It used to be "transparency" for a nonprofit meant being willing to answer donors' questions about your finances and inner workings.
Now it means making that stuff publicly available.
The Nonprofit Consultant Blog explores this issue at Nonprofit Website Mistakes: Lack of Transparency. To be transparent on your website do these things:
- Post your 990s
- Post your audits
- Post board activity
- Start blogging
- Post your contact Information
Not so long ago, you didn't need to worry much about being transparent: most donors never gave a thought to looking under the hood of the charities they gave to. Small print somewhere saying "Our annual report is available on request" was all the transparency you needed.
Now, transparency needs to be a clear and constant part of what you do and how you think, not just on your website, but everywhere.
More than ever before, people are skeptical about institutions, including nonprofits. At the same time, more donors are becoming web-savvy enough to find information on their own -- and willing to do so. This combination of skeptical, web-smart donors demand a radical sort of transparency -- online and off.
When you don't make information easily availab1le, you seem to be hiding something. Don't let that happen to you!
Technorati Tags: nptech, transparency
You don't say! My post last Thursday was about that very thing: http://www.domusblog.org/2008/08/transparency.html. But when helpfully put in bullet form like you do above, it doesn't seem like nearly enough. I wonder what the next thing needed to be transparent will be. Maybe it'll be related to the fact that on the intertubes, you can be anyone you want, or even no one. Would pictures of staff help (something on our to-do list)? Feels more real and tangible (although they could be pictures of anyone, really). Any other thoughts on getting ahead of the transparency curve?
Garland | www.domuskids.org
Posted by: Garland Walton | 25 August 2008 at 16:03