A few months ago I began the process of responding to the inquiries of the Better Business Bureau’s Wise Giving Alliance.  I blogged about it in a post titled ”How Charity Watchdogs Can be a Pain.“  The ministry I represent, Village Missions, has had some correspondence with the Alliance over the past several months, and the evaluation is now complete. You can see it here.

Even though Village Missions did not ace the test, I think the process was quite valuable.  I found the Alliance staff to be accessible, informative and helpful.  The standards are objective – either you meet them or you don’t.  I like this because so much that passes for charity evaluation on the Internet is loaded with editorial subjectivity.

The Alliance standards give donors a good sense of how boards govern, how nonprofits spend their money, how truthful they are in their representations, and how willing they are disclose basic information to the public.  They are a great set of standards to measure ourselves by.  And this is not a one-time evaluation.  Village Missions will use these standards as best practices to benchmark against.  I want to see them used as part of a TQM-style continuous improvement process.

Village Missions did not meet 4 out of the 20 standards established by the Alliance.  These do not necessarily represent deficiencies in transparency, governance, effectiveness or anything else.  Some could be opportunities for improvement.  We do not meet one standard because it does not serve the best interests of the Mission.  

I will discuss these standards  in detail in following posts.  If interested donors follow along, read about Village Missions on the various watchdog websites, do their own research and ask questions,  I think they’ll like what they see.