My boys and I enjoy watching “The Flintstones” on DVD.  In one episode we recently viewed Fred and Barney were feuding, and Barney got a watchdog named Buzzsaw.  As you can imagine, Fred ends up with Buzzsaw clenched firmly to his posterior a couple of times during the episode. As the CFO of a nonprofit org, Village Missions, I sometimes feel like I need to extricate myself from the jaws of overzealous watchdogs. 

Village Missions often receives requests for information from donors.  We give those requests individual attention and respond to them promptly.  We also voluntarily submit to the standards of the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability.  That’s why it’s a bit annoying to be the target of a watchdog group.

 One of our diligent donors looked us up on the Better Business Bureau’s website and came up with this report concerning us:

“Despite written BBB Wise Giving Alliance requests in the past year, this organization either has not responded to Alliance requests for information or has declined to be evaluated in relation to the Alliance’s Standards for Charity Accountability. While participation in the Alliance’s charity review efforts is voluntary, the Alliance believes that failure to participate may demonstrate a lack of commitment to transparency. Without the requested information, the Alliance cannot determine if these charities adhere to the Standards for Charity Accountability.”

Ouch.  Let’s see, the Wise Giving Alliance asserts that because we declined to participate on their website, we may lack commitment to the ideal of transparency. 

I beg to differ.  The reason that we haven’t participated in the Wise Giving Alliance relates primarily to the difficult web-based system that the Wise Giving Alliance has established .  The requests from the Alliance come by email, and end up being tagged as spam.  So, after I retrieve their request from the spam filter, I then go to their web site,  register at the website, wait for an email confirmation, retrieve the second email from the spam filter,  go back to the website a second time and then begin the daunting task of slogging through about 13 screens in order to comply….(whew.)

I begin to wonder if it’s worth it.  After all, the Wise Giving Alliance only reports on 1,780 organizations out of approximately 1.7 million nonprofit organizations that file Form 990.  The Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability has over 2,000 members, and they’re a voluntary organization, representing only the Evangelical Christian segment of the nonprofit world.  And, if you look at the organizations that we are listed with at Give.org , you wonder if we want to keep that kind of company anyway.

And yet, we are committed to transparency.  There are some excellent organizations that comply with the Wise Giving Alliance’s Standards for Charity Accountability . The standards are objective, we’re not being compared to other organizations (I’ll take on the sites that compare charities another time.)  And finally, the Wise Giving Alliance is staffed by some very conscientious and responsive people.

That’s why we are jumping through the hoops and submitting our data. I should mention that we’re not feuding with the Alliance. The analyst handling our data has been responsive, and they seem to be open to our feedback.  Maybe we can help improve the system.

In fact, I have the draft report back from the Alliance today.  It came by certified mail, and I need to respond – the dogs are barking;)