Information on Charities Available Online
By Jim Remsen, The Philadelphia Inquirer
Give to us. No, us. No, us.
Religious solicitations are pouring into mail slots at this time of year, their appeals melting some hearts and hardening others.
So which groups deserve the trash and which the cash? What's a do-gooder to do?
For starters, try a free click-and-check on www.MinistryWatch.com, a Protestant Web Site, or www.just-tzedakah.org, for Jewish groups.
The sites help the "giving public" get smart about the inner workings of hundreds of religious charities and nonprofits. And this is their high season.
MinistryWatch is run by Wall Watchers, an evangelical ministry in North Carolina that promotes Christian stewardship. It is the brainchild of Howard Leonard, a Temple University graduate and one-time portfolio manager at Templeton Investment Council in Radnor.
Now in its second year, MinistryWatch has compiled financial data on the 400 largest Christian "parachurch" ministries in the country, Wall Watchers president Mark Long said. Call up Aglow International, say, or Yugo Ministries and you can see balance sheets for the last few years and analyze their overhead expenses, fund-raising costs, revenue trends, and the like.
Long said MinistryWatch compiled the data from two sources: Form 990 reports that nonprofits are required to file with the Internal Revenue Service, and the audited statements that ministries must share if they belong to the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability.
"We don't endorse any of the groups", Long said. "We leave that decision up to the donor. Our goal is to equip them with information they wouldn't easily be able to get their hands on."
The site has its limitations, as Long conceded. It lists no Roman Catholic and few mainline Protestant organizations. The blurbs on the groups' goals and field accomplishments were provided by the groups themselves.
In a few months, he said, MinistryWatch will head into sensitive territory with a five-star system of "efficiency ratings" that will compare the groups' performances. The site also will have analysts' comments and list any legal action or accusations a group is facing.
Just-Tzedakah was created in 1998 by Ira Kaminow, a Potomac, MD, economist and a former Federal Reserve board staffer in Philadelphia. It has financial profiles of 75 Jewish organizations- and an option for making instant, online donations to each group.
Kaminow said he was not taking a cut from those donations; in fact, he said, he and his volunteer partners absorb the credit-card processing fees as their own act of tzedakah (Hebrew word for charity).
The data consists of the organization's 990 financial forms or the stricter reports required by the New York state, where many groups are incorporated. It also lists information on group's religious practices.
Don't look for financial ratings, though. Kaminow, an Orthodox Jew, said he is "a militant nonrater" because he doesn't want undue weight placed on the bottom line.
"People are hungry for this kind of information," said Tom Riley, associate editor of Philanthropy Magazine. "The economy is good and people want to be generous. Giving will probably top $200 billion this year. But they read about telemarketing scams and Web sites that end up taking huge commissions, and they are skeptical."
Riley also cited two vast sites that evaluate philanthropies: www.guidestar.org, a project of Philanthropy Research Inc., and www.ncib.org, run by the National Charities Information Bureau.
Reprinted from the Philadelphia Inquirer, 12/9/2000