we’ve been testing those and we’re continuously testing and so we’re not. Going with those seven questions, there was, for example, there was a question where we asked, do you admit that you made a mistake and will give you credit? If you admit you made a mistake? We have come to the conclusion that xero point xero non-profits air going to provide that information on, and so we got rid of that one, but basically there are three things we’re looking at. One is, what is your theory of change? Can you explain clearly? What is the problem that you’re trying to solve? And do you have some logic, logic model, if you will, that walks us through how you get from where we are today to where you want to get teo is it’s your road map, if you will. And the second thing we want to see evidence of is data, what kind of data are you gathering to show that you’re on that road and that you’re getting to your destination and maybe even data that shows where we are now, what you’re using as your benchmark toe launch from right, and so and so, and remember, we’re talking data that can include outputs a swell, as on third and probably most important do you adjust? Do you assess as a result of that data? And then do you adjust your work if you are not meeting the results that you were shooting for? So so cn three point oh is based on surveys, surveys that the charity’s themselves are are providing to your emailing them or mailing them a survey and no return the data no house that we’re going ultimately that might happen for one year, what you just said, ok, but ultimately we want to see this information on the charity’s website. This is on the website also, yes. Ok, so in the first year that maybe a grace period you haven’t, i realized provoc only prototype coming by the end of this year with that caveat, though you might start just by having the charity self report, right? Because we know that most charities don’t have this on their website now, but we believe that more and more stakeholders want to see it as do we and that that’s where ultimately will end. So we might say after they give it to us the first year, great job next year, you can’t do it. That way we know you have it. Put it on the website, okay, and that’s. Interesting, because we’re starting toe approach some of the ways that charity navigator hopes to move or nudge the charitable sector, and we’ll get to those in the second half of the show on dh. What other directions those might be. This is tony martignetti non-profit radio. I’m with ken berger. Stay with us after the break, tony’s hoexter. Yeah, you’re listening to the talking alternative network. Are you feeling overwhelmed in the current chaos of our changing times? A deeper understanding of authentic astrology can uncover solutions in every area of life. After all, metaphysics is just quantum physics. Politically expressed buy-in, montgomery, taylor and i offer lectures, seminars and private consultations. For more information, contact me at monte m o nt y at r l j media. Dot com oppcoll are you stuck in your business or career trying to take your business to the next level, and it keeps hitting a wall? This is sam liebowitz, the conscious consultant. I will help you get to the root cause of your abundance issues and help move you forward in your life. Call me now and let’s. Create the future you dream of. Two, one, two, seven, two, one, eight, one, eight, three, that’s to one to seven to one, eight one eight three. The conscious consultant helping conscious people. Be better business people. Dahna hey, all you crazy listeners looking to boost your business? Why not advertise on talking alternative with very reasonable rates? Interested simply email at info at talking alternative dot com durney welcome back to the show, it’s, time for tony’s take two at roughly thirty two minutes into the hour this week, my block post irs tells us what good governance means. There are these vague phrases and notions kind of thrown around the non-profit community and actually, ken berger and i are talking about some of them, and i’m helping to keep him out of jargon jail by defining them. He doesn’t know that, but we’re talking about what they mean and that keeps him out of jargon jail. But often these phrases are not defined like transparency and accountability and good governance, conflict of interest, a document retention. I found a neiers document buried on its website that talks a good deal about what these phrases mean to the internal revenue service and so that’s the that’s what this first segment of the post is about helping you understand what i r s thinks these things mean, and there’ll be another post or two in the coming weeks, just to tease you a little bit good governance to irs, that is the broad category, and it means having in place, quote policies relating to executive compensation, conflicts of interest. Investments fund-raising documenting governance decisions, document retention and destruction and whistle blower claims. End quote. So naturally, what are all those things mean? And i did find a couple of those in this week’s post and i’ll go on and talk about more of them and to find more of them in future weeks. That’s all on my blogged at m p g a d v dot com. And that is tony’s take two for friday, the first of july, the year is the year is half over. Can you believe that? No, no. Can i didn’t bring you back out. Kim burger already doing the rhetorical question e-giving sorry. My guest is ken berger. And he does not believe like me, that the years, years half over. But it is so we were starting to talk about some of these ways. That charity navigator would like to see the sector move, one of them being sharing results on the website. What are some other ways that charity navigator would like to see the community headed in home? Well, i think you know, having done this work for a long time, my observation is that there are a tremendous amount. Of really dedicated people who, you know, give their heart and soul to the work. And and so at the same time, i have seen and lived with very closely some real scoundrels that have run non-profits and they can have beautiful staff, but there’s, some real jerks running these places. And so i actually believe that part of the importance of moving toward results and the like is that the ability for an organisation to engage in the kind of shenanigans that some of these organizations engage in will become increasingly hard for them to dio if they are held to a standard of showing evidence of results, and then the other thing is, when you talked about accountability and transparency, i also think that the notion that the more some light there is, the less you know, you know, the the rats sort of scatter, if you will, that that that that there’s a cleansing elements. So i think that part of what charity navigator has always wanted to do is to separate the wheat from the chaff to separate those that are really not in it for the mission from those that are and, you know, that’s. Probably where we get mohr attention in the media than anything else is to is to is to avoid those scams, and we hope that these directions that we’re talking about and many others are talking about the sector moving in well, garner more trust in the nonprofit sector as there’s more of this transparency and mohr organizations of providing mohr information to people about what they’re doing. I mean, that’s the basic premise and that’s very consistent with what iris is looking for. Actually, they believe that asai said in antony’s, tick to the the organizations that have these policies in place bring the sunlight in and are more likely well from irises perspective more likely to be tax compliant, but generally that organizations that are open and transparent are more likely to be run not by scoundrels and honest and charitable way. Yes, exactly right. And this all goes back to your mean the mission of charity navigator is to be a donor guide, so let’s write, i mean let’s, steer donors toward the better charities and away from those that are not so better. And then the second and i would say, almost equally important role that we try to play is to drive more money toa high performing non-profits and that ultimately what that means is that more people in the world are helped more communities are helped because every dollar is spent more wisely than it might have been otherwise, i should have said earlier that we are live and you can call on basque can a question if you like, our number is eight double seven for a tow for one two oh eight, double seven for eight xero for one to zero. If you’d like to ask a question of ken berger can one of the other questions that i asked listeners to answer before the show on, by the way, listeners you’ll you’ll find these poles on the facebook page always before each show, very usually just two or three questions never more than three takes a minute or so to answer, and i always cite the cite your responses on the on the show. One of the questions i asked was what percentage of charity navigator users rely on the site as their sole our primary source of information and our listeners were sort of evenly divided between one to twenty. Percent and forty one to sixty percent. A few about a quarter of people thought eighty one to one hundred percent. Do you? You know, you know the number. What? What is that? How many people are relying on it for their solar primary? It’s rough decision. Roughly eighty percent. And was that about what you expected when you when you polled or was that higher or lower what it was? Hyre and it was one of the catalyst for changing the rating system. Okay, say more about that. When did you pull? First? When i do this data research, it was about i would say it was about eight months ago, but it really it clarified things with the board. It made the board see this more clearly than ever that the urgency of doing this because we had always told our users that looking at the finances of an organisation is part of the puzzle of what you need to consider. And then when we saw that it was being used differently by our our users, we determined that the need to become three dimensional as quickly as we can to meet the expectations of our users was critically important to get going on even faster than we had hoped to do before. So you learned you’re even more valuable even though you were asking people toe use charity navigator and other sources, you turned out to be more valuable than you realized. I’m okay with that. Okay, well, this is the charity navigator. Not this is not a personal assessment. Wait, we have a caller on dh she’s on line one. Hello, welcome what’s. Your name heimans highlight is welcome. Hi. I’m founded organisation were called love one forty six out of new e-giving panic it. I’m sorry. So absolutely charitynavigator. We really appreciate everything you guys were doing. Tio help raise the bar with charities and wait love’s opportunity to challenge ourselves with regard to how we assess our our work. And i wanted to ask, what are some of the other integral aspect of our work that we should look at? In addition, teo impact like when assessing our program? Well, you know, i couldn’t in the brief period of time, we have really get to all of it. But you know our website we try to be transparent with everything. And if you go there there’s a tab on the top there called myth adala ji, and it lists every single thing that we’re looking at. In the financial area. It lists the accountability and transparency information. If you want to learn more about our experiments in the third dimension of results, you can also go to my block site, which is ken’s commentary dot organ, and i keep a running tally of the work that we’re doing in that area as well. Okay, so, listen, so it sounds like you can use charity navigator’s site to learn what they’re doing and sort of get us close to that and sort of pattern yourself your own work. After that loosening, that sounds okay. We’re already actually, if i’m charity navigator, but we left for me to improve ourselves. Thanks very much for calling loose. Thank you. Other callers you are welcome to call and speak to ken berger ate double seven for eight xero for one to zero. So can carry. Navigator would like to see the sector b doing things. Ah, little differently and nudging charity’s a certain way. Why do you feel that charity navigator has the authority to nudge the charitable sector? Well, there are a number of ways. Look at it. One is with the the fact that we have three point three million households in the united states that turned to us, most of whom say where? Their primary source of information, i think there’s an indicator that they want our organization to be in this role. You know, i just related to that i got to say that, you know, having run cherries for a long time. There’s something unique about charity navigator. Even if you compare it with let’s say, guidestar, some of these other groups, we really are an outsider to the sector. And i mean that in the best sense of the term, we are independent that’s why we don’t charge anybody. We don’t charge charities. We want to be a completely independent, objective third party and advocate for donors, and they were not aware of there being anybody else that’s in a comparable role at the scale that we are to try to do that. There are other groups that are linked with trade associations and that’s. Great, you know, any standards that the sector sets for itself. It’s. Great, but they’re also needs to be. And we think it really resonates with the public that there is also this independent body that tries to do these things. And and as i said before, we’re trying to model some of this on some of the standards of the independent sector, if we think they make sense, but we go beyond that, we don’t just rely upon what, what the sector itself, you know, says it should do, because we think that donors have a unique perspective and they need to be advocated for is charity navigator, the consumer reports of the charitable sector. Without violating any trademarks were comfortable being in that universe, okay? And now there are other players in there you mentioned guide star there’s, also great non-profits dot org’s, you’re doing some collaborative work with with i wonder both of those i know great non-profits that organ, you say little about that before for a break? Yeah, well, and then that gets to trying to be a role model. We agree with the authors of forces for good that collaboration is better than competition and should be mohr embraced by the sector. And so we’ve been in discussion with great non-profits and actually, in march, we launched a collaborative effort where are users can now write a review on the charity navigator website and it’s not integrated into our star system, but you can also see how users view the charity, and it aggregates all the reviews that are done anywhere on the internet. So if if somebody writes a review on guide star, you’ll see it here you’ll see the aggregated score of all the users that write a review with great non-profits tool and any other site that great non-profits works with so that’s one example of a collaborative effort that we think is going quite well with guidestar were in ongoing discussions, and we’re exploring ways that we might do some collaborative work together because they have some capacities and analytical skills that we’d love to share and hopefully meet our mutual goal of getting as much information out to teo terrible e-giving community as possible, then there are a lot of other groups that were also in discussion with in this space to keep you out of jargon jail for people who might not know great non-profits dot or ge just in the minute we have before break. And you explain what what that site is about one one way it’s been sort of described very quickly is sort of a yelp for non-profits where anybody who’s been a volunteer, a boardmember a donor, a beneficiary, a client, that’s had some association with the organization can actually write a review and rate the organization, they have a five star system, we changed it to numbers so we don’t confuse our users, but and then they aggregate so you can see the aggregated reviews of all of the people who voluntarily did this sort of crowd sourced. Information. My guest is ken berger, president and chief executive officer of charity navigator. We take a break, and after the break, ken will stay with us, and i hope you do, too. E-giving didn’t think dick tooting getting ding, ding, ding ding. You’re listening to the talking alternate network e-giving. Thank you. Cubine. Duitz looking to meet mr and mrs wright, but still haven’t found the one. Want to make your car relationship as fulfilling as possible? Then please join us starting monday, may second at ten am for love in the morning with marnie gal ilsen as a professional matchmaker, i’ve seen it all. Please tune in and call as we discuss dating relationship and more. Start your week off with love in the morning with marnie allison on talking alternative dot com. Talking alternative radio twenty four hours a day. This is tony martignetti aptly named host of tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent technology fund-raising compliance, social media, small and medium non-profits have needs in all these areas. My guests are expert in all these areas and mohr. Tony martignetti non-profit radio fridays, one to two eastern on talking alternative broadcasting do you want to enhance your company’s web presence with an eye catching and unique website design? Would you like to incorporate professional video marketing mobile marketing into your organization’s marketing campaign? Mission one on one media offers a unique marketing experience that will set you apart from your competitors, magnify your brand exposure and enhance your current marketing efforts. Their services include video production and editing, web design, graphic design photography, social media management and now introducing mobile marketing. Their motto is. We do whatever it takes to make our clients happy. Contact them today. Admission one one media dot com talking dot com. Dahna welcome back to tony martignetti non-profit radio my guest, ken berger, president and ceo of charity navigator, can i also asked listeners before the show how much they thought their donors rely on charity navigator and listeners were pretty well split between more than half do fewer than half do, and i don’t know the smallest percentage is only six percent. I think fewer than half don’t use charity navigator, so there seems to be some sort of prevalent use sounds good, you know? You know, one of the one of the challenges is to try to ferret that out as much as we can. You know, if if there are roughly one hundred fifty million households in the united states and we have three million, we still have a long way to go, even though we’re the largest charity rating agency in the country and possibly in the world, i don’t know we still are at the base of the mountain there’s so many people that we hope will have a change of awareness. We think that the vast majority of giving is still almost entirely emotion driven and loyalty driven way think that that emotional, that hard part. Should always be there, but we’re hoping that people will also use their heads and look at some information as well. You’re evaluating fifty, five hundred charities. Do you aspire to evaluate more of those over time? Yeah, we have a long term goal of rating twenty thousand and for the statisticians amongst us that’s eighty five, where eighty five percent of all the revenues in the nonprofit sector go to those twenty thousand over the next five years. We’re shooting for ten thousand, which is where seventy percent of the money goes. So, you know, we want to slowly build towards that. I mean, if this volunteer effort, this wiki style effort that we’re developing really takes hold, it could be, you know, depending on how many people are interested in volunteering to rade organization’s, it could be even more than that if it really catches fire. So this is another of another form of collaboration. We’re talking about collaborating with great non-profits dot org’s, but thiss crowd sourcing and using volunteers? Well, i guess it’s really more volunteers used an actual crowdsourcing, but are you soliciting volunteers? Can people offer their time to help? The short answer is yes, but we have to remember that we are literally building this thing from scratch, and the system is not at all fully up. The volunteers that were using at this point are really more sort of kicking the tires and saying, hey, you know, you should add this to your training program would be good if we have a chat room over here, and the wording on this isn’t clear. So it’s really not toe actually, you use volunteers yet to really rate the charities it’s to test the system that we’re developing. We may not be in a position to really use the volunteers and fully implement this program until sometime in the latter part of next year. So this is sort of the prototype testing face, but we’re willing to and we would love to hear from people. And if if it’s not right now will keep their name and we’ll be in touch with them once we have this ready to go, okay? And of course, the site is charitynavigator dot or ge you could potentially maybe this is your aspirations that have thousands of people doing this work for you. That’s the dream? Yes, and you know, it’s it’s also another way to empower donors and engage them in the process, which is really what so much about what social media and the internet is is giving people an opportunity, tio and the interest, the growing interest in being even more engaged involved in the process and since can mention social media, i’ll drop that you can follow him on twitter. His idea on twitter is at ken’s commentary and also you can follow charity navigator, which is at charity knave. Is that run right? Okay, those are the two twitter ideas for ken and charity navigator. Another collaboration you have is with philanthropy dea on you tell us about that philanthropy. Dea is also a rating organization that is built on the idea of expert reviews, so essentially they will take a group of experts in a cause area and asked the experts which khun b foundation program officers it can be ceos within that cause area who, who amongst your peers or who amongst those organizations you have funded foundation, do you find to be the most high performing in this cause area? They aggregate that information to give a report on let’s. Say top ten or a group of charities that they think meets that criteria. I think they’re doing other things as well. But that’s that’s the part that we were, we are most interested in those discussions. Air very preliminary. They recently were acquired by guide star. And i think guidestar also wants to use that service as a value add for their their current customers clients. Okay, on the on the negative side of charities and charitable giving, you have donorsearch advisories for non-profits that are suspect to say that maybe put it at best. What what are the what is the donor advisory, and how do you decide that one should be issued? We developed this about a year ago, and it was because we found that there are circumstances where something so significant occurs that it goes beyond any rating system. We might develop that there’s something that’s happening with the organization that raises questions about whether any of the information that we can get from them. Self reported information is accurate because so, for example, if the organization’s being investigated by a state attorney general, the organization is in a serious lawsuit where there are questions. About the leadership and, you know, financial mismanagement. What have you, those kind of situations that are so big like that? We think that giving a score doesn’t do justice on until that’s resolved, we put up a donor advisory, so if you type the name of that charity, you won’t see a star. You’ll see donorsearch vise ary and in tow link you to the information that we found about the investigation that’s going on that leads us to say the donors, our advice to you is to take a pause and hold off until we find out how this thing plays out. So you’re not drawing the conclusion for the donors, but you’re giving them all the information for them to draw their own using the primary source material that you have found that raises your suspicion, right? But we are, in a sense, making a partial decision. We have opted not to give them a star rating of any kind because we’re not confident in the information we have just a minute before the break and there’s something else that’s interesting that i’m sorry before the end of the show, really that the charity navigator does and that’s your your annual executive compensation survey. Yes. Executive compensation on irs fray catchphrase popular. What? What is the survey? We take a look at the salaries of the middle large size charities we evaluate of the ceos and we show the trends. What is the average salary on? Then we break it out by different sectors by different sizes of organizations. And then we also highlights some of the extreme out layers on that survey gets a lot of attention. People can find that on the website. Yes, there’s a whole section of studies. And you can find all of that on the website we updated every year. The site is charitynavigator dot or ge. The organization is charity navigator. Its president and ceo is ken berger kayman one. Thank you very much for being in the studio and on the show. Thank you. Thank you for having me, it’s been my pleasure. Next week we’re cultivating and motivating women donors. One of my interviews of the speakers from fund-raising day fund-raising conference here in new york city, which was just last month. I’ll plead replay that interview on cultivating and motivating women donors also in the second half. Of next week’s show, i’ll have holly hall she’s, the features editor for the chronicle of philanthropy, she’ll be with me. She was a guest two weeks ago to question some of the methodology in last year’s e-giving yusa report, and so we’re going to talk about this year’s methodology because this year’s report is out and joining me for that discussion will be representatives fromthe e-giving institute, which sponsors wth e-giving yusa report, so it’ll be holly hall and representatives fromthe e-giving institute, and we also talk about the report’s findings on two thousand ten’s fund-raising and what they mean for your fund-raising this year and beyond, as always, you can keep up with what’s coming up on the show. Sign up for our insider email alerts on the facebook page that you know where to go for facebook and then just the name of this show and you’ll find us while you’re there. Please like the show, become a fan, you can listen to tony martignetti non-profit radio any time on the device of your choice by subscribing on itunes. Listen on your computer, your smartphone, your tablet, you’ll find our itunes archive at non-profit radio dot net. Creative producer of the show is claire meyerhoff, our line producer. Today was janice, the owner of talking alternative broadcasting is sam liebowitz, and this shows social media is by regina walton of organic social media. This is tony martignetti non-profit radio. I hope you’ll join me next friday, one to two eastern here at talking alternative dot com no. Co-branding think dick tooting getting dink, dink, dink, dink. You’re listening to the talking alternate network. Get in. E-giving cubine looking to meet mr and mrs wright but still haven’t found the one want to make your current relationship as fulfilling as possible? Then please join us starting monday, may second at ten am for love in the morning with morning alison as a professional matchmaker. I’ve seen it all. 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