Monterey, CA Is Your Non-Profit Doing A Good Job?

View From A Non-Profit Serving Carmel, Carmel Valley, Gonzalez, Greenfield, King City, Marina, Monterey, Pacific Grove, Pebble Beach, Salinas, Seaside And Soledad California

The Better Business Bureau got a black eye on the front page of the USA Today Money Section yesterday with the headline "Is the BBB's charity seal of approval up for sale?"  I thought the story was unfair because it implied that the BBB was the place that you should go to check out a non-profit.  Although they do have an accreditation service for non-profits, it's a very small part of their business and few charities use it.  Hands To Help Seniors is not a member of the Better Business Bureau and it never occurred to me to join it.  The for-profit company that I run, Family inHome Caregiving is a member, and I believe it is an important organization to monitor for-profit companies for quality.  But non-profits are a different breed and there are other organizations which do a better job of gauging their effectiveness.  The USA Today article took the Blinded Veterans Association as an example.  It said that the BBB's Wise Giving Alliance charity rating service gave the group a seal of approval while the American Institute of Philanthropy's Charity Watch gave the group an F and another charity-rating service Charity Navigator gave it 0 stars out of 4.  "There are 158,000 veterans that are legally blind, but only 20% the charity's budget is spent on field services to help blinded vets," CharityWatch founder and President Daniel Borochoff told USA Today.  Only a tiny fraction (not even one-tenth of one percent) of non-profits are accredited by the BBB (about 500 out of 1.5 million).  Therefore, I would not rely on them as a main source of information on non-profits.  A better gauge is to go to a site like www.guidestar.org.  This site is free, and will give you public information about any non-profit you are interested in, including IRS filings such as their form 990 where you can see where the charity gets its funds and how it spends them.  It's a great resource.  I will point out that our info is not on the web site, but this is only because 2012 was our first full year of operation and we haven't filed our 2012 Form 990 yet.

Please note that this blog reflects my personal opinion and may or may not reflect the opinion of Hands To Help Seniors and the individual members comprising the Board of Governors.