How to vet charities for your corporate giving program – Part 2

Stéphanie Grawehr April 01, 2019

In our last post, Alaya’s NGO Relations Manager Grégoire von Blon shared six ways for companies to vet charities for their giving programs and maximise the impact of their donations. Now that we’ve gotten insight into these approaches, how can your company decide which approach makes the most sense for you? Let’s get right to it.

How can companies decide which approach is best for them?

First, companies have to ask themselves why they want to contribute (e.g. internal or external communication, tax deduction), which cause they want to support (e.g. focus on environment, let employees decide from a wide range of charities).  

Then, companies can determine if they have sufficient expertise internally to conduct a multi-dimensional approach and if they can allocate resources to the vetting process. For example, their finance or legal departments may have insights on any specific requirements. Alternatively, companies can outsource this lengthy process and simplify decision-making to the strategic aspects of their CSR program. And that’s where Alaya can help.

How do we help companies vet charities at Alaya?

As mentioned, there are many ways to verify charities, though most organisations tend to limit themselves to one. At Alaya, we adopt a multi-dimensional approach. This includes checking a charity’s registration in a national administration, evaluating a charity’s structure, processes, and governance, conducting interviews, and partnering with reliable certification and standards bodies, such as Sphere Standards. We also take into account other factors, including gender equality, local communities’ implication, people empowerment, and the grassroots nature of the project.

With training in sociology and political science, we apply various techniques of qualitative research. This allows us to take aspects into account that go beyond the views of tax deductibility and find organisations with holistic programs addressing multiple challenges and providing sustainable changes to their beneficiaries.

How does Alaya find and vet charities across different geographies?

Our corporate partners have offices around the world. We help them connect with charities in their geographies, so that all of their employees have the chance to contribute to their local community.

We do this in a number of ways, including searching for charities active in a specific area and reaching out to our existing network of more than 330 charity partners around the world. Sometimes, our corporate partners work with existing charities, in which case we take care of vetting and if appropriate, adding them to our platform. We are also open to suggestions of charities from employees or our community (if you’d like to suggest one, let us know!), which we then contact and vet.

Giving is such a powerful tool to enable social change, we hope these insights can help you ensure that your gift does the most good.

If you’d like to learn more about how Alaya’s platform can facilitate your corporate giving, download a brochure or scroll down to subscribe to our newsletter for more updates on all things employee engagement, social purpose, and CSR.

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