During the last 12 months, David Cameron's 'big society' has shifted favour away from bigger charities to the micro/local impact of community voluntary organisations and small non-profits.
Yet it's that time of year where "definitive" lists of "top charities" are released to a litany of self-interested media (sometimes with a price tag attached to the full research findings), which concentrate on the fiscally large and/or marketing heavy. For example, for the second year running PRWeek and Third Sector publications, in association with Harris Interactive have published their charity brand index.
But, as I tweeted upon its release, I have misgivings with both the criteria and delivery of such reports.
Third Sector magazine told me (in a tweet exchange) that to create the index they looked at the (my emphasis): "Top 150 charities based on their income from charitable activities and voluntary income" which are then ranked according to different criteria.
A great post by Mark Phillips after the launch of the 2009 charity brand index cites a US survey, similar to our own index, which uses a different set of criteria including: "size of budget, potential for future growth, volunteer numbers and news coverage".
Phillips himself says he doesn't buy the idea of a "propensity to donate" and likes to see bottom line income as proof of success (and I completely get his point), but I'd also like to see a more interesting and innovative approach to measuring charities' overall impact and indeed how their "brand" performs.
Meanwhile an NFP Synergy report published last month also decided to take the top fundraising charities as its starting point, finding that "the top 25 have more Twitter followers than either the top 25 shops or the top 25 largest companies on the FTSE 100". Great news, but are they all engaging their followers or just collecting fans with no strategy?
Is it not exclusionary to eliminate the local and small(er) charities at the first round when defining "brand", especially when talking about the employment of social media?
After all, online social media is a leveller; it is innovation, creativity and stewardship that count – not marketing spend or "big" brand power. The smallest charity can find its niche target audience in social media and as long as they are engaging, demonstrate impact and offer clear ways to get involved , there will be real rewards and revelations.
I for one can reel off a list of small and localised charities (like Child's i, which helps abandoned children in Uganda, the Royal Hospital for Neuro-Disability in London, and indeed my own employer) that have strong brands and demonstrable impact in their user-groups, which is strengthening through using social media.
I think community builder Paul Webster (@WatfordGap) nailed it when he commented in the Guardian's recent live Q&A on charities and social media: "People get hung up with ...the number of followers [rather than] the quality of the conversations taking place. Small networks of tweeters sharing quality links and info can be just as powerful as having thousands of followers."
I think perhaps it's time to reassess a) the relevance, or if not, b) the methodology, of corporate-style brand indexing for charities. Especially as this way of indexing throws up some pretty obscure (but evidently financially large) non-profits (anyone heard of Little Sisters of The Poor?) while validating the 'big charity' model among the chief executive's of charities that may be better off using a hyper-local, social-web approach; like Child's i.
While grassroots communities – meeting in coffee shops and school gyms, Facebook and Mumsnet – are identifying the charities that are meaningful to them, our sector could be a tad less navel gazing in its analysis.
Is big always beautiful? Is it the size of your income or what you do with your non-profit that matters?
Perhaps we could do with simply listening to our users and donors and delivering on their needs, rather than getting hung up in the third sector shower room.
Rob Dyson is PR manager at young people's charity Whizz-Kidz, a board member at CharityComms, and runs the Third Sector PR & Comms Network. He tweets at @robmdyson.
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