We recently received a telephone call from Vic Lee of ABC7 News.   He asked many questions and said he had received a few inquiries about Charity Blossom.  We’re not sure if KGO is going to do a story about us. Even so, we want to answer some of the questions that came up, so you can have the answers regardless.

In order to help donors and visitors in general be more informed about nonprofits and charities they wish to support, we make information about nonpropfits and charities publicly available.  We get most of our information from the IRS (www.irs.gov).  In particular, make Form 990 available for many organizations.  We also get this information from the IRS.  For individual Form 990 filings, simply search for the nonprofit listing and check to see if we have the filing.  For example, for the Literacy Network of Greater Cincinnati, go their listing page and click on the Form 990 link.  We make this information available for free.

If you would like to receive the Form 990 information for all nonprofit organizations, you can do so here. Mr. Lee seems to have an objection that we charge for the bulk distribution of this information.  Indeed, we charge a fee to receive the full set of information.   We believe this fee is reasonable — we ourselves must pay a few thousands of dollars for it, and we process that data so that it is in form more palatable for consumption.  The IRS delivers about 200 CDs of information.  We organization it and make it available on a single hard disk (a few hundred gigabytes).  Mr. Lee is certainly entitled to to his opinion that we should make this freely available.  However, we charge a small fee to make sure we can continue to make this service available.

Also, as previously noted, we make individual Form 900 disclosures available for free.

Second, Mr. Lee asked, “Why wouldn’t a nonprofit organization wish to receive a grant from us?”  We’d only be speculating for specific nonprofits so that answer is basically, “it depends.”  However, we received feedback that some nonprofits don’t fund raise at all and some don’t want to receive funds through “third parties (i.e. they only want to receive online donations on their own website).”

If a nonprofit doesn’t want to receive grants from us, we’re happy to oblige this request.  Information on how to do so is found here: www.charityblossom.org/corp/contact.

In general, if you have questions about Charity Blossom, our FAQ is a pretty good place to start.

Or if you have specific questions the faq can’t answer, send us an email at info@charityblossom.org

(Check out the Charity Blossom online Bible!)

Over the past few years at Charity Blossom, we’re pleased that many religious organizations have found and use Charity Blossom to execute their charitable giving initiatives and goals.  We aren’t too surprised.  We knew that charitable giving and religion go hand and in hand. And, I’ve been told by many, Charity and Christianity are intrinsically tied together.

Unremarkably, churches and Christian related organizations comprise a large number of the organizations that happily use Charity Blossom. 

Along the way, we’ve serrendipidously have had many meaningful conversations about Christian values and how they apply in our world today, both with our users and internally. Oftentimes these conversations have led us to the scriptures — we’ve been reading and analyzing the bible frequently.

And, in her free time (20% “adjacent time” in Google parlance), one of our interns decided to build an online bible for us to use internally.  We now have decided to open it up to the public — “in the wild.” We’re not exactly sure where we are going with this, but it’s been a fun experiment.  One of our most popular features thus far is our “verse of the day.” Check it out. Read a verse or two.  And leave a comment or start a conversation if you have something to say!

So, on Good Friday, we’re pleased to announce our new online bible.  Hope you like it!  Leave a comment and let us know.  Happy Easter!

Since we launched Charity Blossom months ago, we’ve gotten a few requests from the Better Business Bureau.  Most have been from the result of nonprofits wanting to understand “what is CharityBlossom all about?”  More precisely, why is there a listing for their nonprofit on the Charity Blossom site.  Or, if money donated to Charity Blossom to help a nonprofit, would the money actually find it’s way to the nonprofit.

Indeed these are legitimate questions from concerned nonprofits that are attempting to understand our mission.  Often times, the inquiry has one of two requested actions —

• Please remove the listing for my nonprofit.
• Please don’t allow grants to be advised to my organization.

On the latter, we are happy to oblige the request.  Under such circumstances, no donation with the advisement to help such an organization will result in a grant to the organization.  On the former, as we state in our FAQ:

We are a community resource of publicly available information and service the needs of both nonprofits and visitors (typically donors and potential donors) wanting information about nonprofits. We balance these two interests. We want to transparently provide as must truthful information as transparently as possible. A nonprofit can claim their listing and elide some of the information but for the most part we do not allow for the complete removal of a listing. If there is a legal reason to update or remove a listing, please let us know.

Part of our goal is to be the “go to” place to find information, factual data such as public Form 990 information as well as opinions through community reviews and comments.  We strive to help donors and potential donors make informed decisions about the charities and nonprofits they support.  Hence, we are quite extensive in the listings for nonprofits in the United States.

We hope this note helps clear up our intentions, goals, and policies.  If you still want to open a case with the Better Business Bureau, you can do so here.

Charity Blossom:  A Better Better Business Bureau for Nonprofits?

Of course, the irony of an inquiry into the BBB about Charity Blossom is not lost on us —   Charity Blossom serves much like the Better Business Bureau, but for nonprofits and charities.  As “clearinghouse” of information, we are a bridge between consumers (donors and potential donors) and nonprofits.  We provide information and forum for to discuss nonprofits and charities. One of our goals is to give donors confidence in the organizations the support by providing Trust, Truth, and Transparency for nonprofit organizations. Like BBB seal, the Charity Blossom Accredited Nonprofit badge is only earned through accreditation.  In addition to providing basic information about an organization, we provide a much richer corpus of data that comes from the US Government, the nonprofits themselves, and users — donors and potential donors.  Our hypothesis is that the richer set of information is even more useful.

(Taking applications to our 2012 program. Apply here.)

Summary

501(c)harities is a nonprofit incubator. We’re here to help charities get started, grow, and thrive. We help you understand and use the Internet and social media to transform your organization. If you are starting up or stuck in the offline world, 501(c)harities is here to help you.

The Internet Changes Everything

Unless you’ve been living in a cave, you know that Charity is going online. It’s not just about donation processing. Rather, how you communicate, motivate, and, in general, interact with your donors, volunteers, and supporters is happening over the Internet. You need to be where your constituents are — online.

Perhaps you’ve been wringing your hands over this. You know you need to make this transformation. But how? Do you have the time, money, resources, and expertise to do so?  After all, at least from a development perspective, offline has worked just fine — fund raisers, phone calls, and USPS mail.  

But deep down you know — you need to get online. Fund raising certainly. But how you will you deliver program services and communicate in general with your peeps online.  And, how will you make the transition?

Overwhelmed?

We’re Here to Help

We understand the difficulties, issues, and promises, but how do you even get started? We are here to help. We have deep expertise with respect to software, the Internet, technology, and social media — in the context of nonprofits and charities. We have over 20 years of experience. Our expertise is working with small organizations — those will less than 20 people or budgets smaller than $10 million/year. We want to use our blended experience to help you.  

But how can we deliver help? And how do so at scale? Certainly, we can provide consulting services. However, this only enables us to help only a small number of nonprofits, certainly not hundreds or thousands.

Our solution:  The Incubator

We’re taking an approach we’ve learned from the technology community. Over the past several years, incubators (or accelerators) emerged to help startups realize their dreams. Namely, the incubators provide guidance, support, and sometimes financing to help entrepreneurs get companies started. Y Combinator, 500 Startups, and Techstars are among the most well known, but there are others that are helping entrepreneurs all over the United States.   Additionally, the incubator provides a network of seasoned professionals to help.  Further, because the incubator runs groups of startups through a program in parallel, participants are cohorts that can help each other. You are not in this alone!

The 501(c)harities:  The Charity Incubator

We’re taking a page from the technology incubator playbook.

501(c)harities is an incubator for charities and nonprofits.

We’re taking applications for early entrance int our first 2012 classes now. We’re just putting the “final” touches on the program now.  (We say “final” parenthetically, because, as you’ll learn, iteration, experimentation, evaluation, and adaption are part of a process to get things built. We subscribe to this model for our incubator as well! The “job” is never done.)

Cut off date for the 2012 class is June 30, 2012. However, sign up now and get a head start. We’ll give preferential treatment to the first 21 charities that do. 

Sign Up Today and Apply

Registering is easy. Go to 501(c)harities and enter your email address. We’ll send you an email confirming your registration and give you instructions on how to apply.

We’re giving away free money to your favorite charity. That’s right.  Free.  Well almost free.

Here’s how: Come to Charity Blossom and make a donation to help any nonprofit of your choice. We’ll kick in an extra $10.  There’s a catch….wait for it….But first, you might be asking,

“Why are we we doing this?”

First, we want to help your favorite charity.  If you support them, that’s all the “social proof” we need to know that they are up to good stuff.  And, we want to help too.

Second, we want to introduce them to Charity Blossom.  We can help them get new donors and more donations.  But, of course, they have to know about us.  What better way than for you and us coming together to make a donation to help them?  They get the double benefit of money  plus an introduction to all the great tools to help them thrive as a nonprofit.

The “catch” you ask?  Well, we want to help your friends’ favorite charities too.  So, we
want you tell your friends that we’ll donate $10 to their favorite charities.  If you can get three friends to donate to help their favorite charities, we’ll kick in $10 to yours.  Of course, we’ll also match 10 cabbages to your friends’ charities under the same circumstances.  Everyone wins!

The basic idea is simple:  You Give.  (3) Friends Give.  And, We’ll Give too.  It’s that easy!

However, restrictions apply, so read the fine print.

For a variety of reasons, we have a different set of expectations from nonprofits relative to for-profit businesses with regards to transparency and information disclosure.  Some of it is legal and regulatory — as required to qualify as a nonprofit organization (for example a 501(c)3 tax exempt organization).  Some of it is a societal expectation for a nonprofit to be more transparent.  If a donor is making a contribution to a charitable cause, oftentimes there is a sense of (legitimate) entitlement to more information.

At Charity Blossom,  want to surface as much information as possible.

For this reason, we provide a forum and meeting place for nonprofits, donors, and other constituents to provide information, opinions, and insight into nonprofits.  Our goal is to be a valuable community resource of information about charities and nonprofits.

Form 990s at Your Finger Tips

In furthering this goal, we’ve decided to publish the Form 990 for all charities and nonprofits.  Form 990, Return of Organization Exempt From Income Tax, is submitted by tax-exempt and non-profit organizations to provide the Internal Revenue Service with annual financial information. This form is roughly equivalent to the Form 1040 that an individual files with the federal government. 

Form 990 contains a plethora of information.  Find out about donations made, how money is spent, salaries of key executives and other pertinent financial information.

While this information is  available from the IRS (for a fee) and some websites expose some of it, it is still difficult to get to.  Our goal is to make this public information easily accessible and as inexpensively as possible (currently, free!).  Just going to Charity Blossom and search for a nonprofit.  If we have the Form 990 for it, you can easily view it.

Form 990 in Bulk

While getting access to individual Form 990s for specific organizations is interesting and informatiive (for example, many have checked out the 990s of the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation during a recent controversy), many have requested getting this information in bulk.  In other words getting access to all Form 900s for all organizations.  We’ve found while this information is “free” from the IRS, it still costs a few thousands of dollars for “media and processing” fees.  Further, it comes in an unmanageable set of about 200 DVDs.  Other companies provide this data at around $30,000/year) in a format that might not be very suitable for consumption.

At Charity Blossom, we can provide this information at a much more affordable level in a much more palatable form — a big USB disk.  Check it out.

We’re shining more light on nonprofits and charities.

We’re down to the wire.  It’s Valentines Day.  Have you bought that perfect give for that perfect person and planned that perfect event for tonight?

Or, are you struggling in despair, frantically trying to figure things out at the last minute?  Chocolates?  Flowers?  Dinner reservations available only at 9:45? At at the Olive Garden?  What to do?

How about a gift in the name of a loved one to his or her favorite charitable cause?  What better way to show that you care by supporting the cause that your loved one cares about.  We’ve done some research.  The gift of giving is a surprise that is appreciated like no other. 

So, if you are banging your head against the wall trying to find that perfect gift for Valentines Day, maybe giving the gift of giving is your savior.  Or, if you are comfortably set for that perfect date tonight, maybe the a gift in name of a loved one makes all the more special.

The Susan G. Komen for the Cure Foundation has been under fire.  First, over policies regarding grant distributions to Planned Parenthood.  Or rather, the decision not to  provide grants to Planned Parenthood.  And, then reversing its policy.   And funding.

And now, they are under the microscope for other issues, such as executive compensation and spending.  Did Nancy Brinker, founder and chief executive of Susan G. Komen for the Cure, really take home $417,000 in salary in 2010 and pay 50 top executives more than $100,000 each?

At Charity Blossom, we attempt not to pass judgment over the missions and operations of nonprofits.  We do provide a platform for data (that is populated in part with IRS information), user generated content, and opinions.  Along with the capability for nonprofits for them to add information and make their “pitch” for their cause and operations.  Our goal, in addition to bringing donors and donations to nonprofits, is to provide information and insight so that (potential) donors can make informed decisions about which organizations to support.

For the Susan G Komen Breast Cancer Foundation, we have a plethora of data, including the Form 990s (basically a nonprofit’s tax filings) for 2010, 2009, 2008, and 2007.

What’s the truth over this situation?  Take a look and decide for yourself.

I saw “How the Grinch Stole Christmas” last night.  It tells the the often forgotten story that “stuff” does not make us happy.  And, related, it reminded me of its corollary that it’s better to give than it is to receive. In fact, as usual around Christmas, I’m seeing stories about how giving is the key to our happiness. This week, I read “Chasing Happiness: You’re Doing It Wrong“ and “The Secret to Happiness: Giving”, both reinforcing this fairly simple idea.  And, at Charity Blossom, the most common requested feature in November was for the option to make a donation as a gift to someone else. So, we implemented the “Give the Gift of Giving” feature so you can do this.  (BTW, here’s the cheat sheet on how to do this if you want to give a donation as a gift.)  We’ve seen a significant uptake of this feature. Over 30% of donations are specified as a gifts to someone else. Maybe this is a seasonal thing but it certainly a significant number of our donations. Clearly people like to give the gift of a donation.

It’s Good to Give But Is It Good to Receive?

We’re encouraged that people like to give gifts of donations. And that it purportedly has a positive impact on their happiness. But, what about receiving gifts? And, in particular, what about receiving a gift of a donation made in their name? It seems so simple — shouldn’t we enjoy receiving gifts? However, growing up, I realized that in Japanese culture, and I presume others, this is really quite complicated. What are the rules of reciprocity? How should you acknowledge a gift? What if you don’t like a gift you’ve received? What obligations have you incurred in receiving a gift? In short, it seems receiving a gift, in a complicated inverted way, might suck.

And, Further…

What does it mean to receive the gift of a donation to a charity? Are the rules different since the recipient didn’t really receive anything themselves? Hopefully, the giver is giving to an organization that you support or at least he or she supports. So, some organization that at least one of you are passionate about gets benefit. So, there is some good here that we can all feel good about. But what about the recipient of gift of the donation made in their name?

So, we did an experiment to find out. Actually, let’s call it a “study” since it lacked scientific and statistical rigor for it to be called a experiment. I gave the Gift of Giving to a handful of people through Charity Blossom — $25 to the Charity Blossom Human Fund. When they received the card informing them of the gift, I asked, 

“Do you feel good about receiving the gift of giving?”

Over 90% said yes.

After I asked them this questioned, I followed up with a second gift, a $25 Amazon gift certificate.  I then asked, 

“Which do you enjoy more — the Gift of Giving or the Amazon gift certificate?”

Over 80% said the Gift of Giving.  Let me re-phrase that: Significantly more people enjoy receiving the Gift of Giving than receiving an Amazon gift certificate for themselves.

We were a little surprised. For those that preferred the Gift of Giving, I asked, “Why?” The most common answers (I paraphrase):

• Doing good makes me feel good.  It’s all good.  Without guilt.
• I’m not obligated to return a gift.  I don’t even have to send a thank-you note.
• It’s easy.  I don’t have to do anything.  (I guess there’s effort in the decision process in what to buy when you get a gift certificate.)

There you go. Give theGift of Giving. You feel good and are happier. Charities get money that is desperately needed. And your recipients of your gift feel good (in a significant way) too.

Happy Holidays!

[Side note: A donation to the Human Fund also has a bit more of trickiness to it as well. As you may know, the “Human Fund” is central a parody skit on the television show Seinfeld. At Charity Blossom, the Human Fund is real but there is a complicated mental interplay with the fictional fund on the TV show. At Charity Blossom, the Human Fund is playful but does serious good.]

Rate a Nonprofit on Charity Blossom.

Review a Nonprofit on Charity Blossom.

As co-founder and first engineers at MerchantCircle, Jason, Jeff, and I are well versed on the impact of online ratings and reviews of local businesses. While MerchantCircle was not focused on providing reviews for businesses, we watched how Yelp became *the* place to find good information on businesses such as restaurants, hair salons, and contractors. Consumers have increasingly turned to web to find user generated reviews to find the “go to” places in a city. The Yellow Pages, at least among the Internet cognoscenti, are left unopened and sent directly to the recycling bin. The professional reviewers in newspapers are no match for the “wisdom of the crowd” and their knowledge. The power of the masses, aggregated by Yelp, has become a dominant force.  Local businesses owners depend on these reviews and reviewers — the collective masses of consumers validate and promote their businesses; ultimately, they have determined whether or not they would succeed or fail.

At Charity Blossom, we’ve taken note of this. Part of our mission is to be the “go to”place to find information about charities and nonprofits. In addition to objective information that we receive from the IRS and the information we get from the nonprofits themselves,  we allow you — donors, supporters, and even detractors of nonprofits — a platform for you voice your opinions, comments, and concerns about nonprofits. We’ve democratized the knowledge available to you by allowing others to let you know what they think about charities and nonprofits. For every nonprofit/charity we have listing information (we get the exhaustive list of over 1.5 million nonprofits from the IRS), you can leave your thoughts and opinions.

User generated content shines light onto nonprofits. It provides valuable information to help you formulate informed opinions and conclusions about charities and nonprofits. Relying only on government, objective, or self-promoted information would leave a gap in the whole story. So, we’ve fully embraced social media as a mechanism to give more an better information about nonprofits.

Our implementation leverages Facebook to collect, disseminate, and authenticate information that gets generated by the collective masses. Using Facebook comments, Likes, and Connect, we’ve built a powerful platform to share user generated reviews and ratings.

So “Like” a nonprofit or write a review for a charity on Charity Blossom.  You are helping charities and nonprofits as well as donors too.  Much like Yelp, Charity Blossom is the go to place to ratings and reviews for charities and nonprofits.

I’ll close with a promotion of another place for you to find user generated reviews on nonprofits — GreatNonprofits. They’ve been around for awhile. And, while it’s a little “old school,” it’s a pretty good place to find out about 11,000+ nonprofits where there are over 92,000 reviews. We’ve poked around a bit to see how they’ve done over the years. Good job!

Here are some numbers from Quantcast too: