Key Benefits of a GuideStar
A GuideStar will inform the work of all critical actors in an existing and/or emerging civil society. It will enhance or enable the work of
Civil Society Organisations
- Offers all CSOs regardless of their size or means, a free opportunity to explain their work and demonstrate their accountability.
- Limits and streamlines a CSO’s reporting to grant makers, researchers and donor services intermediaries.
- Allows CSOs to understand the work of peer organisations and access relevant benchmarking data.
- Lessens the long-term cost of fundraising by providing information to help CSOs identify grant makers and by enabling donors to take a more active role in identifying not-for-profits for their support.
Grant makers
- Satisfies grant makers’ first level of due diligence for grant applicants.
- Allows convenient mapping of grant programme areas—e.g., find the organisations that do a specific type of work in a specific community.
- Permits grant makers to identify other CSOs, for comparison purposes.
Individual & Institutional Donors
- Supports the growth and public confidence in online giving and enables robust transaction systems.
- Gives donors the tools to identify, compare and track the records of CSOs undertaking activities that they wish to support.
- Allows donors a means to take control of their philanthropy, confirm the status of any fundraising entity and assess the impact of its work.
Government Regulators
- Provides data and analytical tools to support regulatory enforcement.
- Generates increasingly higher quality reporting by not-for-profits.
- Supports public disclosure objectives and eliminates costly public requests for not-for-profit accounts.
- Establishes electronic systems that can replace or pre-empt inefficient or intrusive systems.
Government Policy Makers
- Enables policy makers to identify geographies that are over or under-served by CSOs.
- Supports decision-making by enabling policy makers to track the trends in philanthropy and CSO service, by sub-sector and geography.
Professionals
- Generates information that will help accountants, solicitors, and consultants to advise their CSO clients.
Government Statisticians, Academic Researchers and Policy Analysts
- Generates information that will provide the foundation for government statistics.
- Inform the work of academic researchers and eliminate their need to capture data on their own for general analysis.
Third Party Data Service Providers/Evaluators/Accreditation Agencies
- Provides data to third parties that promote electronic philanthropy, support more efficient grant-making, and evaluate and/or accredit CSOs.
Society Generally
- Establishes transparency as the accepted practice in charitable sector activity.
- Fosters a better allocation of resources to CSOs that are doing the most effective work.
- Increases the amount of philanthropy generally.
- Encourages the restructuring of CSO activity to eliminate redundant service provision and promote activity in underserved markets.
Sub sections for this page:
GSI Activities : What is a GuideStar? : Key Benefits : Engagement process
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