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Charity awards – good or bad?

VolResource has a page listing various ‘charity awards’, from the general to the specific, and we mention them from time to time in the weekly email newsletter. However, personally I pretty much agree with the World Land Trust’s weekly column, talking about Charity Times annual awards:

“Is this really what supporters of a charity expect their money to be spent on? Is this really how they expect staff and Trustees to be spending their time?

“And of course only a few charities can afford the time and money to actually enter into a competition to become ‘Charity of the Year’ or be nominated the ‘Trustee Board of the Year’. And not everyone has the ego that needs to be the ‘Finance Director of the Year’. Clearly awards like these are going to be influenced by money and size — particularly when there is an award for the ‘Best Charity to Work for’ and it’s decided by internet voting.”

Anyone have views either way?

3 Responses to "Charity awards – good or bad?"

Daniel Phelan says:

April 26, 2007 at 6:37 am

I can’t speak for the UK Charity Awards with which I have no connection, but I have organised the Charity Awards every year since 2000 so have a good deal of experience in this kind of programme. The approach we take is to invite charities to submit details of projects and to then review these against ten hallmarks of excellence designed to identify great management and leadership. The intention is to recognise excellence and to capture and disseminate that learning to the rest of the sector. This kind of recognition is enormously successful at building morale, encourages more rigorous planning and execution in the conduct of projects and brings to the attention of many the remarkable work of charities working often in desperate isolation throughout the UK. Many of those recognised have found that fundraising becomes much easier as a result and that they suddenly become listened to for the first time by policy makers in their fields of work. We invite two representatives of every shortlisted charity to attend the awards ceremony as our guests so there is no need for them to buy tickets. Virtually all of the 1,000 seats at the presentation dinner (on 21 June this year)are paid for by corporate supporters who then invite charity guests to fill their tables.
The Charity Awards are supported by CAF (the Charities Aid Foundation) and The Times newspaper and are chosen by an independent group of assessors, all very senior figures from the sector, who review the work of charities against published criteria. No award is made without significant evidence of achievements against objectives. We are not measuring management for management’s sake, but believe that good management must lead to better outcomes. I agree with the author that badly thought through programmes can do more harm than good, but would encourage everyone to support genuine attempts to recognise and publicise the inspiring and innovative work of many charities that would otherwise go unsung. To find out more about the Charity Awards 2007, visit http://www.charityawards.co.uk.
Daniel Phelan
Nick Temple says:

April 26, 2007 at 4:39 pm

Have also blogged on this, and the need for recognition and celebration more widely, over at the SSE blog. See Celebrating success: should we?
john dewey says:

May 1, 2007 at 3:46 pm

Charities need to put their organisation on the map so that is an easy way to do it. volre needs to increase profile and awards like this do help

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