Richard Marsh to head Intelligent Giving

By Sarah Townsend, Third Sector Online, 28 May 2009

Former Impact Coalition chief takes the lead at donor information website

Richard Marsh, former director of the Impact Coalition, is to take over the top job at donor information website Intelligent Giving.

Adam Rothwell, director of Intelligent Giving, will stand down in July to pursue a career as a history teacher. Marsh will take his place on an interim appointment of an initial three months.

Marsh has been working with chief executives body Acevo as a consultant to help the organisation oversee its takeover of the Impact Coalition, which works to improve charities' transparency.

"I hope to build on the work Adam has done and help Intelligent Giving become a place for robust debate about charities," said Marsh. "We want to avoid throwing mud at the sector and instead take a more active role in encouraging charities to improve communication with donors and beneficiaries. In this way, Intelligent Giving will adopt some of the same ideals as Impact."

He added that the skills and expertise he gained as director of the Impact Coalition, and the fact that he had worked in the sector rather than as a commentator, were the main reasons he had been hired.

One strand of the role will be to collaborate with Intelligent Giving's US equivalent, Charity Navigator, and Keystone Accountability, a charity that works to imrpove organisations' effectiveness, to develop a more effective way of rating charities' overall performance.

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Catherine Clark

Catherine Clark, 28 May 2009, 11:03

I hope the British model will be far more realistic in evaluating charities than the American. Charites MUST spend money to make it; and contribution income earned one year might not be spent for several years, which distorts the cost of doing charity 'business' -- and for which charities have been punished with bad ratings.

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David Alder

David Alder, 29 May 2009, 09:13

To suggest Intelligent Giving's investigations have been a 'mud-slinging' approach is prejudiced. Its high-profile criticism of some 'chugging' practices, for example, was a valuable wake-up call to many charities, and it needed airing. I believe it helped improve the sector. Hopefully this frank, challenging and independent approach will be maintained, or Intelligent Giving will have outlived its usefulness to donors and charities alike.

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