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Who are your services aimed at? |
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Our services are primarily aimed at individual philanthropists and companies who want to find little known and high-impact international development charities to support.
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Why use our services? |
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We identify and recommend effective development charities using a rigorous analysis that few people or companies have the time or capacity to do.
Our recommendations inspire and make people more confident in choosing what charities to donate to. As there are over 180,000 charities in the UK it is often a challenge to decide what to give to. We will seek out where we think your money can make a difference with a particular focus on international development.
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What is the rationale for the service? |
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We believe that an increase in accessible third-party knowledge and research on international development charities will encourage people to give more.
Most people recognise that the nature of giving is such that it works best in small groups with committed donors, rather than on a faceless, industrial scale with little personal connection. So why would you want to use something like Development Ratings' recommendations?
Because we provide you with personalised advice on finding over-looked charities and provide you with the comfort that you are giving to effective organisations. We provide a service similar to what equity research houses offer to stock-pickers – we recommend the charities that will give you the highest social return on your investment.
This also helps the charities. Again using the equity research analogy - research tends to increase investor interest in the companies it profiles, driving down a company's cost of capital, heightening visibility, and increasing its financial flexibility.The essence of this value-add applies to Development Ratings. We increase the interest in particular charities by recommending them and increase the transparency around the whole of the sector. This should in turn reduce the amount of money charities need to spend on fundraising making them more effective.
All in all we make you more confident that your money will be used to actually foster development where it is needed.
Please click here to see why one of our advisory clients uses us.
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Why do you focus on relatively unknown organisations? |
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As these organisations are often relatively unknown to the general public, new partners and sources of funding can have a profound effect and this is the area where we believe research is scarce and our services can add the most value.
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Do the organisations only work in the least developed countries that you focus on? |
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We concentrate on organisations with a strong presence in these countries. We may also identify organisations in other developing countries.
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Does your analysis place an additional reporting burden on charities? |
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No. Our research analysts carry out in-depth research and fact finding before approaching any organisation and will only meet to ask very specific questions. As a result we are able to efficiently produce reports that will benefit both the organisations and potential donors.
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Do your recommendations tell me the whole story? |
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No, measuring development impact is an inexact science. However, our rigorous analytical approach provides a very useful independent view on the impact that a given organisation will have.
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What makes you different to existing charity rating services? |
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Development Ratings is not a charity ‘watchdog’. Our main differentiators are (i) no narrow focus on financial efficiency (ii) an analytical assessment of each organisation based on a thorough development impact model (iii) specialisation in some of the least developed countries (iv) recommendations identifying the key benefits of funding or partnering with a given organisation (v) no ranking of non-profit organisations (vi) we strive to uncover new and innovative opportunities for social investors.
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Can I fund or partner with organisations through you? |
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Through the Development Ratings Fund, you are able to directly support the charities that we recommend. When you donate through the Fund you also receive the research recommendations that we have written.
We do not charge a fee for this service and we provide this service purely as a way of supporting the charities that we feel should be encouraged.
We provide our clients with tailor-made advice on finding a special charity to support.
There are many schools of thought on how involved you should get in the charities that you support. At Development Ratings we encourage long-term partnerships and that individual donors provide more than their wallet to the charity.
However, we do not encourage micromanagement. While charities may benefit from the skills of their supporters we also urge donors to accept that charity work and especially the work that is being carried out in the developing countries requires specialised knowledge and expertise. Individual philanthropists and companies should not automatically assume that they have this knowledge. Our service exists to increase the confidence that you are giving to capable organisations that are able to tackle the problems that they have set their goals to solve.
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How do you fund yourselves? |
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We charge an advisory fee for the tailor-made advice we give on finding a charity.
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