Marketplace for Effective Philanthropy

Marketplace for Effective Philanthropy Clicking a button on the Malaria No More Web site takes a donor directly to a donation processing page provided through Network for Good, a 2006 grantee.

An overarching goal of our program is to make it easier for everyone—from individual givers to large foundations—to make good choices about philanthropy. If donors can identify the most effective nonprofits and give strategically to them, then every dollar can have greater social impact. In 2006, we improved the marketplace for smart giving by:    

  • Increasing and improving publicly available data about nonprofits. Our grants targeted efforts to collect, organize, and disseminate information about the goals, strategic plans, and actual accomplishments of nonprofits—particularly through Web sites and online databases. 
  • Supporting institutions that make it easy for donors to make good decisions. To strengthen the philanthropic marketplace, we backed organizations that help money move easily from donors to nonprofits.
Marketplace for Effective Philanthropy Grants Authorized in 2006
 
2006 Highlights

Thanks to a 2006 grant, One Economy—a nationwide nonprofit that brings broadband access to low-income people—will add a new feature, The Beehive, to its multilingual Internet portal. Tens of thousands of people now rely on this portal to get needed information about human services, education, health care, and personal finances. The Beehive will allow these low-income users to rate and comment on the nonprofit and government organizations that provide them with services. This aggregate data should prove helpful to donors trying to identify effective organizations.

Two venerable Bay Area community foundations—the Peninsula Community Foundation and the Community Foundation Silicon Valley—agreed to merge in 2006. To help the parties explore the merger idea, we joined the Packard, Irvine, and Skoll foundations and the Omidyar Network in underwriting research by management consultants from McKinsey & Company. Their results confirmed that the new entity could be more efficient and more effective. By joining forces, the organizations gained the potential to reduce administrative duplication and increased their capacity to take on large-scale projects. The newly formed Silicon Valley Community Foundation will address critical regional issues such as literacy, affordable housing, and health.

In 2006 we began to look more broadly at the entire system of organizations that gather information about nonprofits and put that information in front of donors. With the aim of helping these organizations work together more effectively, we funded a collaboration between Network for Good, an online marketplace for nonprofits, and GuideStar, an organization with a huge online database of financial information about U.S. nonprofits. With these new capabilities, a prospective donor who learns about an organization on GuideStar’s site can simply click a link and make a donation. In 2007 we will continue to focus on supporting comprehensive systems that provide programmatic data and not just financial information.
2007 Goals
 
  • Increase the number of nonprofit organizations providing program information online
  • Bring in other major funders to help create a comprehensive system for the entire nonprofit sector in the United States