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New Web site a network for nonprofits

<mailto:mmay at sfchronicle.com>Meredith May, Chronicle Staff Writer

Friday, December 26, 2008

(12-25) 17:44 PST -- If you want to pick an auto mechanic or hair 
dresser, you can go to Yelp.com. A restaurant - go to Zagat.com. A 
college class - ratemyprofessors.com.

But what if you want to donate to charity?

Taking a cue from the online field test movement, a group of Stanford 
University students created greatnonprofits.org - where volunteers, 
nonprofit workers, donors and the needy rate the charities they encounter.

"These days people don't go to a movie or buy a book without first 
checking the reviews," said greatnonprofits.org founder Perla Ni. 
"Nonprofits need a forum to create that same type of trust." 
Especially now, Ni said, as the recession makes it harder for people 
to give, while also creating more demand for nonprofit help.

Most of the charities reviewed on her site are small, with an average 
of two people on the payroll, 30 volunteers and an annual budget of 
$180,000. They don't have the money for marketing, and their work 
goes largely unnoticed, she said.

After a beta test, Ni's Web site went live in June. To date, 400 
nonprofits have been reviewed, the bulk of them in the Bay Area. More 
than 1 million U.S. charities are in the Web site's database, waiting 
to be reviewed.

So far on the site, a Buddhist teacher who volunteers for the 
Liberation Prison Project in San Francisco wrote about the powerful 
letters he received from inmates. Someone who adopts abused rabbits 
through House Rabbit Society in Richmond lauded the program. When a 
gay couple was banned from a ballroom dance class in San Mateo, they 
wrote about the advice they received from the National Center for 
Lesbian Rights in San Francisco: Write to the mayor. Shortly 
thereafter, the couple was invited back to the ballroom class.

"It's an extremely beneficial tool for nonprofits like ours that are 
young and still trying to create name recognition in the community," 
said Caron Tabb, who provides new clothes to homeless children for 
their first day of school through her 2-year-old Burlingame 
nonprofit, My New Red Shoes.

Some of her first reviews were from professionals who work in 
homeless shelters and send her requests for children's clothes.

"We welcome anybody's inquiry, and we want people to go to our Web 
site and read our annual report and strategic plan," Tabb said.

Nonprofits that are not so great also get noticed. Reviewers have 
written about outdated computer equipment and staff shortages, as 
well as nonprofits that exaggerate their need to get more funding. Ni 
removed one nonprofit that is the subject of a federal investigation, 
from the Web site.


Roots in Hurricane Katrina

Ni, 35, got the idea for greatnonprofits.org after Hurricane Katrina. 
The then-publisher of the Stanford Social Innovation Review, she was 
considered by her friends the go-to person to find out which New 
Orleans relief agencies to fund.

She didn't have an answer, and realized she couldn't find any sort of 
measurement system for charities online, beyond the basic 
income/expense ratios.

She sent one of her reporters to New Orleans to walk the streets and 
find out. The five charities the reporter found providing most of the 
shelter, food and water were small, obscure ones that weren't getting 
any media attention, she said.

She found the same was true in the Bay Area.

"There is so much innovation in the nonprofit world here, so much 
amazing intelligence and hard work, but those aren't the kind of 
charities that have time or money to promote themselves," she said.

In general, donors give to their church first and their alma mater 
second, Ni said. Overall, the poor receive about 12 percent of national giving.

It's not because people have an aversion to helping the needy, she 
said. It's that they are just unfamiliar with which groups are making 
a difference.

Greatnonprofits.org and GiveWell.net, an online charity evaluator and 
funder that puts its ranking system online, are seen as the 
front-runners to bring transparency to the charity world.

"What greatnonprofits is doing is quite unique; there are only a 
couple other experiments happening but it's the largest," said Jacob 
Harold, program officer in the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation's 
philanthropy program.

"These sorts of constituency opinions provide insight but do not in 
and of themselves get to the question, 'Is the nonprofit creating 
social impact?' " Harold said. "But it can be really useful in 
context with other information."


Holiday book

For the holiday season, Ni culled the Bay Area charities that ranked 
four stars or higher on her Web site and compiled them into a book: 
"Great Guide to Giving and Volunteering - San Francisco Bay Area 2009."

Each entry includes a review from the Web site and examples of what 
the charity could do with a donation of $50 or two volunteer hours.

Ni distributed 10,000 guides with San Francisco Chronicle 
subscriptions in late November, is passing them out at beauty salons, 
and sells them for $2.95 on her Web site. She hopes to create a new 
guide every year in December.

Four community foundations in other cities have contacted Ni about 
replicating the site.

GuideStar, a Web site that allows users to examine charity tax 
records, plans to add reviews from greatnonprofits.org to its site in February.

"The concept works because yes, you want to know that the charity is 
not bilking you out of your donation, but more importantly, you want 
to know if it's having an effect on someone's life. We are allowing 
nonprofits to tell their narrative story," Ni said.


Check out your charity

To read charity reviews

or order a nonprofit

giving guide, go to: <http://www.greatnonprofits.org>www.greatnonprofits.org

E-mail Meredith May at <mailto:mmay at sfchronicle.com>mmay at sfchronicle.com.

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/12/26/BAEP14OGI4.DTL

This article appeared on page B - 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle




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